I use a lot of extra, smaller programs to make my work easier. After gauging interest on Twitter, it seems many people are curious about what I use. A while back, I wrote about some iOS apps, but an expanded and updated list including Mac apps is due, since many of those apps have been abandoned, or have been replaced in my workflow with others.
I'm not afraid to admit that I'm slightly addicted to my iPhone. It's a really useful piece of tech, not just for communication, but for my work as well. Here's a list of apps I use almost daily for my motion design & post production work :
What The Font (Free, iTunes Link)
Take a picture of a sign, layout, billboard, or pretty much anything and upload it to What The Font. It operates much like the website and can be a lifesaver. Though it can be tricky to get matches back unless you have a 3G S, as the fixed focus camera on the original and 3G iPhones makes it tricky to get a decent picture.
cliqcliq Colors ($2.99, iTunes Link)
Choosing the right colors for a project is important and inspiration can come from anywhere at any time. Chose your own colors (up to 16) or use a photo as the basis for the palette. You can work in RGB, HSB, Gray or CMYK (for you print designers). When you're done you can name & rate your palette, or even send it in an email. The email is especially thorough, providing ACO, ASE, Office Open XML Color Theme, bitmap, plaintext, and CSV file formats, along with a preview.
ColorSlide (Free, iTunes Link)
Speaking of color palettes, you're probably familiar with Adobe Kuler. ColorSlide is basically an iPhone front-end allowing you to search, browse, and bookmark the palettes. Unfortunately, there's no way to sign in with your Kuler account, though you can email links.
Mill Colour (Free, iTunes Link)
A great little photo adjustment app by The Mill. Allows you to chose from predefined looks or adjust lift/gamma/gain (both luminance & separate RGB) and saturation on your own.
PS Mobile (Free, iTunes Link)
From Adobe themselves. Crop, adjust exposure/saturation/tint, apply filters and save & upload your completed image to photoshop.com. I admit I don't use this too often, but it's handy to have.
Animation Timer ($4.99, iTunes Link)
Tap out timing for your animation. It's similar to the "lap" feature on stopwatches, though instead of fractions of a second, you get frames, 35mm footage or timecode. It's handy for timing everything from edits to complex character animation.
EditCalc ($0.99, iTunes Link)
A simple timecode calculator. Works in 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 59.94, and 60 fps. You can also work in varying film footages, from 16mm 1perf all the way up to 70mm 5perf.
AJA DataCalc (Free, iTunes Link)
Recently released, this app will calculate storage for varying frame sizes/rates and codecs, and closely mirrors their Mac & Windows calculators in function. You can work in days/hours/min/sec or timecode. What I really like about the app is you can chose between working in KB (1000 bytes), KiB (1024 bytes) or even Bits, which is handy if you're working in Snow Leopard. One complaint is that they don't offer 720p24 as a preset, though you can use custom setups, so it's not that big of a deal. When you're all done you can mail a summary of your calculation; useful if you're on set and need to let your assistant know what's coming.
iBlueSky ($9.99, iTunes Link)
If you're not familiar with mind mapping, you might not care much about this app. But it's hands-down the best app for this purpose. What I really like is that I can email my maps as OPML files (along with other formats) and open it up with OmniOutliner on my Mac.
Pocket VFX ($0.99, iTunes Link)
This is just for fun. Framestore (vfx credits include Avatar, The Dark Knight, The Golden Compass, and Where the Wild Things Are) has released an app of their own. You, too can have Framestore's power in your own pocket!
Have other favorite design/post apps? Share them in the coments.
ProLost has an interesting idea for an iPhone software/accessory. As you may have heard today, Apple had a press event to discuss the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software. One of the features is the ability to access devices through the dock connector. Imagination went wild:
The idea is that someone could manufacture an HDMI-to-Dock Connector accessory to monitor footage in the field. (I love the addition of lens settings & RGB waveform, by the way.)
However, while I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, I'm pretty sure this isn't quite possible. I doubt the iPhone hardware is capable of crunching HD video. But perhaps that hardware accessory itself could crunch the video down to iPod friendly 480x360 h.264 video on the fly? With the ability for the on-screen controls to send commands to the accessory to show pixel-pixel video (with paning, of course) for a focus aide?
Actually, hot damn! That does sound like an awesome idea!
Think Tetris, but upside-down, with letters. That's the best way I can think to describe KERN (App Store), a new game for the iPhone. From the site:
KERN is a minimalist typography experience challenging you to precisely place a missing letter into a falling word while avoiding any unnecessary ligatures! Practice and prove your typographical acumen with a score that gives new meaning to point-size!
The design is beautifully minimal and well thought out. It's also easy to pick up and well worth the $0.99, even if your not into typography. I think this might be my new go-to game.
Video of the game play available after the break.
[via @rohdesign]
USBfever is selling 2x telephoto, 0.7x wide-angle macro, and fish-eye lenses for the iPhone. They attach with a magnetic ring with a self-adhesive backing. Now, it's no secret that the iPhone camera sucks, but they are so prevalent that some have managed to get better-than-mediocre pictures.. At US$16.99 each ($19.99 for the fish-eye), it might be with it to pick one up. Throw in Camera Bag (App Store), and you have a nifty little toy camera!
[via core77]
I'm not sure who put this up, but it really made my morning.
As has been reported all over today, the iPhone NDA has been dropped for released software and features. However, I'm pretty sure it will still cover rejected apps (specifically, rejection letters). Even so, it is great that developers now have the opportunity to share their code and techniques with one another.
Now, not to rain on the parade here, but now can they fix the issue with app rejections? IBM's Lotus Notes has been approved for sale in the App Store, despite apple rejecting a third party G-Mail app earlier for "duplicating funcionality and potential user confusion." Granted, Lotus Notes is a bit more complex than MailWrangler, but they both seem to provide "sufficient differentiation" than the built in Mail app.
Still, the NDA shows progress in the right direction.
Flash Magazine is reporting that Adobe is indeed developing Flash Player for the iPhone. It appears they have a team working on development, if the report is to be believed. I would note, however, the language used here: Flash Player, not Flash Plugin.
The Flash many have come to know and love (or hate) is embedded in websites and loaded with a browser plugin. As far as I know, Safari on the iPhone has no plugin architecture. I see three outcomes here:
First, Adobe is developing Flash Player as a separate browser, possibly based on Webkit. If you know you are going to a site that uses Flash, you launch the Adobe built browser. Obviously, this isn't the ideal situation as users would now have two different browsers to use depending on the site technologies.
Another option is to have Flash behave similar to QuickTime on the iPhone. When a user browses to a site with Flash, an icon is displayed which the user can click to launch the content in the Flash player. This might work, but there are two caveats: Only for sites built entirely in Flash or that use Flash for content purposes (think video and games) would benefit. Sites that just incorporate Flash into certain portions, like navigation or animated elements would either break or lose their intended design. Second, Adobe would have to be working closely with Apple for this implementation, which clearly isn't happening. If they were partnering with Apple in this way, they would be either definitive in ther colaboration, or completely tight-lipped. Not these in-between quotes which continually pop up.
The last outcome, and perhaps most probable: this just won't happen. I think Flash on the iPhone is the new Duke Nukem Forever.
[via lifehacker]
Apparently, Apple has heard the public complaints about their recent rejections from the App Store. Their solution? Cover the rejection letters under NDA:
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE
Nice. It's no secret that I can be considered an Apple fan boy and all, but this is getting ridiculous. I wonder how many rejected developers will break the NDA?
By this point, most of us are familiar with the App Store and the controversy: why do apps have to be vetted by Apple before being deemed acceptable to install on our own devices? This is not a post specifically about that, but rather the extension of that practice.
Several months ago, I ran across a post on Rogue Amoeba's Under the Microscope blog about code signing in Leopard. At the heart of the discussion was the following quote in an Apple mailing list:
In order to achieve the nirvana of only running valid code, the system must completely refuse to run unsigned code. Since that would really have ruined third party developers’ Leopard experience, we don’t do that in Leopard (except for the Parental Controls and firewall cases, where we surreptitiously sign unsigned programs when they are “enabled” to run).
Eventually you will all have signed your recent releases, and we’ll have fixed all the (important) bugs and closed all the (important) holes, and a switch will materialize to this effect - to refuse (at the kernel level) to run any code that isn’t valid.Posted to apple-cdsa on March 3, 2008 ((It should be noted that I commented on that post as to who, exactly, "Perry the Cynic" was. He is an employee of Apple as past posts of his in the mailing lists will clearly indicate.))
At that time, I said that no one would accept such measures. How could people possibly use a system where all the code is signed in such a manor? The iPhone App store is certainly such a system, but it's a closed device with the expectations of a closed device. ((Except, perhaps, for the Jailbreak community.))
However, with the apparent success of the App Store, Apple's history of using smaller projects as test-beds for OS X, the inclusion of the Trusted Platform Module on Intel chip sets when Apple made the x86 transition ((Even though the TPM is not enabled on Intel Macs, its presence just adds fuel to the fire.)), and the support for signed code in Leopard, I have to wonder.
If Apple does indeed move to a closed system with all applications requiring signing in order to run, it will be a troubling time for those who run on Macs. Take, for example, the recent rejection of a podcasting application from the App Store:
Today I finally got a reply from Apple about the status of Podcaster.
Apple Rep says: Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.
This bears repeating: an application was rejected because it duplicates the functionality of iTunes, an Apple app.
Now, I'm usually an advocate for Apple when it comes to "the whole solution." I believe that by having control of the hardware and the OS which runs on that hardware enables them to provide a solid experience. That, however, is as far as my advocacy for a controlled system will go.
Yes, I use iCal, Mail, Final Cut Pro, and many other Apple apps, but I do so as a choice. The minute I lose that choice is when I jump ship. No user experience, regardless of polish and ease, can justify that. Imagine if I was forced to use iChat instead of Adium, Safari instead of Firefox... Motion instead of After Effects.
This single tweet from Steven Frank illustrates the worst-case-scenario:
Scenario: Apple makes code-signing mandatory for desktop Mac applications. You can now only buy them through iTunes. Think it can't happen?
I think it can, I just hope against hope that it doesn't. If it does? I'll stick with Leopard (or in some cases Tiger) until I can no longer install those systems on new hardware. Once that happens? Well, I just hope Linux will have matured enough to get the support from the software I need to use on a daily basis.
[thanks to Daring Fireball for inspiring the conversation]
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