Where have all my iPhone images gone?

I have had an iPhone since they first came out back in 2007 but I didn’t buy one until the December of that year. We are now over half way through 2010 and I have no clue what I did with all the images I have shot in 2007/08. Is that not dreadful?

In truth they have been backed up along with all my other shots and are on DVD. But my point is I don’t actually remember much abut them in terms of who, what, when where and why I took each shot in the first place.

I do know that for about a year I turned my nose up at the lack of megapixels and really only thought of it as a device for capturing web quality snaps. How wrong was I? Its all about the moments and memories that transcend what device you are capturing it on.

Think of all the Memories…

Gillian, Jools, and I were looking through my old childhood photos with my mum and dad a while back and when I was a kid we had one of those Kodak 110 Cassette Camera with the flash cubes that sat on top of the camera. There was a little slider on the bottom of the camera to advance the frame and turn the cube so that you were ready to “Nuke” the next unsuspecting victim, eh! I mean subject…

Yep, thats me with my Jack Nicklaus haircut and my first Fisher-Price Camera that didn’t actually take pictures…

I have 2 lasting memories of using that camera. Firstly, wet fingers and flash cubes really hurt! And secondly, blasting through a whole 24 shot 110 cassette at your Aunt Caroline’s wedding before you got out of the church does not go down well with you’re mum and dad.

Anyway I digress, my point is that these cameras and cameras of a similar nature e.g. “35mm Disposables” were the low quality phone camera of their day and how much I appreciate looking back on these images regardless of how bad the quality is?

The Best Camera…

I know a lot of smart phones have 8mp and even higher but lets face it the lens quality and the chip is not up to even the standard of my little Canon G9. But thats not the point. Its the camera you have with you pretty much all of the time and its probably going to be a mobile phone that you capture those precious moments.

Seattle based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis says, “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You” and he has proved that creating images with your iPhone can be art as long as you accept the limitations of the phone and work with them rather than against them.

Workflow

One of my greatest failings was dumping images taken with my iPhone into iPhoto and then not doing anything with them. Not because I have anything against iPhoto. Its actually a pretty powerful little image processor and it can do a lot with you’re images. But of course my heart lies with Lightroom, Bridge and of course Photoshop.

Starting with all the images from 2009, I have created an iPhone catalog in Lightroom 3 and it is there I plan to start working on these images for personal slideshows, web galleries and output to Photobox etc… In fact the images you see have been been tweaked directly in Lightroom 3 and I have to say the new noise reduction is essential for any iPhone shot because you hardly ever have the right kind of light levels that you need for a phone to take a clean shot.

Photoshop

Up until a month ago I had hardly ever brought a single iPhone image into Photoshop to see what the pixels were really like and I have yet to print one even on my inkjet printer let alone sending it to a lab for printing.

So, with all this confessing I thought it would be cool to include some of my iPhone shots in this article and in future videos tutorials. I am going to see if I come up with solutions to some of the problems you get from using smart phones whether its an iPhone, Nokia, or LG, you get the idea…

Top 5 iPhone Apps

I thought I would leave you with my top 5 photography applications that I use pretty much all the time on my iPhone. They are as follows:

1. Best Camera
2. Flickr
3. Tiltshift
4. Camera Bag
5. Pano

I also use Easy Release and Photocalc for other photography related calculations for when I am working with da big cameras.

It would be good to hear about your frustrations with using camera phones and maybe I can put together an actions workflow and some Lightroom presets to help you make the most of the camera you are likely to have on you most if not all of the time.

And Finally…

I just wanted to apologise for lack of posts of in the last 2 months. I am looking after Gillian pretty much full-time as she comes into the final stages of her pregnancy and this is the main reason why my latest training series Signature and Photoshop CS5 Essential Training were delayed. Anyway they are online right now available as an instant downloads.

Normal service will resume next week with a new screencast and article going online around the middle of the week.

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series >

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series >

So I thought it very important to do a tutorial showing you where your images are in relation to Lightroom and your computer. It can after all be confusing to many users and although simple, its better to have this video than not to have it.

I also show you some hidden features of the folders panel and a way to make easier to identify the location of your images if you are not always keeping them in the same place. Enjoy!

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series >

Make sure you pay close attention to the “Organise” aspect of the video because once you have placed the images its a real pain to move them again. Apart from that its pretty plain sailing for the rest of this part of learning about the essential basics of Lightroom 2.

Finally…

I will be updating this video pretty soon for Lightroom 3 because there is quite an update as far as the importing side of things are concerned.

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series >

What is a Catalog?

We covered where to store you images in part one of the series. Now we are going to look at creating a catalog, but first lets ask the question ‘What is a Catalog?

Well if you have ever used Lightroom2 it used to be called a “Library”. But since Lightroom 2 came out the database where you collect and store all your image data is known as a catalog. Unlike Apple’s Aperture Software, Lightroom does not store any images directly in the catalog which for me is a good thing as your less likely to then lose both the catalog and images at the same time. However you do have options as to where you store your images, how you process them, present them, and of course print them from directly within the Catalog.

Lightroom, unlike Adobe Bridge also remembers where you were in the catalog and this alone saves you time and allows you to work more efficiently. So in simple terms the catalog is used to group and retain your image library together along with all the meta and image data for you to be able to sort and view those images quickly and easily.

If you are new Lightroom then this screencast if for you. I discuss the best location for saving a catalog and also the pro’s and con’s of using one or more catalogs and how best to name them. Next Tuesday we will start to get into actually using Lightroom by Importing our first set of images into the new catalog. Enjoy!

View The Lightroom Essential Training Series >