iPad App Review: Flexfolios

The first thing that you need to know about this app is that it's $24.99. That's fairly expensive in terms of applications, even for the iPad. So I would definitely recommend carefully considering whether or not you even need this kind of application based on price alone.

AppStore Description: Flexfolios app for the iPad is an innovative and groundbreaking way to present and showcase virtual, digital portfolios content.

Easily make and customize multiple portfolios to target any client’s individual needs.

With Flexfolios you can create stunning visual presentations with multimedia capacities in seconds so you never miss an opportunity to promote yourself or your business.

No internet or website not loading up? No problem with this iPad device based application. Save money and time. No pricey leather portfolios and costly printing.

Present your work or inventory to anyone, anywhere and at any time. Impress your clients and prospects. Perfect for photographers, videographers, models, agents, reps, retouchers, stylists, architects, designers, and visual artists. It applies to inventories of any kind; anyone needing to showcase products or services.

FlexFolios does not seem to be particularly intuitive. Opening the program for the first time brings you to either a blank page with a menu button and edit button on top, if in portrait mode, or a blank page with a red menu bar on the left if in landscape mode. I tried fumbling around to see if I could make a portfolio right away, but I ended up having to check the reference manual, which they thankfully include, to see what I was doing wrong.

Even the manual itself was slightly confusing, with a table of contents that looks like a group of clickable links that aren't clickable at all. Instead, one must manually flip through each page of the manual, which is a little archaic and annoying if you're trying to jump to a specific topic. Thankfully, the manual isn't that long.

I started out by setting up my contact info. You can create an electronic business card, or more precisely, you can create contact info with an attached image that you can then send out to a client or contact. The card image itself is constrained to 700 pixels by 400 pixels, and any other image size is cropped without an option to resize it. It's really not particularly impressive, and I think that sending a contact card through the Contacts app is actually much better. The only nice thing is that it's centrally located in the program that you'll probably already have open if you're showing your work to a client. I was a little dismayed, though, to find that my contact info disappeared the first time I exited and re-entered the application, although it could have been a fluke.

I should point out, though, that you can create a different contact card for each portfolio you design, which is a nice touch, and might make sense if you're presenting work as a company representative vs. a freelance photographer. I don't know, realistically, how many people would use this feature, but it's definitely a nice touch. You can associate a document with whatever business card you design for a particular portfolio, but not with the primary contact card. And then, you can only send that document by e-mail if you include your business card as part of your portfolio display. Yes, it really is as confusing as it sounds.

The next step involves adding pictures to your media library. This is probably one of the most irksome features of this program. Instead of being able to directly add pictures from your library to the portfolio directly, you need to add it to the application's media library first. It's not particularly fast, and you have to choose photos one at a time. I found it a little annoying, but there was a feature here that I did like. Double clicking on the photo, or clicking edit then clicking the photo, will allow you to add details about the photo, such as the title, the client, the talent and comments, and will allow you to add items such as pictures and documents that are associated with the photo. It's nice to be able to add this level of detail to a picture, but if you don't need to add that kind of detail, then dealing with the media library is annoying.

As I've just mentioned, you can also add documents, sound files, movie clips and other files to the media library. This is definitely a nice feature, but it all needs to be done through iTunes. There's no option to be able to take files from iDisk, for example, which would have been great. So I was left wishing for a little bit more in this case.

Once you've added everything you need to your media library, you can then start designing your portfolio. Touching "Create New Portfolio" brings you to the portfolio creation screen, where you start out with the basic info, such as the name of the portfolio. You also have the option of whether or not you want vertical images placed side by side when viewing the portfolio.

Next, you need to add items from your media library. Again, we encounter another irksome feature of this application. Instead of simply allowing you to drag the images from your picture library into the portfolio, you need to hold your finger down on the image, wait for it to "pop up", then drag it into the portfolio area. This took me a while to figure out, and did not win any points with me.

You can then select a background against which your pictures will be displayed. You can create a custom background, if you like. More on this below.

As a side note, you can only have 36 images per portfolio. This is a little limiting, especially since, being electronic, you might want to show a potential client more images.

Finally, you can create a custom business card for this particular portfolio, and can even attach documents and other non-image files to the portfolio, which is nice if you need it.

Once you've done all that, you can finally look at the portfolio you've created. The photos in the portfolio are displayed against the background you've selected, which quite frankly, seems like a complete waste of screen real estate to me. I'd much rather have my pictures taking up the entire screen instead of having them shrunk down. Also, there's no option to zoom, so if your client wants to look closer at something in one of your photos, then tough luck. This is made worse if you have "Display Images Side by Side" activated. Any pictures with a portrait orientation will be put next to each other, displaying two portrait pictures per page if you're holding the iPad in landscape view, thus rendering your pictures even smaller. But you can always turn this feature off, or hold the iPad in portrait mode, which turns the effect off. (As a side note, there's no option to stack landscape pictures on top of each other in portrait mode.)

You can, however, double click the image to look at any additional information or associated items you have for the image. You can also e-mail the image to someone with whatever info you've added to the picture, and you can e-mail items that are associated with the image. Curiously enough, however, you can't e-mail an associated image, only documents and items that you've transferred through iTunes. It's a little unusual, and it would be nice to be able to e-mail any associated item that I want.

Honestly, I wasn't particularly impressed with this application. It's expensive, a little clunky, somewhat counterintuitive and a bit limited in some ways. It does have a couple nice features, such as being able to associate information, pictures and documents with any particular image, but unless you need to provide that level of detail to a client, this program is going to be somewhat annoying to use. And those who do need that level of detail are going to find the limitations, such as not being able to turn off the background option and being limited to 36 images per portfolio, rather annoying.

I don't think that I'd be so negative about this application if it wasn't so expensive. I could deal with quirks like this even if it was a $5 application, but for $24.99, it should be amazing. This program is not amazing. I give it 2 stars.

AppStore Link: Flexfolios - Price: $24.99/£14.99