Press release: iPhone app developers create solution to simplify multi-app photo-editing

PocketPixels and CodeCrop are pleased to announce the PhotoAppLink initiative and the release of the open-source PhotoAppLink library. PhotoAppLink allows users to easily edit an image using multiple photo-editing apps by providing a mechanism to send an image from one app to the next. The feature is available immediately in these apps: Snap!, Color Splash, Simply B&W, PicTools, AutoStitch, TrueHDR, Juxtaposer, Click! and Photogene.

Given the large number of high quality photography apps for iOS, users now have more ways than ever before to capture and edit images. Some of the best photography apps do one thing only but do it well. Thus, users often use multiple apps to process a single image. For example a user might take a picture using an HDR camera app, apply some effects using a second app, then crop it and add a nifty border in a third app, and finally share the image using the latest social-networking app.

But getting an image from one app to the next is tedious. When switching apps the user must save the edited image to the camera roll, quit the current app, launch the next and then load up the intermediate image before continuing to edit it.
 
So a group of app developers got together and found a way to solve this problem with PhotoAppLink. The user simply selects another compatible app in the PhotoAppLink interface, which launches it and transfers the image from the previous app to the new, allowing the user to immediately continue editing. This avoids littering the camera roll with intermediate images and provides a much better user experience.

PhotoAppLink apps automatically detect other compatible apps installed on the user's device and present them in a user-friendly interface, which also offers a separate list of additional compatible apps the user doesn't yet have. This makes it easy to find more apps that support this simplified workflow.
 
PhotoAppLink was conceived and developed by PocketPixels and CodeCrop. It is implemented as an open-source library that is available on GitHub. The library is well documented and easy to integrate into existing apps.

Several prominent developers already have committed to adding PhotoAppLink support in updates to their iOS photography apps in the near future. Apps already confirmed include PaperCamera, PhotoToaster, ColorBlast!, Color Range and MobileMonet. Other developers will be sure to join when they see the benefits PhotoAppLink will bring to their users.

Comments

[Dixon Hamby]

This seriously rocks!

[Miege]

Don't we have iOS' 'Open In' already? Better make use of it instead tying users to selected apps. :-?

[Brian Eaves]

Does the App keep the location that the image was taken?
and does the image jpeg quality from my iphone 4G get reduced by recomressisg from app to app?

[James Moore]

THe image quality is retained, as it passes a UIImage from app-to-app, so the only factors are those determined within the apps themselves.

In terms of EXIF data - notably GPS I think this would be stripped out, as there's a necessity to hold this data in a separate block from the image data... and - as far as I can see only image data is passed...

That's not to say that I am by any means correct or that it couldn't be addressed in the future!

[Bren]

I have simply B/W and True HDR. why am I not prompted or asked if I'm In one to use the other as well? Isn't this the point? Please email me if u can. Thx :)

[Lakelander]

How come I cant find this in the app store?

[Hendrik]

Hi, I am one of the developers behind the project.
I'll try to answer some of your questions:

@Miege: That is a valid question. The problem with the "Open in" system is that it clearly was not designed for this use. What it is designed for is apps that somehow receive files of arbitrary types (such as in an email or FTP app). It allows those apps to pass such files to other apps that actually know how to handle them. A photo editing app would first have to save the current image to disk and then pass that file to the "Open in" feature to send it to other apps that can handle images. It is possible, but awkward. As far as I know few (if any) apps support this (correct me if I am wrong) and it is hard to find out which ones do. With PhotoAppLink we added the "More apps" interface to make it very easy to discover other compatible apps.

@Brian: As James correctly stated, the metadata currently is not passed along. The image does get re-compressed but at the highest possible quality (basically lossless). So you shouldn't see any degradation in quality.

@Bren: Make sure you have the latest version of both apps. You should then be able to send the current image from TrueHDR to Simply B&W. Tap the "rectangle with arrow" button at the bottom and then select "Other Photo Apps". As TrueHDR needs multiple images as input it doesn't make sense to send a single image to it. Therefore TrueHDR can only send but not receive images using PhotoAppLink.

@Lakelander: At the bottom of our web site http://www.photoapplink.com is a list of apps that are currently supported. It also states whether the apps can send&receive apps or only send. Tap any of the app icons in that list to go to the App Store page for that app.

I hope this helps.

It is still early days for this project (well, day 1 actually). Hopefully many more photo app developers will add support for this to their apps, making the feature much more useful over time.

[Mr Tmney]

Congrats Hendrik!




Cheers Patrick

[Miege]

@Hendrik

Hey, thanks for the reply! :-) I like responsive devs! At first, I thought you were gonna say about iOS' current limit on the number of compatible apps for 'Open In' i.e. 10-12 apps...

Anyway, I'm still not sold by this idea. To a non-developer like me, your idea sounds exactly like 'Open In' i.e. transferring one file from app A to app B (but the file will be saved in app B not app A). :-? RetroCamera and MyCamera can do it just fine--but the only obstacle is iOS' app limit which I think developers should push Apple to upgrade it to limitless. :-D
Yep, couldn't really a lot of apps supporting Open In--but I don't exactly need it for the time being.

[@fabienb]

What can I say? Thanks.
I hope all my fave apps will join the project asap :D

[MomentsForZen]

Congratulations on this excellent initiative. Perhaps these forward thinking and imaginative developers could tackle another issue - that of recording and exporting the processing sequence that is applied in each app. Such a record would have many uses. I'm not sure what can be done in the existing file headers, or whether an additional file would need to be created to carry this information. An XML file with the same base name as the photo springs to mind if a new file must be created. I am constantly amazed that not all app developers even bother to maintain the existing header data, so my suggestion of permanently recording additinal information in the form of the processing steps and their settings may seem like the suggestion of an alien being rather than a user. But I see in front of me here evidence of some people that are capable of doing things a better way.

[James Moore]

@MomentsForZen that's an interesting concept... and one that's not impossible. Of course, there would be a need for some standardisation to keep things neat. I agree about supplementary data - it's always good to keep things like EXIF and GPS data in there, but I am sure Machine Tags - a-la Hipstamatic style could work; although this would purely be a point of reference as opposed to any data that provides control over the app.

In saying that, presets could be set and save in some form of Block but this would be individual to apps themselves... but yeah - macros is a cool idea. A kind of cross-app actions set?

[MomentsForZen]

Thanks for the follow-up, James. In other parts of my world, (i.e., work), we apply style sheets to these type of XML files (that contain processing programs and their settings) to produce human-readable report files. Some of the programs also accept these files as instruction sets to re-process a data set/image or to batch process other files, often with complex sequences and multiple programs involved (with obvious parallels to the processing sequences applied to photos). At the very least, it would be a record that an iphoneographer could use to answer the inevitable question of which app(s) and what settings were used to take a captured image through to a processed result.

[James Moore]

I'll maybe look at incorporating such data into my EXIF set within Bleach Bypass and roll out in the next update - eg... border, vignette, selected effect

[Lakelandr]

Wait so this PhotoLinkApp is more of an add-on to existing apps and not something I can download and open as its own app? I think thats a big mistake to be completely honest. People like to have something they can look at and see. An icon on the screen is much more likely to be opened than a hidden extension of another app. Dont get me wrong, this PhotoLinkApp is PERFECT for me as I edit all my photos in several apps starting with Autostitch, but I would like to be able to open PhotoAppLink by itself and then select whatever photo I want to play with and jump around to different apps. What I dont want to do is open the existing apps I've already been using just to look around for a new button somewhere within that app. Making sense? I hope this app takes off and does extremely well, I just wanted to point out an obvious flaw that became very apparent when I went to search for this app within the app store and was unable to find it. Thats a problem in and of itself right there. You're losing people's interest as soon as they cant find it in the app store.

[James Moore]

@Lakelandr I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when you use it.

I have tried it and it was an absolute no-brainer - the fact that there's nothing to download makes this even more unobtrusive in the process of editing images within multiple apps...

[AlanH]

@Hendrick,

What a GREAT initiative for those of us using multiple editing apps on our iPhones! Thanks!

I have a question though... I have PicTools on my phone, but the only apps that show up as being available for passing the file on to are PhotoGene and Color Splash. As far as I know I have the most up-to-date version of PicTools. Any idea why I'm not seeing this app on the list?

[lostarchives]

I'm not seeing the "send to app" feature in the latest version of Color Splash.

[Hendrik]

@AlanH: PicTools only got updated yesterday. Check for updates again. It should work.

@lostarchives: Currently it only shows up when you actually have a second compatible app installed that can receive images via PhotoAppLink. Most likely I will change this in the next update so that the "Send to app" feature is always shown, even if the list of destination apps is empty.

[lostarchives]

... but I do. I have PicTools, and Juxtaposer.