Andréas Saudemont

Revue in action

2009-10-12T21:46:01Z

Just published — a short video on YouTube showing Revue in action:

Revue 1.1

2009-10-12T21:31:07Z

Version 1.1 of Revue, my iPhone and iPod touch application that allows you to browse your favorite photo websites all in one place, has been approved by Apple and is now available on the App Store.

What’s new in version 1.1:

Adds new entries to the catalogue.
Uses the in-app mail composer, which allows images to be embedded within messages.
Allows navigation within the subscription preview.
Adds support for websites with frames.
Improves the user interface in numerous places.
Improves performance.
Resolves minor and not-so-minor issues.

Get it and let me know what you think!

For Your Own Good

2009-09-29T19:33:42Z

John Siracusa on the new QuickTime Player in Snow Leopard (emphasis mine):

One blessing for people who share my OCD tendencies: if you move the floating controls, they don’t remember their position the next time you open a movie. Why is that a blessing? Because if it worked the other way, we’d all spend way too much time fretting about our inability to restore the controller to its default, precisely centered position. Sad, but true.

Indeed.

Evolution of Revue’s User Interface

2009-08-04T20:59:56Z

I’ve started a new set on Flickr showing the evolution of Revue’s user interface, starting with the first sketches back from April and going on with sneak previews of the changes in upcoming version 1.1.

iPhone App Icons Alphabet

2009-08-02T20:56:22Z

My graphic skills being what they are, Revue’s application icon is a bare ‘R’ letter with a striped black background. Seeing that, a colleague of mine aptly suggested that I scour the App Store for other icons in the same vein and present them as an alphabet, for the beauty of the thing. And that’s what I did.

(OK, I cheated. The Hockey News’ icon looks like an ‘L’ but it really is a hockey stick. And eBuddy’s ‘b’ icon can hopefully be mistaken for a ‘6’.)

Revue is out

2009-07-27T20:45:11Z

At the beginning of the year, the six hundred-plus unread posts piling up in the ‘Photography’ folder of my news reader inspired me to start the development of what became my second iPhone application, Revue, now available on the App Store.

Revue allows you to browse your favorite photo websites within a single application on your iPhone or iPod touch. You subscribe to the sites you’re interested in and Revue will show you their latest images as they are published. You can flick through the photos, view them as slideshows, and share them with your friends.

After six months of late-night coding sessions followed by three weeks of review by Apple (including a rejection for inappropriate rating), Revue is now out and available on the App Store. Go get it!

PS: My first iPhone application is Clong, in case you’re interested.

Canon 40D First Impressions

2008-12-20T20:43:50Z

A couple of weeks ago I went out and bought a Canon 40D to replace my beloved 350D (also known as the “Digital Rebel XT” or “Kiss n Digital”, depending on where you live). I’d grown slightly tired of the 350D’s cross-shaped autofocus points that rarely matched my desired focus position, especially when shooting the kid indoors at wide apertures such as f/2.2 and larger. Using the 350D, I often had to focus and recompose which almost as often led to out-of-focus images. And so, after more than three years of concubinage with the 350D, I switched to the 40D and its diamond-shaped autofocus points.

The first thing I noticed with the 40D is that it’s focusing way faster than the 350D. With the Sigma 30mm lens mounted, it focuses almost instantly on any of its focus points. The 350D with the same lens could take a few noticeable tens of seconds to get the focus right, which sometimes meant that I missed the blissful smile on my son’s face. As far as I understand, the 40D is fast thanks to its cross-type autofocus points that the 350D does not provide but for its center autofocus point. Or so I’ve heard.

While we’re talking autofocus points: to select a single of these points on the 350D you press the AF point selection button while turning the main dial until the desired point is highlighted. Far from insurmountable for sure, but sometimes this operation took long enough for me to miss another blissful smile. The 40D works the same way by default yet you can configure it to use its multi-controller button to select an autofocus point directly. In this mode one single push on the multi-controller selects either the center autofocus point or one of the eight outer points of the diamond shape. This, to me, might be the most useful feature of the 40D.

The second most useful feature, then, would be the custom settings that you can record through the menus and recall using one of the three ‘C’ positions on the exposure mode dial. As of now I’ve configured the ‘C1’ position as follows: aperture priority; f/2.0; ISO 1600; exposure compensation +1/3 EV; continuous shooting. These are indeed the base settings I use for 99.9% of my indoor shots and it’s very useful to be able to recall them by simply turning the mode dial.

Also perceptible are the bigger viewfinder (the 40D has a pentaprism viewfinder whereas the 350D has a pentamirror one, whatever it means) and the seemingly better image quality, especially in the highlights. And at 740g the 40D is obviously heavier than the 350D (520g), but it also provides a firmer grip that’s not without its merits.

Now it’s time for me to go chasing the next blissful smile.

Clong is out

2008-12-14T20:32:20Z

Clong is my first iPhone application. It’s a simple game with absolutely no goal at all. No levels, no high score, no nothing.

Get Clong on the App Store »

More info on Clong »

I love the N key

2008-10-10T20:32:56Z

Every time I need to pick the best photos from a large set, which happens quite often considering I’m the father of a 7-month old toddler, I thank the creators of Lightroom for the N key.

Once basic adjustments — such as white balance and exposure — have been applied, I go to the Library module (G), flag all the photos (Cmd/Ctrl-A then P), activate the ‘Flagged’ filter to show flagged photos only, then hide all panels (Tab).

Next the fun begins. I select a small group of similar photos, usually 3 to 5, then press N to enter the Survey view where I can compare the selected photos. When I spot one that isn’t up to par, I activate it (either by clicking on it or by navigating to it with the direction keys) then press U to unflag it. This has the immediate effect of making the unwanted photo disappear thanks to the active ‘Flagged’ filter. Once all unwanted photos have been discarded from the group, I go back to the Grid view (G), select another small group of photos and start the process again by pressing N.

After a few iterations the photos that are still flagged are my real picks, which I can then email to friends and family, send to be printed, or share on Flickr and Urban Zebra.

All of this thanks to the N key.

Send By Mail Plug-in for Lightroom

2008-03-27T19:58:53Z

Send By Mail is a Lightroom plug-in that allows you to automatically create new messages in Apple Mail including photos from your Lightroom catalog as attachments.

Send By Mail is free and available under the BSD license.

Download Send By Mail 1.0 »

Send By Mail 1.0 requires Lightroom 1.3 or later, Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and the Apple Mail application. It won’t work on Windows.

How It Works

Once installed, Send By Mail allows you to directly export your photos in a new e-mail from the “File” menu in Lightroom:

Send By Mail also allows to configure the photos in the export interface before exporting them in a new e-mail. The plug-in comes with presets for the usual photo sizes:

Once the photos have been exported, a new e-mail is created in Apple Mail with the photos attached. All you have to do then is to send the e-mail:

Download Send By Mail 1.0 »