I recently decided to give Formspring a shot to see if any of you would like to ask me questions. A few have come in and they’ve been thoroughly entertaining to answer. I welcome more if you’re so inclined. They can be about design, photography, life, whatever.

Shawn Blanc recently posted about one of his favorite iPhone camera apps called “Pano”. He mentions that it’s so easy anyone could use it. I’ve tried Pano before and yes, it is simple, but the results I got from it didn’t impress me. For example, take a look at this photo Shawn took of his office using Pano. Notice the sharp angle on the baseboard on the wall on the right and then see how the wood floor has a bend in it in that same location. That’s the result of the app not handling the change in perspective well enough. While everything’s lined up, the transitions from photo to photo leave much to be desired.

Now take a look at this quick shot I took of my office (click for full resolution):

This is stitched together with another panoramic iPhone app called AutoStitch (iTunes Link). It’s a composite of about 6 or 7 photos. Notice how well AutoStitch handled the wood floor in our area. Granted, the perspective-handling produces a bit more curvature to your environment, but I prefer that than to have any noticeable “seams” where the photos intersected. Also the tighter the environment you’re shooting the more obvious the curvature will be. If I was shooting a mountain range it would be much less noticeable.

AutoStitch is arguably even easier to use. All you have to do is snap photos, select the ones you want to use from you camera roll, and hit “Stitch”. You have a few options at your disposal such as the ability to crop the final shot, change the resolution, blending quality, and have the app attempt to adjust the exposure automatically. I’ve found the results from AutoStitch to supersede all of the other panoramic apps I’ve tried on the iPhone.

Here’s a valuable tip when making panoramic photos. When taking your photos, imagine the camera is attached to a tri-pod and thus can only rotate around a fixed axis. If you move your hands or arms then you’re dramatically altering your vantage point and your photos will not line-up as well. You’ll also notice in my photo above that as well as this app did, you’re almost always going to have ghosting with people if they don’t sit still. Unless you can control who’s in your shot and tell them to sit still, ghosting will be an unfortunately unavoidable result.

SlideShowPro has a long-standing presence in the image and video gallery industry and I would say is one of the premiere options available. I’ve used it a few times and have watched it mature into a highly capable gallery viewer powered by a robust CMS. Up until this point SlideShowPro has run solely on the Flash platform. When news came out a few months back from Apple that the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch wouldn’t support the Flash plug-in, SlideShowPro issued a statement saying they promised to “…continue to develop products that solved real problems for our customers, regardless of technology or how people accessed the internet.” In making good on that promise, they recently demoed their mobile version of SlideShowPro built entirely in HTML5.

SlideShowPro has always exuded an elegance in it’s presentation and this new mobile version continues that tradition. Since the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch are all multi-touch devices, the team behind SlideShowPro built this new mobile version for that type of user interaction. In the demo video you hear how they took into consideration the interactions users have grown accustomed to in regards to these devices, particularly with navigating through their media. You can tell they wanted the experience to be familiar for iDevice users, yet still remaining consistent with the navigation structure native to SlideShowPro. The result in my opinion is the best of both worlds. Swiping through photos feels very “Photos App-esque” and the ability to pull up the photo drawer and select different galleries like you would in SlideShowPro looks natural on these devices.

I’m also impressed with how fluid everything looks. Swiping through images, the progressive loading, and navigation controls look amazing. I think the benefit of living in the Flash world for so long is definitely paying off with how they’ve built this player in HTML5. All of the movements look natural and organic.

Kudos to the team behind SlideShowPro for not only building what looks to be a beautiful evolution of an already stellar product, but for dedicating their energy into meeting the needs of their clients rather than wasting it in the great Flash vs HTML5 debate.

So, this is nothing short of incredible! Made with Brushes for the iPad and a lot of talent.

I haven’t visited the Concept Ships blog in awhile and wow, a re-visit there never fails to inspire me. Studying images like these teaches me a lot about composition, mood, and color. Lovely, lovely stuff!

I created iPad versions of my World Cup iPhone Wallpapers. These are designed for the lock screen while the Football Pitch wallpaper I created last week is made for the home screen. I don’t have all 12 as I did last time as some of the logos I had for the iPhone versions weren’t large enough for the iPad. However just like with the iPhone wallpapers I’ve posted the PSD so you can create one for your country. If you do, please post a link to it in the comments for others to enjoy.

Argentina
Brazil
England
Germany
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
USA

Granted this was for World Cup 2006, but it’s still the best anthem for England! I don’t care what happened this past Saturday, my enthusiasm in my team remains unshaken.