For the past two years, people have suggested that taking video with a tablet simply looks stupid. That makes sense to a point. But to some, having a conversation with your phone about today’s weather looks stupid too. And holding up an iPad for a FaceTime chat isn’t the sexiest-looking activity either. Yet we’re still doing both. Why? Because these are both effective solutions. At some point, what used to “look stupid” can become the norm if it works well.

Strange looks aside, I think the new iPad will become a far more useful tool for video and pictures than people yet realize. Sure, our smartphones are superb for capturing images and sharing them as well; that’s why the No. 1 camera used on Flickr is a phone. Handhelds are generally always with us, making it easy to capture the moment. But editing can be a chore on the small screen and its limited number of pixels.

That changes with a 9.7-inch screen with 2048 x 1536 resolution. Think about it: You have a portable editing palette with 50 percent more resolution than even the best HDTVs currently available. Add in the updated iMovie software — and the new iPhoto app for still shots — and the editing process is favored on a tablet over a smartphone. Both software titles also work on Apple’s iPhone, where I’m sure they’ll be used as well, but if given a choice, I’d rather edit on the larger, higher-resolution display. I’d also prefer to show that content off on an iPad over a smartphone.

The other factor here is the camera sensor itself. Few tablet makers have invested the effort and cost to integrate a rear camera that’s worth relying on. The new iPad re-uses the sensor from its iPhone 4, which is very capable in all lighting situations.

If you have an iPhone 4, you know how much of an improvement that sensor was over the iPad 3GS camera. Besides the boost to 5 megapixels and support for HD recording, the camera has five optical element layers and a back-illuminated sensor. Even though the iPhone 4S improves on this, the top camera used for Flickr is still the iPhone 4.

Whether it looks stupid or not, the new iPad has all of the tools to morph the tablet into a stellar video content creation tool. If Apple didn’t think so, I can’t see why it would have boosted the camera sensor and created richer editing tools for this very purpose.

Image courtesy of Flickr user atmtx.

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Smart Browsing

Two of the coolest features in iPhoto for iPad are the ability to find similar photos and side-by-side browsing. iPhoto for iPad will automatically detect pictures with similar scenes and present them to you so you can pick the best picture of the bunch. You can also put pictures side by side to compare them more carefully.

Multi-touch editing, brushes & effects

You can adjust areas of the picture by just touching and dragging on the parts that you want to change. There are also some precision tools like a loupe for precise white-balance adjustments. Brushes are used to add effects to your pictures, like removing red-eye or a blemish. The brushes and effects are a blast, and these tools might completely replace several popular photo-editing apps.

Photo Journals

Photo Journals provide a way to put together a page of pictures that tell a story. iPhoto automatically places your selected pictures into a layout, and then you can move and resize photos to get it exactly the way you want. The exciting part is that you can then share these journals online by publishing to iCloud web pages. MobileMe galleries were noticeably absent from the new iCloud, but they have come back, in a limited fashion, with this integration with the iPhoto app.

Maps

The last surprise in this update is that the location maps do not appear to be from Google. In the image below, you can see that the map of the area around Winter Park, Colo., does not look like the same area when viewed in iPhoto on the Mac.

Google Maps have been tightly integrated into iOS from the start, but Apple has made several mapping-related acquisitions over the last year as their relationship with Google has soured over competition from Android phones and tablets. While we don’t have definitive word from Apple yet, it appears that iPhoto for iOS might be the first iOS product from Apple to drop Google Maps and use a different system.

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iBooks Author

Creating layouts in iBooks Author is easier than any comparable tool I’ve come across, including Adobe’s InDesign and Quark Xpress, and the ability to instantly see on your iPad through iTunes how the final product will look and feel really helps with the design process. Switching between portrait and landscape orientation is as easy as tapping a button.

You can add any kind of media using a pop-up media drawer, or by dragging and dropping elements from your desktop. Apple provides ready-made widgets for interactive galleries, images, in-line video, chapter review, Keynote slide shows, 3-D .dae files and HTML code. Each of these offers additional custom settings, like captions and headings, to make sure you can present your multimedia elements exactly as you want. The interactive image feature is particularly cool, because it requires almost no media creation skills; you can simply upload your photos, then set view points that zoom in and pan on the image as required when clicked, and also provide a helpful description of what a reader is looking at.

If you just want to publish your work for private distribution, it’s easy enough once you have the elements in place; just hit the “Publish” button and save it to the folder of your choice. Then you can distribute the file to whoever you want, and they can manually upload it to their iPad via iBooks through iTunes.

For those looking to publish their title in the iBookstore, there are only a few more hoops to jump through. Create an iBookstore seller account at Apple.com, download the iTunes Producer application, create an active contract if you don’t have one at iTunes Connect, and then make a sample version of your book. Books on the iBookstore max out at 2 GB and are of course still subject to Apple’s approval process. Apple has more about the distribution process in its official iBooks Author FAQ.

I have a confession: I used to publish poetry anthologies in college when I was doing my graduate studies. I admit that here only to point out that this would’ve been a great way to create something like that quickly and cheaply. It’d be even better if Apple would update iBooks Author to also work with iOS’s Newsstand, but this is still a lovely start. Especially since while titles can be distributed through the iBookstore, they don’t have to be, with the big caveat that Apple’s licensing agreement specifies you can’t charge money for iBook Author books distributed outside its own marketplace.

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Now, with iCloud and Photo Stream, that hassle has been eliminated. Once I take a photo with my iPhone, as long as all my devices are connected to a Wi-Fi network, my photo will appear on all of them. My photos also appear on my Mac (in either Aperture or iPhoto, so long as they’re installed), or in the My Pictures folder on Windows. It’s one part of iCloud I can say worked exactly as advertised, but even so, it has both strengths and flaws.

Setting up Photo Stream

On a Mac: Go to the iCloud System Preferences pane and make sure Photo Stream is checked.

iPhoto: To enable Photo Stream in iPhoto, just go into the Preferences and make sure Photo Stream is checked.

Once you’ve done that, click on Photo Stream in the sidebar and you’ll see your photos.

Aperture: To enable Photo Stream in Aperture, just go into Preferences and make sure Photo Stream is checked. In this case, I’ve intentionally left Upload unchecked since I don’t want photos imported from my DSLR to go into the Photo Stream; just those I sync.

Once that’s done, click on Photo Stream in the sidebar to see your synced photos.

On a PC: First, download and install the iCloud Control Panel. Once you launch it — you guessed it — make sure Photo Stream is checked. You will also need to click on Options next to it to specify the Upload and Downloads directory.

The gotcha: You can’t delete from Photo Stream

Photo Stream’s directive is simple: keep either the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken or the last 30 days worth, whichever comes first. Update: It’s only the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken on an iOS device, not on iCloud.com. But right now, it seems to require a chicken, two goats, and a shaman to get a photo deleted. None of my devices can delete directly from Photo Stream, and deleting the source image on the device where it originally appeared doesn’t delete it from Photo Stream.

I’m perfectly fine with Photo Stream uploading my Camera Roll on a moment’s notice. What I’m not thrilled with is not being able to delete from Photo Stream. Part of my job description is taking iOS screenshots and during a heavy review week (like this week), I’ll take a ton of screenshots. I don’t need them or want them after they’ve been put in the article. Now, I’m kinda stuck with them. There’s been a lot of attention paid to this Photo Stream failing, so I expect Apple to issue a fix soon.

Update: Apple points out that you can delete photos, but only by completely resetting your Photo Stream data, and removing all images stored there:

• You can reset your Photo Stream at icloud.com. This removes your photos from iCloud but keeps photos already on the device. For more information, see Photo Stream Help.
• Photo Stream photos can be removed from your device by turning Photo Stream off in iOS settings or in OS X Lion System Preferences. You can also delete any photos imported into your iPhoto or Aperture library on a Mac, or in the folder they’re imported to on a PC.

Until then, be careful what you take pictures of if you plan to make Photo Stream a part of your digital life.

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Many people have a collection of recipe clippings culled from magazines, newspapers, and the supermarket. But where do you put the clippings? Ideally, you type it out and put it in a recipe manager (my favorite is SousChef). If I only had the time. What I do instead is either scan the recipe directly into iPhoto from my Mac, or if I can’t easily clip the recipe, I’ll take a picture of it with my iPhone. When I see a recipe I like on the web, I take a screen shot to easily get it into iPhoto, too.

Once in the iPhoto, I rename the photo to match the actual recipe title, and then in the keywords I put the important ingredients that I’d need to know when shopping such as “chicken breast” or “celery.” This is also a handy way to search for recipes when something is on sale or in season. Then I just drop it in an album I call “Cookbook.”

I also have an album called “Current Recipes.” I, and other members of the family, will put especially interesting recipes into this album. I’ll sort them in the album to create both variety and efficiency in shopping. I have the recipes synced to a password-protected MobileMe site as well for ease of browsing. With iCloud’s Photo Stream feature, which arrives in September, this should be even easier.

You can also sync those albums to your iPhone and iPad so that you always have all your recipes close at hand, which can be useful if you stop in at the grocery store on the way home from work. Not only is this a great reference, but recipes can be easily emailed from the iPhone to whoever’s doing the shopping.

With the recipes in digital form, cooking with iOS in the kitchen is also breeze. I’ll use either my iPad or my iPhone to check out the recipe(s) I need. After cooking, I’ll return to iPhoto and modify the ratings and notes for the recipe so we know whether to make it again. If it was lousy, we delete it from the album.

Keeping my recipes in iPhoto has reduced our reliance on eating take-out, as well as being a great way for everyone to contribute to dinner. Considering every Mac comes with iPhoto, it’s also cost-effective and easy, too. Anything you think might add even more to my system?

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Collecting GPS information

Two important pieces of info are required for adding GPS data to your photos. The first is the latitude and longitude where the photo was taken. The second, equally critical piece of information, is the date and time the camera was at that location. This is the key to automatically matching up the GPS data with photos.

When it comes to figuring out where a shot was taken, there are three main sources that myTracks can use:

1. GPS data logger. One way to collect this information is to invest in a GPS data logger. There are several Mac-friendly GPS data loggers on the market to choose from. These standalone units will keep track of where you and your camera have been without draining your other device batteries. myTracks can then import the location information directly from the logger itself, or indirectly through GPX or KML files. Under the hood, myTracks uses the open-source library LoadMyTracks to support a wide range of GPS devices. If you find that your device is not supported, you may need to use a utility like HoudahGPS to convert the data to a format that myTracks supports.

2. iPhone sync. If you have an iPhone, then you already have a basic GPS logger. In fact, I’ve found the tracking capabilities of the iOS version of myTracks to be great, and it offers a built-in sync feature that will allow you to transfer location information directly from your iPhone to the Mac version of myTracks. If you prefer using a different GPS tracking app, then you’ll need to export the data and import it into myTracks using either the GPX or KML file format.

3. Track from photos. The simplest way to collect the location information you need is to take a series of reference photos along the way with the default camera app that came with your iPhone. Provided you are adding location information to your photos on your iPhone, myTracks can create a track from your iPhone’s library. From the Tools menu in myTracks, select “Create track from photos…” and select the photos you want to create a track from.

Adding GPS Information to your photos

Now that you have your track loaded into myTracks, the first thing you will want to do is ensure that your camera’s clock is in sync with your GPS data, as well as any of the other cameras you may use. Once you’ve made any time adjustments to your photos, you’re ready to add the GPS info. MyTracks supports adding GPS location information to photos in iPhoto, Aperture and Adobe Lightroom as well as any folder of images on your Mac. The following steps are for iPhoto ’11, since that’s the program most will likely use:

1. After importing tracks into myTracks, select the track that has the GPS information you want to sync.
2. Open iPhoto and select the photos you want to add the GPS information to.
3. Drag the photos from iPhoto onto myTracks.
4. Make any final adjustments in myTracks’s Pool of Photos to align the GPS track info with the photo time stamp.
5. Click Start in myTracks Pool of Photos and select the GeoTag option.
6. In iPhoto, select the photos you tagged, and from the Photo menu, “Rescan for Location.”

Reviewing and sharing your mapped photos

Once you have added the GPS information, using it to help illustrate your life’s adventures is much easier. You can sync your track and photos to the iPad version of myTracks, or post the images to one of the many online photo sharing sites that support geotagged photos, including Flickr.

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After only a few days use, Syncomatic has already become one of my most-used apps, since it lets me keep my iPhone’s camera roll clear and uncluttered, while also making sure I don’t lose a worthwhile clip or snapshot in the process. It works by monitoring your iPhone’s on-device photo and video library, and automatically grabbing new photos and videos when you’re near your Mac, putting them in either a folder of your choosing, or your iPhoto or Aperture library. Photo Stream in iOS 5 will do something similar, but Syncomatic is available now, is only limited by the size of your hard drive, and also offers multiple destination syncing options instead of just one. Here’s how to get it up and running yourself:

1. Install the Syncomatic iOS app to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
2. Download and install the Syncomatic Mac companion client (direct link to download file).
3. Click on the Syncomatic icon in the Menu bar on your Mac and go to “Preferences.”
4. Choose whether you want Syncomatic to launch automatically, and pick a destination for your synced iPhone photos and videos. You can choose a folder, sync to either iPhoto or Aperture, or choose a combination of all three.
5. In the iOS app on your iPhone (or other iOS device), click the gear icon in the top right corner to enter the Settings menu.
6. Choose your destination Mac from the “Mac to Sync With” menu. If you have the Mac client installed correctly and are on the same Wi-Fi network, it should automatically appear.
7. Your Mac will display a four digit PIN. Enter that PIN into the iOS app when prompted.
8. Turn Sync on.

Now, whenever you’re within range of your Mac and connected to the same local Wi-Fi network, photos and videos will automatically be transferred to your Mac from your device. Syncomatic will also display a badge number with a count of how many photos or videos remain to be synced since it last connected, so that you know when everything’s been moved over to your Mac.

If you’re looking for a similar option, but would rather save the $2, PhotoSync offers similar functionality, albeit without automatic background syncing. For me, the set-it-and-forget-it aspect of Syncomatic justifies the extra expense.

My iPhone camera roll has always been a mess, but thanks to Syncomatic, I have little excuse not to get in there and clean it up once in a while. This is a must-have for mobile photo geeks, especially until iOS 5 arrives this fall, and likely beyond because of its customization options.

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Google+ is already popular, and it isn’t yet showing any signs of slowing down. If you’re already in, or if you’re eagerly awaiting an invite, there are a few ways you can improve the experience when accessing Google’s new social network from Mac and iOS devices.

Mac

Create a Google+ Mac app with Fluid. Earlier this week I talked about the newest version of Fluid, which lets you create full-screen web apps for Lion using specific websites. Even if you don’t have Lion, Fluid is a great way to create a Google+ application that looks and feels more like a native Mac app than a website. You can even grab a nice Google+ icon to use with your Fluid app, like this one from deviantart user KillaAaron.

Better interaction with bookmarklets and extensions. You can change how Google+ looks and how it behaves with custom extensions for Chrome and other browsers. Go2Web20 has a great list of some of the best tools out there. One of the best is a +1 extension that lets you save any web page you come across to your +1 list in Google+, but that specific link on the Go2Web20 site is currently broken, so check out this similar option from the Chrome web store instead. If you’re not using Chrome, you can grab this bookmarklet for +1 recommendations that should work with most other browsers.

Import your iPhoto albums with Picasa for Mac. You’ve got a lot of iPhoto events, and now you want to share those photos on Google+, which actually has a great photo viewer. Apple has built Facebook support into iPhoto, but obviously there’s no direct method for getting that content to Google+. But with Picasa’s free native Mac app, you can import your iPhoto content and share it to your Picasa Web Albums right from your desktop. Depending on your sharing choices, the pictures will be visible in your Google+ galleries.

iOS

Use third-party Picasa apps to upload your photos. There’s no instant upload for iPhones and iPads as there is for Android devices. But you can get your photos from your mobile to your Google+ account without having to upload to a computer first. Just choose one of the available iOS Picasa photo uploading tools, like Web Albums, and then upload the pic you want to share to a public gallery on Picasa. Once you’ve done that, navigate to the photo in the Google+ mobile browser app and comment on the photo to share it to your stream.

Bookmarklets for sharing. For sharing sites and saving content to your +1 list, bookmarklets that work with mobile Safari are your best bet. The one I mentioned above should work for your iOS devices, too.

Share from desktop to mobile. You can use Google+ as a handy way to quickly share links between your desktop and mobile devices, by adding an email address that you have registered on your smartphone to one of your sharing circles on Google+. So, for instance, you could create an iPhone reading list and re-share interesting links in your Google stream to a specific circle called “for iPhone” that just contains your own email address, or you could set up a circle with the email addresses of your coworkers or project team for easy forwarding of interesting links and notes.

Google+ will likely improve as it iterates, and it will offer even more avantages for Mac and iOS users, especially when (and if) Apple approves the official Google+ iOS application. But even at this early stage, I’ve found that it enriches my computing experience on any Apple platform. Any advice you can add based on your own use of Google+?

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Welcome to another instalment of Tips and Tricks, the series of articles aiming to teach you something you didn’t know about your Apple products. Let’s continue by looking at iPhoto, and some ways of speeding up your workflow.

Quickly Change the Thumbnail for Events and Faces

When you first open either the Events view or the Faces view, you are presented with a series of thumbnails, called the Key Photo, for each event or person. You can change which photo is the Key Photo by viewing the Event or the photo series for a person, right-clicking the photo you want to use and choosing Make Key Photo. There is also a quicker way; without clicking, move your mouse over the current thumbnail in the Events or Faces view. As you move around, you’ll see all the photos in the event. When you see the one you want to use as the Key Photo, just hit the spacebar. When you move your mouse away, you’ll see that photo has been set as the Key Photo.

Rotate a Photo in the Opposite Direction

In the Edit view, there is a button which rotates a photo and does so in a counterclockwise direction by default. There is a setting in iPhoto’s preferences to make the icon rotate a photo clockwise instead, but you can also swap the direction on the fly. To temporarily switch the direction of the rotation, hold the Option key before you click Rotate. The icon of the button will change to let you know what’s happening, and your photo will be rotated the opposite way.

Unmount a Connected Device

Since iPhoto can import photos directly from a device, there is a list in the iPhoto sidebar of all the devices you have connected. It’s possible to unmount these devices from within iPhoto, rather than ejecting them from the Finder. To do so, right-click the device’s name and choose Unmount. This has the same effect as unmounting from Finder. You can also drag the device’s name to the Trash item in the Recent list of iPhoto’s sidebar. As you drag the name, the Trash icon will change into an eject symbol with the label Unmount. Just drop the device’s name onto the Unmount item and it’ll be ejected for you.

Confirm or Reject Multiple Faces Matches at Once

Often, iPhoto will recognize faces in newly imported photos and ask you to confirm that it guessed the identify of those faces correctly. When you open the ‘Confirm Faces’ view, it can get tedious clicking each one in turn. If there are a lot of photos which are all correct (or all incorrect), you can, instead of clicking the photos individually, drag a selection over all of them. This will mark all the photos you selected as confirmed, and if you do the same again, they’ll all be marked as rejected.

Assign Keywords Without Typing

Keywords are iPhoto’s equivalent to tags, and are useful when searching for specific photos in your library. Normally to add keywords, you select one or more photos, then type the keywords into the Keywords section of the Info panel. However, it’s possible to add keywords using just the mouse and keyboard shortcuts. Under the Window menu is an option to Manage My Keywords. If you choose this option, a window will open with a list of all the keywords you have used in your library. If you now select some photos, you can then click on a keyword in this list to add it to the photos without typing.

If you have a keyword you use a lot, you can also assign it a keyboard shortcut. In the Manage My Keywords window, click Edit Keywords. You can now select a word from the list and click Shortcut. You can’t use shortcut modifiers such as Command or Option, but you can use single letters or short sequences of characters. Now you can apply this keyword to photos by selecting them and typing the shortcut. You don’t even need to have the Info panel open.

I hope you’ve learned something new, and as always, leave your own additional tips in the comments!

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Take Photos of the Current Time in Safari

First, you’ll need a photo of the current time taken from each camera whose internal clock is out of sync. Be sure to disable the flash to avoid screen glare before you complete these steps:

1. Launch Safari on your Mac and open the URL of an established “time authority” that will display the current time  (http://www.time.gov/ for example).
2. Using each camera, take a photo of Safari as it displays the correct time.
3. Import the photo of the correct time from each camera into your iPhoto Library.

Create Smart Albums for Each Camera Model

Now that you have photos of the correct time imported into your iPhoto Library from each camera you own, you will need to isolate the photos for each camera:

1. From the File menu on iPhoto, create a new Smart Album (one for each camera).
2. Use the drop down list to set the “Camera Model” condition of the Smart Album to match the relevant camera model for each album you create.
3. Keep creating Smart Albums until you have a unique Smart Album for each camera.

More Than One Camera of the Same Model

If you happen to have multiple cameras of the same model, then you must add a second field, “Any Text”  to the conditions of the Smart Album and set the value for this field will be set to the serial number of the camera as follows:

1. Select one of the photos for each camera of the same model.
2. From iPhoto’s File menu, select “Reveal in Finder” to show where the original photo is located in the Finder and open the photo using the Preview application.
3. From Preview’s Tools menu, select the “Show Inspector” menu item and navigate to the EXIF tab to find the value of the serial number.
4. Enter the serial number as the value for the “Any Text” condition of the Smart Album.
5. Again, keep creating Smart Albums until you have one unique Smart Album for each camera.

Determine the Time Adjustment for Each Camera

By comparing the time represented in the photo to the time stamp on the picture itself, you can determine the amount of the adjustment that must be made.  To determine the adjustment for each camera:

1. Select only the photo of the correct time as it was displayed in Safari within each Smart Album.
2. From the Photo menu in iPhoto, select the “Adjust Date and Time…” menu item and copy down the time difference between the time shown in the photo and the time stamp of the image file.
3. Click cancel, and repeat for each camera’s Smart Album.

Adjust the Time for Each Camera

Now that you have a unique Smart Album defined for each camera, and you know the exact time adjustment required for each camera, all that’s left to do is adjusting the time for all photos in the iPhoto Library for each camera.

1. Select one of the Smart Albums you created and select all of the photos in the same Smart Album.
2. ‘From the Photo menu in iPhoto, select the “Adjust Date and Time…” menu item and modify the date/time of all of the photos in these Smart Library, using the interval you discovered when comparing the time displayed in the image to the time stamp of the photo from that camera.
3. Be sure to check “Modify original files.”
4. Click Adjust, and repeat for each camera’s Smart Album.

It may seem like a lot of work, but once you’ve done it once, it should hopefully help keep your iPhoto Events in chronological working order for a long time to come, without requiring you to make manual changes each to the metadata of each photo you add.

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