Hi, and welcome to Episode 70 of the Photography Explained Podcast. I’m your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. What I tell you is based on my lifetime of photographic experience, and not Google.
Before I go on, if you have a question you’d like to ask me to answer just go to Photography Explained Podcast.com/start. Looks like I need to reword that sentence doesn’t it because I made a mess of that, which is a shame, but let’s get on with it.
Here is the answery bit
Now I’ve got this up from five to seven because there are two that I forgot which was very remiss of me, so apologies Canon and Olympus.
Right – the seven phone apps I use the most in my photography are (brackets on my iPhone XS)
- Lightroom
- Camera app
- Photos
- The Photographer’s Ephemeris
- Photoshop Fix
- Canon Connect
- Olympus OI. Share
Now I’m talking here about taking and editing photos. There are loads of other apps that I use, but I won’t bore you with those because this is meant to be about photography.
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading. Or do both. Entirely up to you!
Sound good? Okay, let’s go through each of these in a little more detail. Not too much, of course. Right then.
Lightroom
Lightroom is free. If you want to sync to Lightroom on a desktop, you have to have a paid plan, which is called the Creative Cloud Photography plan. Now that’s what I am on. And that’s how I pay for Lightroom and Photoshop. It cost me £9.98 a month, and I have to say it’s a bargain. But I’m talking free here. So Lightroom on the iPad/ iPhone.
Oh, I need to make an apology here – I use an iPhone and an iPad. Now I’ve never ever, I’ve never even held an Android phone of any shape or form. Ever. The closest I ever got to it was a Nokia (long) before smartphones were invented.
So apologies, but I’m in the Apple ecosystem.
I’m talking to you now as an iPhone user and an iPad user, so if you are an Android user apologies, but the good news is you can still certainly get Lightroom on an Android device. And it’s free on both, which is a recent change, which is nice.
If you haven’t got the paid plan, and you have Lightroom on an iPad or an iPhone, the two will obviously sync through the cloud.
What do I do on my iPad with Lightroom?
Now obviously, I edit most of my photos on my desktop PC, because I’ve got a large 32-inch monitor, I’ve got a PC, I’ve got hard drives, I’ve got backups and everything. So sure I edit most of my photos in Lightroom on a desktop.
So why do I like Lightroom mobile?
Again, I’m going to try and stick to the free stuff that you can do with it. Well, you have got a camera in Lightroom, which takes RAW photos. You can take RAW photos, and you can edit them.
And the editing capabilities of Lightroom, as you’d expect as it is made by Adobe, are pretty outstanding.
Editing photos, it’s a lovely, lovely experience.
How am I doing this?
I can create collections of photos, and I can sync them from my desktop onto Lightroom. Just the same as if you had photos on your phone, you could import them into Lightroom. So again, this is free stuff that anybody can do.
So you can add the photos to Lightroom. No idea what happens with phone memory when you’ve got these things in so many different devices?
And then you can just scroll through them, you can rate them, you can give them star ratings, and you can edit them. Organising photos is a real breeze.
On a shoot, I will quite often put the photos onto my desktop, sync them as a collection to Lightroom, and then I’ll go through them. But the first edit is choosing the photos I want to edit.
Getting photos into Lightroom
You can get your photos from either your Lightroom camera or whatever Photos app you use. Whatever camera you use, you can import them into Lightroom. There, you can organise them, as I say, but it’s the editing which is the real thing.
And you can export the photos, you can share them, and you can share directly from the app which is really good. And when you share them, it doesn’t share them as a RAW file, because if you share a RAW file with somebody who hasn’t got Lightroom, or other specialist photo editing software, they won’t be able to open it.
So they’ve got that one covered.
So that’s Lightroom. Sorry to go on, but in my opinion, it is the best editing software out there.
The next one is the
Camera app
The good old, default basic Apple camera app. Now I use this for personal stuff, family stuff, snaps, photos, and reminders. I also use the camera app for behind-the-scenes shots.
I also use the Camera app for all the videos I record – there isn’t a YouTube channel for this podcast yet (but there will be).
But I have my own YouTube channels, and I just use my iPhone and the camera app. And that’s it.
I also use the camera app for stuff created in Canva, which I use like on the podcast, creating the artwork and everything.
The next one, which ties in nicely with the camera is the
Photos app
Again, another default Apple App. I use this to look at photos taken with my phone, I have photos and other things that are created on my PC, and this is one of the ways I’ve bridged using an iPhone and a PC, through apps like photos because I can get to the photos on the phone on iCloud on my desktop.
Again, it’s a free, default app. It’s not fancy, but it does the job. And that’s all I’m bothered about really. I also use the app to manage and download the videos I’ve taken using the Apple camera device from the cloud onto my PC, which gets them into my (in very loose terms with quote marks) “professional system”, where things are backed up and what have you.
I’ve got cloud backups and everything.
But I use the Photos app for this. And it’s just that simple. You’ve probably gathered by now I’m a fan of keeping things as simple as possible.
Right, that’s enough for the simple stuff. And now for the complicated one. This is great. Now I have to warm up for this because I can’t say the word.
The Photographer’s Ephemeris. I said it, right? (well done me…..)
This is a paid App, costing just under a tenner at the time of recording this. And this is the tagline of the people who create this fantastic app. It goes like this, and I’m quoting directly here, and I don’t have a problem with this
“See how the light will fall on the land day or night for any location on Earth”
Wow, that’s something, isn’t it? That’s why I wanted to read it out because I just love that – there’s not a wasted word there. It just tells you what you need to know.
You have to pay for it, which I’ve done. I’m a paying customer. I think it’s a lifetime purchase. Anyway, I’m not being paid to say this, I’m a paying customer and I use it.
It works on Apple and Android, which is good news.
I just checked the App Store and there it was £9.99. It’s a super clever device. I’ve used the term super for a word – how very un-English of me!
So what do I use it for?
Sunrises. On holiday, I do a lot of sunrise photography. I will find something that looks interesting, and I’ve got a rough idea of where the sun is/ will be.
And then I will fire up the app. It looks a bit daunting at first, but it’s OK. You’ve just got to work out which coloured line you’re looking at. And what I can do with this app is I can find out exactly where the sun will rise, and where it will appear above the land.
Perfect, because that’s the moment I’m after on any sunrise shoot, and I use it all the time.
I also use it so I know what time the sun will be on a particular elevation of a building. Very important for my architectural photography work. It does loads of other things, moon cycles, all sorts of stuff, but that’s what I use it for, the two main features.
I should learn the other ones really, but as with all these things, that’s what I need. And you can also save the locations as well. I can go to a spot, I can choose where I’m taking my sunrise photo from and then I can get there in the morning in the dark, and I know where I am, and it’s great.
I also know in which direction to point the camera, which helps because I can get everything framed up so well worth a tenner.
Next one Photoshop Fix.
Now I’ve had this for ages, and I’m pretty sure it’s free. And as I’ve said previously, on the desktop, I use Photoshop to remove stuff and no more.
On my phone or my iPad, I use Photoshop to remove stuff and no more. That’s what it does. It removes things, and it’s brilliant. Lightroom can’t do that as well. It can do a bit but nowhere near as well.
Last two
Canon Connect and Olympus OI.Share (snappy title Olympus).
Right when I can’t see the viewfinder, the best example I can give you is when my camera is five metres up in the air on top of my painter’s pole. If I’m using my Canon camera, obviously, it’s the Canon Connect. If it’s the Olympus, it’s the Olympus one.
I probably didn’t need to say that, you could have worked that one out yourself.
So my camera’s five metres up on a painter’s pole. It’s probably wobbling around as well, because I’ve not got that sorted yet, strapping it to a tripod becomes quite a, it’s quite a challenge (when you’ve got 1-2 kilos of stuff on a five-metre pole) keeping it stable.
What I do is I use the app to look through the viewfinder of the camera and take the photo. That’s it. That’s all I use it for.
You can use it to go through photos and output them, but I use it when I can’t use a self-timer, or I can’t get to my camera. That’s the only time I use it/ them.
And that is pretty much it for apps that I use. And again, I’m talking about apps that I use to take and edit photos.
There’s a shockingly high number of other apps that I use in my business, but I’m not going to bore you with those (now).
Now my last section is called the talky bit
I think I’ve talked about all this already. So let’s just check my script. Yes, there is a script. Yeah, I use an iPhone XS. Sorry, I don’t know anything about Android phones, but the point is this, and I will make this point again, because it’s worth making, even if I do say so myself.
Like with a lot of the other things I’ve talked about. I have pretty much one App with one use. And that’s it. I’ve simplified my apps down to this small number.
So keeping it simple is something I love to do.
Okay, my one-line summary.
I use the seven apps on my phone or my iPad to help me take and edit photos. And I don’t use any others. And believe me, I know it’s more than one line now. I have tried others. I write about this on my blog a lot. I’ve mentioned this in other episodes, I’ve tried everything. And now I just have the things I need and love and use right?
Enough waffle. Next episode.
What is the best free photo editing app for (the) iPhone/ iPad? Now it’s no surprise that it is Lightroom, isn’t it? I just decided that there’s so much good in Lightroom and so much clarity from having one thing, I want to talk about it a bit more.
Okay, I’m done.
Thank you very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast. To find out more and do stuff to help me check out Photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.
That’s it no more.
This episode was brought to you by two pork pies and an egg mayonnaise sandwich. And some salt and vinegar crisps. Very nice.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again very much for listening to me and for giving me slightly less than 14 minutes of your valuable time, and I will see you on the next episode.
Cheers from me, Rick.
OK – that was the podcast episode.
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
