iPad Pro

Enlight Photofox: Jaw-Dropping iOS Photo Edits

Enlight Photofox – Free on the App Store

There are dozens of great image editors for iOS. However, most of them seem to lean towards the Instagram-filter type of edits that have become so popular over the past few years. That’s fine. I love Instagram filters are much as the next person. But today I discovered an app that does the kind of edits I used to think I could only do on the computer. Enlight Photofox is a full-blown image editor with support for transparency and layers.

When I was in middle school, I started to play around with GIMP, a free, open-source alternative to Photoshop. GIMP is hard to work with, but I remember the huge “aha” moment I had when I finally figured out how layers work. See those two little thumbnails in the upper right corner of the screenshot above? Those are my two layers. I’ve imported two images right on top of each other – two of my favorite pictures from my trip to San Francisco last summer – and I can use transparency to let one photo bleed through the other. Layer-based editing is the gateway that opens the power of professional-grade software like Photoshop.

If you’re looking for a free photo editor that goes beyond filters, look no further. Enlight Photofox is the app that will do the job. ••

Bibliography: I found this app from this App Store article, a great tutorial on how to create a double exposure. Go check it out!

Thanks for reading! Have comments or feedback? I’d love to hear from you! I respond to all messages I receive. Drop me a line on Twitter @NickFoster56 or email me at staringatphones@icloud.com. And be sure to subscribe to my blog and follow me on Medium!

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3 Reasons Why iOS 11 is Incredible on the iPad Pro

I’ve been a big fan of the iPad for a long time. I stopped bringing my laptop to school with me years ago, instead relying on my trusty little iPad Mini 2 with a Bluetooth keyboard and a stylus I bought on Amazon. That iPad was a great little device. I think it’s safe to say that it was my most-beloved piece of tech. It was just such a joy to use. Over time, however, it had gotten a little… slow.

So I bought the new 10.5” iPad Pro back in July. It’s an incredible device. The screen is beautiful, everything is lighting fast, and the Apple Pencil was a game changer for taking notes at school. But a big part of why I bought a new iPad was what I saw of iOS 11 when it was unveiled last summer at WWDC. So after spending three months drooling over the new features, I’ve finally had some time to actually use iOS 11.

And it’s amazing.

Seriously, it’s made using and being productive on the iPad better than ever. It’s also made using the iPad more fun than ever. So, in a slight deviation from my usual focus on specific apps, here are my favorite three features of iOS 11.

One: Better Multitasking

Having all those apps accessible on the new dock, without having to go back to the home screen, makes iOS so much faster and easier to use. I love being able to have all my most-used apps right there, all the time, and the predictive/recent area over to the right is great too. The fact that side by side apps stay paired together is really nice as well – I’ve found it’s super helpful to keep my email and todo list next to each other all the time. 2Do doesn’t need much of the screen, so it stays on the side, leaving most of the real estate for Airmail. Awesome.

Two: Drag and Drop

Why did we not have this before? It’s amazing. The other day I was in a lab at school, and I had some screenshots from the lab computer that I had uploaded to iCloud Drive so I could put them into Notability. Before, I would have had to import them, one at a time, using a photo picker in Notability. But instead, I just pulled up the files app over Notability and dropped all four images in at once. Amazing. The WordPress app supports this too!

Three: Screenshots and Screen Recording

Two features here: You can now take a screen recording of your iPad or iPhone directly on the device, without connecting it to your computer. Pretty neat! Screenshots are even better though. When you take a screenshot, it now appears in a little bubble in the corner of your screen. You can then tap this to bring up an editor, and do stuff like put red arrows pointing to the thing you want to draw attention to. You can then share this screenshot directly from the editor. Or, if you don’t need to edit, you can just drag and drop the bubble directly into whatever app you’re using! ••

Fun fact: You can’t screenshot the screenshot bubble! It just doesn’t show up. That’s the reason the status bar is red in that screenshot above – I actually had to do a screen recording to get that capture.

Slide Over: Limited, but still Useful

It’s been about a month and a half now since iOS 9 came out.  In general, I like it a lot (except for the new app switcher), and everything is running smoothly.  Not the least of the new features of iOS 9 were the iPad multitasking features.  Unfortunately, the coolest ones – where you can actually run two apps at a time – are limited to the latest model iPad of each size (the iPad Air 2, Mini 4, and Pro).  However, there are two features that are supported on my iPad Mini 2.

The first is picture-in-picture.  This allows you to watch a video in a smaller window while using another app.  This is useful, but I don’t watch a whole lot of video on my iPad.  However, I bet it’ll be great watching movies on our next road trip.

The second feature is the one that I actually get use out of: slide over.  This allows a second, iPhone-width app to “slide over” the one you’re currently using.  Like this:


At first, I thought this wasn’t going to be very helpful.  The newer iPads can have one app take of that width of the screen all the time, with the app to the left still fully functional.  This seems way more useful to me, especially since my iPad case makes sliding from the side of the screen over and over again kind of a pain.  So going into this feature, I was ready to be disappointed.

But honestly, it’s still really nice.  By far the most useful thing you can do here is reply to messages without leaving the app you’re in.  This seemed redundant to me at first, since you could already do that with actionable notifications.  However, pulling down to reply with iMessage has been slow and laggy in iOS 9, so it’s not as useful anymore.  Also, you can only send one message in reply.  If you want to send more than one, or a picture, you’re out of luck.  However, with slide over, you can just pull the Messages app onto screen.  It’s not just a reply box, it’s the full Messages app (well the full iPhone messages app at least).  It works really well and then when you’re done you just tap on the app you were using before and it slides off the screen.  Neat.

It’s not without flaws.  If I’m watching a YouTube video, slide over pauses it, because the first app doesn’t really continue running in the background; it just freezes.  And again, if I’m having a conversation with someone, I have to keep pulling Messages onto the screen, instead of it just leaving it there.  In other words, I wish my iPad could use all of the new multitasking features.  But as a first step, slide over is definitely useful, and it makes my iPad better and easier to use. ••

Apple’s September 2015 Event

I know the title says “September Event,” but this might have been Apple’s only event this fall.  That’s what sources were telling us leading up to last Wednesday, and it seems like they were right.  This event was jam packed, and did cover pretty much every Apple product.  So what all happened?  Let’s dive in:

Apple Watch
First comes the Apple Watch.  No Watch 2.0 here (it was, after all, just released in March), but there were a few new color combinations.  The Sport model now comes in yellow gold and rose gold aluminum.  In addition, there’s a whole slew of new bands, both colors and styles.  Finally, they briefly mentioned watchOS 2, but they didn’t give much of a demo.  To be fair, they had already demoed it at WWDC, but in the past Apple’s always given a refresher demo right before the release in the fall. For the people who had seen WWDC, it was a little repetitive, but it was probably still worth doing.  However, Apple had so much to talk about at this event that I guess they just didn’t have time.

iPad
Enough of the boring new-colors announcements.  Apple has released an enormous new iPad Pro.  It has a 12.9″ diagonal screen (compared to the iPad’s 9.7″ and the iPad Mini’s 7.9″) that looks like it’s going to be stunning.  It can run two apps at the same time, side by side (the same feature we saw demoed for the iPad Air 2 at WWDC).  For those in the business world, there’s a keyboard case; for those in the creative world, there’s a stylus, dubbed the Apple Pencil.  This new iPad won’t come cheap, however.  It starts at $799, plus $99 for the Pencil and $169 for the keyboard.  Other than the new iPad Pro, Apple also released a new iPad Mini (the 4th generation), with specs on par with last year’s iPad Air 2.  This was the first year we didn’t see a new regular sized iPad.

Apple TV
This was huge.  People have been waiting for this for years.  To drop the most important part on you in one sentence: The new Apple TV runs apps.  There’s an app store, which will include everything from entertainment channels to games.  Games can be played on Apple’s new remote.  It has motion sensors like a Wii Remote, a few buttons, and a small touch surface.  But most importantly, it also has a microphone.  That’s right, the new Apple TV has Siri.  You can use Siri to search for TV shows and movies from iTunes, Netflix, hulu, HBO, and Showtime all at the same time.  Pretty cool.  You can also ask Siri to show you the whether or sports scores in the middle of your show.  The thing that stuck out to me most, however, was that you can ask Siri, “What did she say?”, and it will skip back 15 seconds in your show and turn the captions on for just that 15 seconds.  Someone should’ve thought of that years ago.

iPhone
Yes, of course you’ve been waiting for it, there are new iPhone available.  There’s the iPhone 6s and the 6s Plus, in the same two sizes as last year.  They’re also available in a new color, rose gold.  This is an S model year, so there aren’t that many big improvements.  The biggest one is called 3D Touch.  As far as I can tell, it’s the same as Force Touch on the Apple Watch (in fact, Federighi accidentally called it that once on stage and had to correct himself).  This means that the iPhone’s screen now registers how hard you’re pressing on the screen.  This allows you to do cool things like preview links sent in a text message.  Press hard on the link, and it pops up in a little window.  Press even harder, and it pops to full screen.  Pretty neat.  The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus also have improved cameras, as usual.  They now shoot 4K video, which is cool, until you realize that Apple is still selling the 16gb model of the iPhone.  Let it go, Apple.

iOS
At the end of the iPhone demo, iOS got a short spot.  All it really had was a demo of 3D Touch; like watchOS, they just didn’t have time to redo the WWDC demo.  We did get a release date, however: Wednesday, September 16.

Oddly enough, the Mac didn’t seem to get any time at the event.  It’s not a surprise that there’s no new Mac hardware; we did just get that new Macbook back in March.  But I would’ve thought that they’d at least give 10 minutes to show off OS X El Capitan, and then announce a release date.  That would seem to totally wrap up the product line in a single fall event.  Apple’s website now says that El Capitan will be available on September 30, but I don’t think that was even said on stage (maybe I just missed it?).  Of course, it’s not like this event was lacking in news just because they didn’t talk about the Mac.  ••

Predictions for Apple’s March Event

Yes, you read that correctly.

If my research is correct, Apple hasn’t had a spring event since 2012 (when they unveiled the 3rd generation iPad, in case you were wondering).  However, Apple is all set to have their latest press event on March 9.  If if we weren’t already sure that this event would showcase the Apple Watch in full detail, the title of the event, “Spring Forward,” certainly confirmed it.

So what exactly is going to happen at this event?  There are lots of rumors swirling around, but I’m guessing that we’ll see at least two if not three new things.

Apple Watch
First and foremost is, obviously, the Apple Watch.  This was unveiled at an Apple event last September, but we there’s still a ton of stuff we don’t know about the Apple Watch.  The most notable detail is pricing.  Apple told us last September that the Apple Watch would start at $349.  However, that doesn’t clear things up as much as you might think.  Let me explain how complicated the Apple Watch Product line is.  There are three main models.  The flagship one is simply called the Apple Watch.  This is the mid-range model, available in silver or black stainless steel.  My guess is that this model will be somewhere around $500 – $700.  The second model, the Apple Watch Sport, is the cheaper one.  Also available in silver or black, this model is aluminum and has a rubber watch band.  The aluminum and rubber mean that this watch is the more durable one, living up to its “Sport” name.  This, for sure will be the one that starts at $349.  However, I’ve neglected to mention that there are also two sizes to the Apple Watch.  These could be differently priced (like the iPad), or they could be the same, since it seems one is geared towards women and the other towards men.  So, as you can see, Apple Watch pricing is far from definitive.  But I haven’t even talked about the last model.  The Apple Watch Edition is 18-karat yellow or rose gold.  This model is Apple’s attempt to enter the fashion industry.  All bets are off as to what the price of this model will be, but I think it’ll be $10,000 – $20,000.  This sounds absurd, I know, but Apple is shooting for the super high end market.  Think Rolex here.  The Apple Watch Edition isn’t just aiming for the high end consumer market, it’s aiming for the people who have so much money to just throw away that they buy the most expensive watch they can find just to show off.  I’ve given prices for each model here, but they’re really just educated guesses.  You can bet that a good majority of my post next week will be devoted to Apple Watch pricing.

MacBook Air
There was a story a few months ago in 9to5Mac which contained supposedly leaked information regarding the latest edition of Apple’s MacBook Air (the low end of their laptop line).  People have been clamoring for a retina display-equipped Air for years now, and it seems like they may finally get it.  If 9to5Mac’s sources are correct, the new model is 12″ across, but it reduces the size of the bezel to keep the screen size of the current 13″ model.  However, the most revolutionary part of this rumored model is the fact that it only has 2 ports: a headphone jack and a USB-C connector.  What is USB-C?  It’s a new type of USB technology which can not only connect peripheral devices but also deliver power to the laptop.  This of course opens lots of questions.  How do you (or can you) charge your laptop and sync your iPhone?  Is there an adapter to buy?  I don’t know for sure if we’ll see this device next week, but I’m guessing we will.

iPad Pro
The last device we may see next week is a 12″ iPad Pro.  Larger than the current 10″ iPad Air line, this model would include a stylus and cater towards creative professionals.  Apple has historically pooh-poohed styluses, and because the iPad’s screen isn’t designed for the increased precision of styluses, third-party styluses just don’t perform as well as, say the Surface‘s stylus.  I see a lot of people take notes on Windows Tablets at SPSU, so I know that this is a feature people are interested in.  I’m less inclined to believe that we’ll see this device next week (I’m guessing it’ll come in the fall), but it is possible.

So long story short, this week is going to be an exciting week for Apple.  I’ll be back next week with a recap of what happened, which will most definitely include lots of details about the Apple Watch.  Stay tuned!  ••