App Review: Photographers Contract Maker

App Review:  Photographers Contract Maker


Description:
This app allows you to write (or use pre-made templates/alter them) contracts or releases for your photography.  It comes with a "Photo Shoot, Model Release, Copyright Release and 2nd Shooter-Work For Hire" contracts.  It allows you to have placeholders where contact information can be inserted into contracts.  This is easily done by the model just filling out a contract sheet and it automatically puts that information into the placeholders in the contract.  The app also allows you to do signatures so there is a signature written on the contract.  It also allows you to have all your information imputed into the app so your information can easily be placed into contracts each time.  The signed contracts also save on your iPad and can easily be e-mailed from your iPad to the client(s) (and yourself).  As well, if you work repeatedly with models, it saves the contact information in the app so the model only has to input their information once.  It had more features to make the app easy to use but those are the main ones in my opinion.


Thoughts and Opinions:
This is a very helpful app to a photographer.  It is so much easier to do releases on my iPad since I don't have to print out releases ahead of time and always have them and a pen with me.  The ability to make your own contracts is a huge plus as well as signing them electronically.  E-mailing the contracts also is a huge plus for me since it again saves paper.  Very impressed with this app.  The placeholders is also a good idea which makes the contracts easy to do.  Overall the app is well thought out and easy to use.


I did a shoot with a model who needed a parent/guardian signature however there was no placeholder for that sadly.  So I just made it as "a witness" however I made sure the wording of the contract made it clear it was the parent/guardian signing.  It did not matter since the placeholder naming doesn't stay in the contract but always good to be clear with clients when signing legal contracts.


Also on a small tangent it is kind of cool for people to use the iPad and such for the contract.  It adds a small cool/fun factor into signing releases since paper work (especially legal papers) isn't fun for a lot of people.


Pros:
- Ease of Use
- Simple
- Usefulness
- Ability to Sign Contract on iPad
- Placeholders
- Ability to E-mail the Contract
- Cost (2.99 CAN)
- (as a side note) also works on my phone! (iPhone)


Cons:
- Pre-made (which is good) placeholders however not customizable (not good)


Conclusions:
Overall a very useful app that is very easy to use.  I know it is a new technology and such but it is hard to describe this since I would say it is a tool for photography.  What I mean is, it is like describing how useful a hammer or drill is to someone in construction.  You should/need to have signed release when working with models and this makes that very ease so I would almost call this a tool rather than some fancy extra app.  So 10/10 on usefulness and it is a great app as well as it is very easy to use.


I highly recommend this app for any photographer who works with models or signs contracts with clients a lot.  All you need is an iPad (or iPhone).

App Review: Photo Carousel

Description:
This app is an app that is used to access your Flickr account.  It also allows you to do slideshows of the account as well as the ability to open multiple Flickr accounts.

Thoughts and Opinions:
I had a Flickr app for my iPhone however when I went to open it on my iPad it was only the iPhone size. I scrolled through Flickr apps and this one was free and seemed very straight forward.  I was not looking for a lot of crazy features, I just wanted to see my photos if I needed to show my Flickr photos.  I really like how simple the display is.  There are no distractions, just the photos.  You can then open the photo in full screen by tapping on the photo.  You can then open that photo in the normal Flickr window to view it's comments and views and such.  I really like this app because you go from a non-distracting view of all your photos, to full screen and then to Flickr's usual setup.  This way, it is easier to show photos than it usually is just using Flickr.

Pros:
- Easy to Use
- Simple Design
- No Distractions
- Good Features

Cons:
- None

Conclusions:
So all and all a great app for showcasing your Flickr.  You can still manage and view your Flickr however it was more designed to showcase your photos which I thought was a great idea.  So for anyone who uses Flickr for their portfolio this would be a great app.  I have no complaints with this app.

And just as a side note, this is my 100th post!  That was definitely a lot more than it feels like.  Hope everyone has enjoyed them thus far.

App Review: Portfolio for iPad

Description:
This is an app for the iPad which as it says, it a portfolio for showing off photos.  It allows you to make different folders to display different content.  It also lets you have control over what folders are displayed if you only want to show certain folders to certain groups of people or clients.  This app also allows you to lock the app so if you pass your iPad around to clients, they cannot access the hidden folders or your settings.  These are just some of the features this app has to offer.


Thoughts and Opinions:
So far I love it.  Thought I would start off with that.  It is very well designed for a photographer (or anyone who may need to present photos) and is very easy to use.  The features are very useful.  I really like only showing what folders of photos I want to be very useful since a potential model doesn't care about seeing my landscapes.  You can rate the photos and then review the folder of photos based on the rating.  This makes the portfolio very useful to me for narrowing down ideas with a client.  Uploading and organizing the photos was easy and I did it with almost no difficulties.  I think I overloaded the RAM a little moving photos around and it did close on me once or twice.  This was fine since I think I was doing a little too much at the same time, organizing and uploading simultaneously.  Another thing I like, is it gives you a place to put a logo which is great.  Not only does it give you a spot, it tells you the exact pixel dimension of the slots for landscape/portrait/external screen layouts.  I currently have my cousin, who design logos, cooking me up one so I haven't fully used this feature but I know when I do it will be great.


Pros:
- Easy of Use
- Great Features
- Well Designed
- Good Presentation Layout


Cons:
- $14.99 is fair but probably could be cheaper


Conclusions:
All and all a very good app.  I really do love this app since the main reason I got an iPad was for it being a portfolio and this app makes it do that for me.  It turns the iPad into a very good portfolio.   I have very little to say against this app.  I would highly recommend this app for anyone who needs to present a portfolio.  I did look into other portfolio apps but this one just looked the best designed and it looked like it had a lot of thought put into it.


I will be using this app a lot more (hopefully) in the future and will update this review as I use it more.