We are very happy to announce the release of Photosmith for iPad version 3.0.2.  This is a maintenance release only, and fixes the crashing many users experienced after upgrading to iOS 7, especially when swiping through photos in Loupe and Fulllscreen Views.

Photosmith uses caching to help increase performance.  We cache a number of things, but in particular, we keep photos in memory so scrolling and movement between large images is more responsive.  For example, if you just viewed a photo, then swiped to look at another photo, there shouldn’t be any reason to wait for the previous photo to load again if you swipe back to it – simply pull it out of the already-rendered cache if needed.  It only makes sense, right?

To do this, we made use of iOS’s built-in NSCache for some of our photo caching needs.  NSCache is handy because iOS manages what is kept in cache automatically, discarding anything that it doesn’t have room for anymore.  This is especially handy when writing code that isn’t dependent upon a particular piece of hardware – available RAM varies from around 35MB on an iPad 1 to several hundred megabytes on the iPad 4; we can simply cache as many photos as necessary, and if iOS decides there isn’t enough memory, it will handily remove it from the cache for us.

Except… that’s not what happens in iOS 7. For reasons we can’t quite explain, this appears to no longer be the behavior.  There were no announcements in the iOS 7 pre-release notes (or even in the released SDK documentation) and we didn’t run into the issue while testing beta versions of iOS 7.  And this is why things will work for a while and then crash unexpectedly – NSCache is getting filled up, and iOS 7 is no longer removing photos as it did in the past when cache memory got full.

In Photosmith for iPad version 3.0.2, we still use NSCache, but added some code so that for users running iOS 7, the total number of entries was limited, thereby having a somewhat similar (though not quite as optimal) effect.

Users with iOS 6 (or earlier) will see no difference, as our method of handling this caching issue only applies to iOS 7.  Also, there are no updates to our Lightroom plugin at this time.

We are very interested in hearing your thoughts on Photosmith performance in iOS 7 – please drop us a note over on our User Forums at http://forums.photosmithapp.com.

Photosmith 3.0.2 will be become available today as a free update in the App Store for your country – standard delays may apply as the update propagates through Apple’s servers worldwide.

Posted in: Current Progress, Development, Musings, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

One of the more challenging aspects of Photosmith is the level of integration necessary with other products; most notably Apple iOS and Adobe Lightroom. So, when both Apple pushes a new major updates to iOS and Adobe releases an incremental (but significant) update to Lightroom within a day of each other, it means some extra work for us.

But the betas, what about the betas?

To be sure, both Apple and Adobe are very good about getting early pre-release versions of their software to developers, called beta releases. That said, we have found that testing anything except ship-ready public releases (nicknamed RTM or GM in tech lingo) to be an effort in futility. Apple frequently releases four or more beta versions of iOS to developers prior to the official “GM” release. Things can and do change during the beta period and the final GM release, and we have found ourselves chasing beta ghost bugs – bugs that only appear in beta, but are ironed out in time for the GM. We are now avoiding this unnecessary timesuck by only validating (and coding changes for if necessary) GM releases.

Apple pushed the GM of iOS 7 to developers about a week prior to its public release on September 18. This gave us roughly 168 hours to kick the tires, and to check in with our usual group of users who live on the bleeding edge of technology. Version 5.2 of Lightroom was released by Adobe without a pre-released GM version; 5.2 lived as a public beta version, but many bugs, especially with Publish Collections, were fixed in the final 5.2.

OK, cut to the chase!

Here’s where we are at: The current public version of Photosmith for iPad, v3.0.1, plays very well with Lightroom 5.2. As mentioned previously, there were a number of bug fixes in 5.2 public which were not part of the 5.2 beta, so any countermeasures we might have tried to work around the Publish Service bugs would have been wasted effort. And if we may say, the Adobe engineers did a really great job of addressing the Publish Service bugs; we can’t find any trace!

As for iOS 7, Photosmith plays well, with one caveat: Swiping between photos in Loupe and Fullscreen Views can cause the app to crash in certain situations. No metadata or other information is ever lost, and when you restart Photosmith, your viewing position should be retained. It’s just a (really annoying) 5-7 second hiccup.

The cause of the swipe crash bug actually has its roots quite a ways back, but iOS 6 masked it fairly well. Unless swiping between photos very rapidly (3-5 per second for many seconds), the bug only manifested itself for a handful (four that we know of) users in “normal” use. It’s a memory management thing, and we’re working towards a fix. The crash actually occurs when a background process begins; think fetching mail or some other system-level event; this is why it’s a bug for everyone.

This and a few other more significant bugs, along with native camera raw photo processing, will be front-and-center in the forthcoming Photosmith for iPad version 3.1.

Apologies for the lateness of this blog post; each member of the Photosmith Team is busy with many independent projects at the moment. Since Photoshop World a couple of weeks ago, we have been in divide and conquer mode.

You can always get the most recent news, musings and occassional rant from us via Twitter @photosmithapp and facebook.com/photosmith .  Our User Forums are also highly trafficked and a really useful resource for finding new and interesting workflows in which to leverage Photosmith: forums.photosmithapp.com.

Finally, thank you for your continued support. The users are what keeps us going!

Posted in: Current Progress, Development | 3 Comments

Greetings from Photoshop World in Las Vegas! We’re well into day three of “the big show” and have met an amazing number incredibly enthusiastic new and existing users of Photosmith for iPad.

We’re really excited to take the wraps off of what we’ve been working on over the past few months: Native camera raw processing right in Photosmith! This will mean full resolution support for camera raw formats previously unsupported in Apple’s iOS, and will be the stepping stone for the next phase of Photosmith development.

Don’t worry, we’re still committed to refining and enhancing existing features, and are continuing to streamline existing digital photography workflows – announcements outlining our efforts to make Lightroom sync even more robust are forthcoming.

We will be at our booth, #434, for another hour – please stop by and say hello if you haven’t already.

Below is our press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Photoshop World – Las Vegas, NV – Friday, September 6, 2013 – C Squared Enterprises, developer of Photosmith for iPad, announced today that it will include native camera raw processing in its photography app for Apple’s iPad.

Native camera raw rendering, which unlocks full-resolution viewing of photos in Photosmith for iPad, is being demonstrated in booth #434, at Photoshop World in Las Vegas September 6, 2013.

“Although Apple’s iOS offers compatibility for viewing certain more-popular camera raw files on iPad, there are some pretty significant gaps, especially when working with older and narrowly-supported digital cameras like Leica,” said Chris Horne, Co-Developer of C Squared. “By creating our own camera raw rendering engine, we are able to support rendering of far more cameras, and offer never-before seen compatibility on iPad for both old and brand new cameras.”

“This is really exciting! We’re adding support for over ten previously unsupported camera raw file types covering hundreds of camera models, all of which can now be viewed in full resolution on iPad,” said Mike Wren, C Squared spokesman and Chief User Advocate. “iPad users will no longer need to rely on, and wait for Apple to push an iOS update to unlock support for brand new cameras. This also opens up a tremendous number of possibilities for photo processing in future versions of Photosmith, right on the iPad.”

Native camera raw rendering is currently undergoing final testing and will be be available in the next version as a free update for all current users. A complete compatibility list of supported cameras will be posted on Photosmith’s website at www.photosmithapp.com.

C Squared released Photosmith version 3 in April, 2013 to universally positive reviews, both in Apple’s App Store and in the tech media. Charlie Sorrel of the popular blog Cult of Mac said in a recent review, “The interface actually makes [adding keyword tags] easier to do in Photosmith than in Lightroom. You can quickly create new tags, make trees or hierarchical tags (People>The Lady) and apply tags to multiple photos at once.”

Photosmith 3 is a free update for all existing users, and is available for a one-time cost of $19.99, or the equivalent local currency.

Contact:
Mike Wren
[email protected]
(518) 288-8873

###

Posted in: Current Progress, Development, Marketing | 7 Comments

The early reviews are in, and Photosmith 3 is a hit with users, old and new!  We have received a lot of positive email and Twitter mentions from folks thankful that the new version lives up to the promise.  But don’t take our word for it, Stephen Shankland over at C|Net does a great job of summing up the Internet buzz.

Thank you all for the very kind words, but our work isn’t done.  Below is a brief run-down of issues we’re tracking related to the release of Photosmith 3, and plan for our ecosystem moving forward.

Known Issues

We really went out of our way with testing (as much as is allowed by Apple), but with the huge number of cameras, iPad versions, Lightroom versions, workflow combinations available, combined with stuff we missed or didn’t expect, we have a few issues that need addressing.  In the spirt of full disclosure, we’re outlining these issues below.  As our friend Brian from ShutterSnitch said – “That’s what puts the ‘Oh’ in a .0 release”

• DNG+JPG and RAW+JPG pairs are not being imported correctly and cause a crash in certain situations FIXED IN v3.0.1
• Selecting a photo in Grid View, then tapping on Fullscreen View doesn’t correctly maintain the current image FIXED IN v3.0.1
• PhotoCopy with Shuttersnitch has a memory leak, and will fail after around 100 images FIXED IN v3.0.1
• Sync will remove keywords in certain very specific situations. FIXED IN v3.0.1
• The Sync button was removed from the All Photos and Lightroom drawers (intentionally, due to many logical inconsistencies with syncing AllPhotos).  We’re clarifying how to best sync User Collections in the Photosmith for iPad app.
• Virtual Copies in Lightroom won’t be synced with Photosmith, and shouldn’t be placed into User Collections.
• Creating more than one Publish Service for Photosmith in Lightroom may produce unpredictable results.  Please only create one Photosmith Publish Service in Lightroom, and sync will be much more happy.
• If 1:1 previews aren’t rendered or if you have chosen to not use Lightroom previews (configured in Lightroom > Plugin Manager > Photosmith > Lightroom Preview Extraction), sync may stall.  This shows as a lot of CPU utilization, but a stalled sync, indicated by progress indicator not moving in both Photosmith and Lightroom.  Also network activity will not so any activity for Lightroom/psahttp.

We will do our best to keep this list current. The v3.0.1 update to fix these initial issues is being worked on right now, and will be made available in the App Store as a free update in a couple of weeks. Bugs and crashes take priority over new items – we will be addressing these before adding any new features.

In the meanwhile, if you experience any additional issues, please contact us so we can address it in this revision cycle. We can’t fix it unless we know there’s an issue.

Finally, if Photosmith 3 is working well for you, please consider leaving a star rating and review in the Apple’s iOS App Store.  If something is not working well for you, please let us know! Positive reviews encourages us to continue working on the app – there’s still a lot of features we would like to add!   But we can’t do it without your support.  Thank you.

Posted in: Current Progress, Development | Comments Off

Welcome to June – Here’s a quick progress report about where we’re at with the ongoing development of Photosmith 3.

This is a very important weekend for Photosmith for a couple of reasons:

What’s Up?

First, we pushed out the third, and what we expect to be the second-to-last Release Candidate of Photosmith 3 to our amazing group of beta testers. The Beta Testing Team have been extremely helpful, diligent and patient in helping us identify some very esoteric bugs – and the the app will be all the better for it. While we can’t promise a bug-free perfect app, it’s light years ahead of the current v2.2.2.

This weekend, we’re putting Photosmith 3 through some pretty extraordinary torture tests – scenarios that we wouldn’t ever expect folks to use, like syncing 10,000+ photos in one session from Lightroom, or importing thousands of photos via Eye-Fi and FTP… at the same time.  These tests have been exceedingly positive.

Publicly announcing timelines and due dates has never worked well for us in the past, and we’re really not keen on jinxing ourselves now. We’re close, very close.

Hello World!

Photosmith is featured in this weeks episode of Click, a weekly program about technology airing worldwide on BBC’s network of television and radio stations. Photosmith’s Mike Wren was invited to discuss the relevance of metadata in the world of photography and digital asset management, and of course, show off the forthcoming Photosmith 3 app and Lightroom plugin.

Metadata is something we’re a little bit passionate about, and it was a wonderful conversation. It’s also the first public demo of the Photosmith 3 ecosystem of camera running Eye-Fi, Photosmith on iPad and Lightroom on computer.

Look for Click on the BBC airwaves this weekend and periodically through next week. You can watch the segment on photo metadata here: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22736987

In other media news, Photosmith was Leo Laporte’s pick of the week on episode #148 of iPad Today. Click here to watch: http://twit.tv/show/ipad-today/148 (skip to 1:19:40 to see our segment).

It’s an exciting time for us – Photosmith 3 is the real deal.

Posted in: Current Progress, Development | 10 Comments

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