Photography Apps

by Sean Setters

While casually looking through the Play store yesterday, Google suggested I take a look at an app called ASCII Art. As Google seems to know me fairly well (we've spent a lot of time together), I thought I'd give the app a shot. After about 20 minutes of throwing various images at the app to see its results displayed in glorious monospaced text, the point about Google knowing me very well was reiterated once again.

From Wikipedia:

ASCII – Abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, although they support many additional characters.

After conversion, the file can be saved or shared as a .PNG, .TXT or HTML document (you'll need to change the file name extension from ".txt" to ".html" after saving). Click here to see the full resolution ASCII image from above.

I haven't done extensive testing, but my guess is that simpler images with a strong subject will work better than more complex ones. If you download and try out the app, share your favorite ASCII-converted (G-rated) image below.

I've been using The Photographer's Ephemeris for several years now and it's one of the most useful photography apps I've found. By the looks of it, the app is getting even better. I'm hoping an Android version is not too far down the pipeline. When the iOS app launches, you'll be able to find it here. [Sean]

From The Photographer's Ephemeris:

The Photographer's Ephemeris 3D (TPE 3D) is a unique natural light visualization tool for outdoor and landscape photographers. It’s a 3D map-centric Sun, Moon and Milky Way calculator: see how the light will fall on the land, day or night, for any location on earth.

Watch a sunrise from the future in a rich simulation of sunlight, moonlight and starlight set against the actual topography of your planned shooting location.

Need to see when the arch of the Milky Way will rise between two mountain peaks? Need to see what time in the afternoon the valley will lose direct light in September? Watch the light unfold under clear skies hours, days, weeks or years before you’re actually there in person.

Availability

We plan to soft launch TPE 3D in select markets (including Ireland and New Zealand) on Tuesday, June 20 2017.

We expect to make the app available worldwide on Tuesday, June 27.

TPE 3D requires iOS 10. It runs on all devices that support iOS 10, but more modern devices benefit from higher detail in the 3D topography and higher resolution shadows and stars.

Pricing

We plan to launch TPE 3D as a paid app, selling individually for $19.99 in the US ($30.99, Australia, 21,99 € Eurozone, £19.99 UK, based on current Apple pricing tiers).

A bundle will be available making TPE 3D available to users who already own TPE and/or The Photographer' Transit at reduced price. The bundle will launch at $24.99 in the US, for all three apps.

That means that if you have already paid $8.99 for TPE, you can purchase the bundle to add TPE 3D and TPT for $16.00. If you already own both TPE and TPT, you can complete your bundle for $12.00, representing a 40% discount off full price for TPE 3D.

(All pricing is subject to change.)

We expect to offer a pro subscription for future enhancements such as satellite maps and full offline support.