The Mobile Blogger

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Most people, including bloggers, are happy to share their pictures via the snap-it-and-post-it route.  A few use Instagram or PicPlz for a quick snazzing-up before they post their pics.  But when I post family or travel pictures, I want to use a bit more care.  For years, I used GIMP as my go-to photo editor.  I will be forever indebted to the developers of GIMP for the service that program has provided in improving countless pictures.  It is still the program I use to edit pictures in my lab at work.

Recently, I bought an iPad 2.  There is no iPhoto for the iPad 2.  Too bad because the iPad turns out to be really well suited to photo editing and kills at picture viewing.  In fact, I have taken to importing all of my pictures to the iPad before they go on my computer.  I use the $29 camera connector kit and the SD card from our cameras.

This raises the question of the day.  Do I need a computer to blog while on a vacation cruise or can I get by with just an iPad 2?

I can use either Adobe Photoshop Express for iPad for basic edits or Filterstorm Pro for iPad for more needy pictures.  Adobe Photoshop Express lets me do basic cropping, brightness, contrast, etc.  It also lets me upload to Picasa or Facebook.  Filterstorm Pro has customizable presets for cropping to standard photo size ratios (5×7, 8×10, etc.) as well as curves.  Filterstorm Pro can be used to export or batch export to Flickr or Dropbox as well as an FTP site or email (which will work with Picasa or Flickr if one is set up to do so at those sites).  Adobe Photoshop Express is free and Filterstorm Pro is $15, but well worth it.

I can use Filterstorm Pro to batch post to my Gallery2 website via FTP.  Or, I can export my edited pictures back to my iPad Photo Library.  From there I can include the pictures directly in a post to one of my blogs using the WordPress iPad app.

Shipboard Wi-Fi is notoriously slow.  Hopefully, I can batch FTP my pics at an internet cafe (like Starbucks) while ashore.

On the phone front, pictures and videos can be shared from the Gallery app via just about any service imaginable.  On my Droid Incredible, I have the options of Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Hootsuite, and Gallery2 (via RegalAndroid) and a host of others.

If I need to edit a phone picture, I can send it to my Dropbox.  From the iPad Dropbox app, I then add it to my iPad library and edit with either Adobe Photoshop Express or Filterstorm Pro.

I’m pretty sure this means I can get by without my computer on our next cruise.  But should I take the bluetooth keyboard?  Sadly the Dragon Dictation app apparently does not work offline.

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