Over the past few days I’ve been trying out the Sort Shots iPad application (website, iTunes). Whereas most other iOS photo apps are either designed to enhance photos or show them off in a limited portfolio, Sort Shots is all about using your existing metadata to slice and dice your way through your photo collection in ways that can’t be done with any other app I’ve tried.
Things like ratings, the date photo was taken, and most importantly keywords can be used to browse, filter, and view your photo library. Images can be brought into Sort Shots via iTunes or a built-in FTP client. The metadata that came from your camera along with your keywords/ratings from a DAM application such as Lightroom, Aperture, Bridge, or iPhoto gets imported into Sort Shots for use in the app. In addition to being able to take full advantage of the metadata that you added previously, Sort Shots allows you to add keywords, rating, or sorting directly within the application. Images can be rated in thumbnail or larger view and it supports the now-ubiquitous pinch-to-zoom gesture.
Using the metadata, you can filter your photos down to a selection that includes whichever criteria you like and then save that set of filter criteria – your custom sort and sequence becomes a dynamic portfolio that can easily be retrieved via Sort Shots at any point in the future. Photos can be viewed one at a time or played in a slideshow that can utilize music from your iTunes library.
Sort Shots includes the ability to upload photos to Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket, or MySpace. It’s an interesting set of online services to support – I’m a bit disappointed that Flickr and SmugMug aren’t included.
For those of you already keywording your images, you’ll find that Sort Shots makes it really easy to browse. If you’re looking for a way to quickly rate photos while on the fly, you can do that here as well. Sort Shots fills a bit of a gap in mobile photo management applications. It’s a tool that I plan on working into my mobile workflow. I look forward to spending more time with Sort Shots and seeing how I find it works as part of a mobile photo suite.
View/buy Sort Shots – iPad Edition on iTunes
