Visual Supply Company (VSCO), famous for the popular mobile photo editing and filtering app VSCO Cam — as well as its film-stock desktop plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom — is now debuting its app for the iPad, specifically targeted to the tablet’s Retina display and larger screen size.
As part of its across-the-board 4.0 mobile release, VSCO Cam, newly optimized for iOS 8, not only launches an iPad app, but enables syncing between all iOS and Android mobile devices that run it. A compatible Android version 3.1 is also available in the Google Play Store. Among VSCO Cam’s new features are side-by-side comparison viewing of applied presets (filters) and the ability to modify, undo or view image changes in Edit History.
In addition, the app can now handle DSLR images and let you search by topic, location and more, features that had previously been available only in the company’s desktop applications.
“This is an experience that’s built specifically for the iPad,” Joel Flory, co-founder and CEO of Visual Supply Co. told TNW. “We took a step back and tried to figure out how we’d want to use the app on an iPad — so we focused on editing, content consumption, the grid and image search.”
The new version 4.0 offers multiple enhancements to the iPhone app as well, with a completely overhauled and updated look that includes advanced camera controls such as manual focus, shutter speed, white balance and exposure compensation.
In addition, VSCO is introducing a Web uploader tool to help photographers import DSLR photos into their library for editing and sharing to the community publishing platform VSCO Grid, and to the VSCO Journal.
Previously open only to VSCO staff contributions, Journal is now open to contributions from the whole community. With this update, VSCO members can also use Journal to create their own multi-image themed works, mix text and images and share image collections. Journal differs from VSCO’s Grid, the curated photo sharing platform that has always been open to all members.
“One of the new major features is that VSCO Journal is giving community members the ability to create long form content so they can share more than just a single image with something more complex than a description,” said Flory.
As part of VSCO Cam’s 4.0 All Together creative theme, VSCO Journal is featuring work from The FADER, a music-oriented photo publication, and Tommy Ton, a NY street photographer — as two newly formed content relationships. For the first time, the FADER is publishing parts of its 15-year photo archive and sharing selections from it on the new VSCO Journal.
While VSCO’s Grid may call to mind other popular photo sharing and filtering apps, VSCO Cam differs from Instagram in a critical way: “Our social currency is curation,” Flory said. “Everything that you see — from the Journal to the Grid — has been curated. We’re really focused on quality over quantity. VSCO’s Grid of curated shots contains no likes and no comments. That is intentional. We want to focus on the image and the voice of the artist.”
VSCO Cam for iPad is free in the App Store and is compatible with iOS 8.
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