AppleTap » Photography

iPhone Wallpapers. How to Install Them on Your Device.

Matt Petch — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:09:14 +0000

Short Version:

You can make any image on your device a wallpaper by selecting it in your photo library, tapping the icon in the bottom left corner and selecting “Use as wallpaper”

To get images into your device you need to set iTunes up to sync with iPhoto or the folder containing your wallpaper images if your not using iPhoto.

Long Version:

What sort of image can you use as a wallpaper? Wallpapers can be obtained in a veriety of ways. Any photograph you have stored in the photos app on your device can be used as a wallpaper. You can also download images from a number of places on internet. These have been specialy created for use as iPhone wallpapers and are the correct size and aspect ratio and the images are usualy composed to fit well within the iPhone format. You can download my specialy designed wallpapers here if you wish.

If you are using iPhoto it’s not a bad idea to create a new album to keep your wallpapers in. You can then sync this folder with your device. If you are not using iPhoto, you can keep your wallpapers in a specified folder on your hard drive and sync with that.

Copy the wallpaper images you have downloaded or created to your iPhoto album, designated folder, Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements. Connect your iPhone or Touch to your computer and open iTunes. In the library column on the left click your device icon. Now click on the Photos tab. Make sure “Sync photos from” is checked then in the pulldown menu either select the folder where you placed your wallpapers or select iPhoto. If you are just syncing selected albums rather than all photos make sure your wallpapers are in an iPhoto album and that it is selected in the list. Press Apply (or sync) and the images in iPhoto or the selected folder will be copied over to your device.

On your iPhone or Touch, navigate to your photos and select the wallpaper you wish to use. You dont have to use a specialy made wallpaper image, you can use any photo you wish. Tap the icon in the lower left hand corner that looks like an arrow jumping out of a box. Sometimes you need to tap the screen once to make the icons visible.?

The menu that follows will contain the option to “Use as wallpaper”. On the iPhone you could also assign an image to one of your contacts.

Print Anything From Your iPod or iPhone

Matt Petch — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:29:24 +0000

01 Print from your iPod Touch or iPhone to any any computer via it’s mail application.

Wait, this isn’t what you think! This is so much better than just emailing a document to your computer and manually printing it from there. This method is automated and allows you to print anything that’s on your Touch or iPhone from any printer connected to any Mac anywhere in the world. Im sure there will be a Windows equivalent of this but im just going to cover the Mac method here.

Ok I admit, there is a bit of fiddling about to do up front but once done it works a treat. The idea here is to email the item to be printed to a Mac that has its email application running (in this case Apple’s Mail) and printer turned on. Mail then uses rules to automatically launch a script which prints the item it received. Credit for this method should be given to Martin Michel of macscripter.net who provides detailed instructions and has developed the AppleScript that makes it all work. I would suggest a minor change to the rule however.

a. Download the Pergamail AppleScript from here. This is the script that the Mail application runs to print what it receives from your device.

b. Create a custom rule in Mail by first going to the Mail menu item and selecting Preferences. Click the Rules icon and create a rule as shown below.

As you can see the action we are getting it to perform is to run an AppleScript under a certain condition. The AppleScript you need to choose here is the Pergamail one you have just downloaded. If Mail receives an email with the words “please print” in the subject line it will go ahead and print it. You can make the condition whatever you like as long as you remember to include it in the email you send from your iPhone.

Now whenever you send an email from your iPhone with the words “please print” (or whatever you set the trigger to be) it will automatically be printed… assuming you’ve remembered to turn your printer on.

What do you mean you can’t email an image from your favorite game?

You can actually email anything that appears on your iPhone’s screen. Here’s how you do it. When you have a screen that can’t be emailed simply press the home button and the power button together to take a snap shot of the screen. The snap shot will be stored in your photo library. Open your Photos App, Tap the “Saved Photo’s” library and you should see your screen grab. You can email any images in a library by tapping the share icon in the bottom left, selecting the image or images you wish to send then tap the share button again and select email. Don’t forget to include your trigger text in the subject line if you want it to automatically print.

02 Print from your iPod Touch or iPhone to any computer via a dedicated app.

You may prefer to buy one of the dedicated iPhone print applications available. There’s actually not that many to choose from. One of the more versatile ones seems to be Print & Share by EuroSmartz Ltd.

Print & Share comprises of two parts; an iPhone/Touch app and a desktop helper app. Once these have been installed and configured you can use the iPhone app to select and print files, emails, web pages, contact info or images from your photo albums or camera. The items you wish to print need to be selected via the app so you can’t simply print something interesting you come across whilst browsing the web or checking your mail. You would instead need to close the app you were using, open the Print & share app, then use it to locate the file you wish to print.

This works reasonable well but, in my opinion the limitation of having to select items through the app makes it less appealing than the first method I mentioned.

03 Print directly to your HP networked printer.

If you have a networked Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer you could stop all this messing about and print directly to that. You would need to download the HP iPrint Photo app from the app store which lets you print anything that is in your photo library. Of course much of what you will want to print wont be in your library but you can overcome this problem to some degree by taking screen grabs of anything you want to print. Pressing the power and home buttons together whisks a copy of your current screen off to your photo library, where it can be sent directly to your HP printer via the HP iPrint Photo app.

Upload Photo’s to Almost Any Sharing Site From Your Iphone or Touch.

Matt Petch — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:09:11 +0000

When I first decided to write this post, the intention was to review a collection of the better photo sharing app’s. After some initial research I realised that the list of available app’s was nearly as long as my To-Do list. To review and discuss them would have been an unenviable task and an even less enviable read.

What I have chosen to do instead, is recap on how you can upload your photo’s to your MobileMe gallery using only your default Photo app. I have then listed some other common photo sharing sites along with their corresponding upload applications. Because there are so many I have been a little selective and only included the more promising options.

To Share Your photo’s From the Default Photo App.

To do this you will need a MobileMe account: which is free for 60 days but then im afraid you have to pay for it. Before you dismiss it, it’s worth considering some of the many features you get with the service. Check it out here.

Assuming you have a MobileMe account, you first need to login to the service and create an album to upload your photo’s into. Do this on your computer beforehand. Make sure your album settings allow adding of photo’s via email or iPhone as shown below.

Once you have done this you can start selecting and uploading photo’s from your iPod Touch or phone…

1. Launch the default Photo application that comes with your device and open an album.

2. Tap the share icon in the bottom left corner of the screen.

3. You can now tap any photo to select it. You can tell that it has been selected as the photo icon dims, and displays a small tick.

4. Tap the share button and you should get the options of emailing your selection or sending it to MobileMe. Click “Send to MobileMe”.

5. Give the image a name and select the gallery you want to upload the photo to. When you have done this, simply tap the Publish button in the top right and off it goes.

The only problem with this is you can only upload one photo at a time. Luckily you can email lots of photo’s in one go but you need to know your galleries email address.

1. Use your browser to go back to your MobileMe gallery on your computer.

2. Select your gallery and then click on the settings button at the top: The one that looks like a light switch.

3. Just below the checkbox that reads “Adding of photo’s via email or iPhone” will be an email address you can use to email photo’s to the gallery.

4. Now when you want to email some photo’s from your device you simply select photo’s as we did before but this time select multiple photo’s.

5. Tap the share button and select “Email”. Your chosen photo’s will immediately be transported to your mail app.

6. Enter that email address (perhaps save it in your address book)and shoot them off to your gallery.

Other Popular Photo Sharing Sites.

Even if you do have a mobile me account, it may not be where you want to send your photo’s. I have listed below all of the most promising photo uploading apps and grouped them by photo sharing and social media sites. Pick your preferred service, download one of the app’s and share away.

Flickr – http://www.flickr.com

Photobucket – http://photobucket.com

Photobucket for iPhone

Shutterfly – http://www.shutterfly.com

Shutterfly for iPhone