Mac Apps

Poster – Mac App Review

Poster, available in the Mac App Store for $9.99, is a simple to use photo and video uploader for use with social sharing sites such as Flickr, SmugMug and Facebook.

Read our great review below, to learn more…

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At this time there’s no support for other sites, and video can only be uploaded to Flickr but that could change. We’re thinking if it’s to appeal to professional users then uploading to agencies would be essential, but we can see how difficult it would be to tailor the app to meet each site’s specific requirements. For all that, Poster uploads images complete with the metadata intact (for captions and keywords, which is essential for pro-image makers).

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In the meantime, Poster’s strength is its simplicity. Upon downloading and installing you’ll be asked if you want to install two plug-ins, one of iPhoto the other for Apple’s pro photo workflow tool, Aperture.

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Poster’s two export plug-ins are available for download, either as a free 15-day trial or for keeps, so long as you’re prepared to part with $9.99.

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Once installed, Poster is launched from the main menu from within Aperture or iPhoto using the File > Export > Poster command.

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Whether you choose to use the plug-ins or not Poster works in much the same way. Whether you’re exporting images from iPhoto or Aperture or you’ve dragged and dropped as requested, you’ll see the Poster window appear.

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It’s a simple interface, but don’t waste your time looking for options and preferences now as you’ll need to authorize the relevant site-sharing account first.

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Poster allows you to choose between profiles you administer on Facebook or Flickr, and allows easy uploading of your profile picture to Facebook (that’s particularly handy if you’re managing and creating accounts for business) as well as adding photos to your albums and to your Wall.

 

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Flickr has some additional functionality. It will, for instance, auto complete tags, you can moderate images, as well as add to the description and create and choose sets and groups and change privacy settings. If posting images to SmugMug then it add images to existing galleries although you can add new ones.

Images can be tagged rotated and resized if necessary all before uploading. Once you’ve authorized the various accounts Poster works a little differently, offering a choice of account to upload to, but you can’t upload the same images to several accounts at a go, you must up-load each separately.

What’s more, if individual video clips are larger than 150 MB or longer than 90 seconds then they can’t be uploaded to Flickr.

Despite the few niggles we’re always cautious when it comes to recommending up-loaders, as few are stable, efficient or that quick to upload, but we’re happy to report none of those negatives apply to Poster. And that’s perhaps reason enough to justify the $9.99 asking price.

If you would like to give it a try out, you can download it by clicking here.

Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: joanne@theappwhisperer.com