Reuters’ new iPad app is called The Wider Image, and it’s dedicated to showing off the news agency’s photographs. It’s free, and if you want to spend the next few hours lost in amazing photojournalism from around the world, whilst learning a bit about that same world, then go download it now.
The app has one huge failing, which we’ll get out of the way here: it is non-Retina (for the photos at least). For an iPad app that focusses on photography (in 2012!) this is almost unforgivable. The photos look good, but the pixels that jump out of them when you look closer certainly don’t. I understand that the app is pulling its photos down from the internet, and many people will be using this on cellular networks, but there should at least be a setting.
That said, the app is a delight. It’s responsive (on my 100-meg fiber connection anyway — I didn’t yet test it out and about) and easy to navigate. You can browse by the photographer, the country the pictures are from (by map or confusing tiled list), and you can even e-mail photos and create collections right there in the app.
This is the kind of app the National Geographic should have made.
If you have an iPad, I’d recommend checking this out — it’s free after all, and good. Hopefully an update will bring proper retina resolution photos. Until then, just squint when you view them, or put the iPad across the room whilst browsing.
Thanks: Chris!
