photo sharing

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on photo sharing:

Instagram makes ‘likes’ disappear in even more countries

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heart shapes
Your fans will know you are liked. They just won't know how much.
Photo: Iouri Goussey/Wikimedia CC

Instagram’s hidden “likes” experiment is expanding to six other countries as the photo-sharing app continues to change features to make social media a more positive experience.

Instagram made the announcement Wednesday on its Twitter feed, though it has yet to disclose findings from a trial of select users in Canada. It will now hide “likes” tallies on select posts in Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand.

The most popular filter on Instagram may surprise you

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Instagram filters
X-Pro II is widely used for the drama it brings to a photo. But the most popular "filter" adds no drama at all.
Photo: Iconosquare

Normal is the single-most used filter on Instagram, which means exactly what you think: Normal is not really a filter.

Still, because it lines up alongside Instagram’s 40 native filters, it came out on top, according to a database of 790,000 Instagram users. This is still considered a small sample for a user base that just surpassed 1 billion active users.

Explore your interests through pictures with Instagram [50 Essential iOS Apps #20]

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Cult of Mac Instagram profile
Instagram could soon offer original shows of its own.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Workflow appThere are tons of social networks to choose from. Some help you stay up-to-date with news, while others are focused on friends or family. Instagram is the social network for seeing the world and keeping up with your interests through images. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, Instagram lets photos do the majority of the talking.

Instagram’s new feature is a ripoff of Snapchat Stories

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Stories is already seeing more users than Snapchat.
Stories is already seeing more users than Snapchat.
Photo: Instagram

Instagram is rolling out a new feature that lets you post more privately and without the kind of permanence that can get you in trouble.

Sound familiar, Snapchat users?

On its blog Tuesday morning, the company introduced Instagram Stories, which lets you share multiple photos and videos in a single slideshow. It can be shared with select followers without showing up on your more public profile. It then disappears 24 hours later.

Facebook adds support for Live Photos — but there’s a catch

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facebook-news-feed
Your Facebook News Feed is about to liven up.
Photo: Facebook

A few months after Apple birthed Live Photos into existence with the release of the iPhone 6s, Facebook is catching on to the idea. The social network is building the feature right into its iOS app so iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners can start uploading their animated photos and viewing others. But it’s not all good news, since there are two issues with Facebook’s implementation.

Photo app lets you send the party snaps when you’re sober

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Flashgap lets you take pictures at the party, but then makes you wait a day before you can share them.
Flashgap lets you take pictures at the party, but then makes you wait a day before you can share them.
Photo: Flashgap

There is a growing category of apps that fall under the heading, Apps to save us from ourselves. There are messaging apps that delay the sending of text messages and apps and hardware that measure the amount of alcohol on your breath.

Flashgap enters this category – probably in time for some – to stop embarrassing party photos from making the rounds before you’ve had a chance to sober up and consider who will get to see your fun and foolishness.

Apple takes aim at Facebook with photo-sharing patent

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Moments-Photographic
Facebook's Moments app in action.
Photo: Facebook

An Apple patent application describes a way of identifying people in digital images using face-recognition technology and then making it easy to send copies of the image to everyone in it.

The concept is highly reminiscent of Facebook’s Moments app, which identifies people and places in images and then allows users to easily share with friends, without having to post the pictures to Facebook.

Microsoft’s incredible photo sharing app gains Apple TV support

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Photo: Microsoft
Photo: Microsoft

Microsoft’s Xin is already one of the best ways to share photos between devices, even if you’re on Android or iPhone, but it’s getting even better today for iPhone users with a new update that adds Apple TV support, plus a ton of other set top boxes.

Chomecast, Fire TV, Xbox One and web browsers are all getting support for the simple photo sharing app meaning you can now toss pictures to pretty much any smartphone or TV screen in the world.

See how Xim works with Apple TV in the video below:

Kicksend: An Awesome Way To Share Digital And Physical Photos With Anyone

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When Apple introduced Photo Stream to iCloud back in 2011, the Cupertino company made it incredibly quick and easy for its users to share their favorite photos with their friends and family without syncing them to their computer first. But Photo Stream has a downside, and that is that it’s only available on iOS.

Fortunately, there are plenty of awesome alternatives with cross-platform support, and one of those is Kicksend. Not only does Kicksend let you share photos with friends — regardless of the smartphone platform they choose — but it also lets you print and send real photos to those who don’t have a smartphone at all.

Try A Kinder, Gentler Real-Time Social Photo Sharing App, SpeakingPhoto

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Speaking Photo

SpeakingPhoto is a new social photography app that lets you connect in real-time with anyone you like, using photos and recorded audio to share your special moments. Competing with Vine, Snapchat, and Digisocial, SpeakingPhoto aims to be a nicer place to be; instead of the party-atmosphere of the latter two apps, this one wants to let you record and archive the “memories, notes, and stories behind milestone moments in your personal and professional lives.”

Pretty heady stuff for a photo sharing app, right?

Add Smart Text Overlays To Your Instagram Photos With InstaWeather Pro [iOS Tips]

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InstaWeather Pro

I like Instagram, with its fun filters and social features. I’m glad the latest controversy over the terms of use and privacy concerns has been dealt with, at least for now. One thing that I’ve always wondered, though is why Instagram didn’t have any text overlay features.

With InstaWeather (and InstaPlace, really), you can place some location and weather-aware overlays on your Instagram photos, giving you a whole new conduit for sharing information or amusing your Instagram friends.

Simply Share Photos And Videos With Friends And Family Using Pear

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Sometimes you just want to share photos with family and friends, simply and easily, without having to post to Facebook, figure out the lists thing there, or use some weird Dropbox shared folder, because, honestly, your mom really doesn’t “get” Drobpox and can’t you just send her a nice picture of the grandkids like you used to? And don’t even get me started on shared Photo Streams and your dad, ok?

Since it’s the end of the calendar year, and many folks celebrate holidays of one sort or another, or completely boycott them, which is its own kind of celebration, really, I though it might be nice to connect you all to a new app, called Pear (get it?). It lets you share photos and such simply, easily, and only with those folks you want to share with.

Use A Shared Photo Stream To Send Photos Only To A Specific Group Of People [iOS Tips]

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Shared Photo Stream

We constantly share our snapshots from our iPhones to Twitter and Facebook, we send them via e-mail and iMessage, print them from our phones, and even share them to group sites like Picasa and Flickr. It’s a veritable frenzy of photo sharing!

It’s all really amazing and fun, of course, but what about those times we just want to share our photos with a select group of friends or family members? Setting up special lists in Facebook or Flickr can be unintuitive and tricky, so chances are good that it doesn’t happen that often.

Luckily, Apple’s got shared Photo Streams in the new iOS 6, and it’s fairly straightforward to set up. Here’s how.

Getting Evicted From MobileMe? Here Are The Best Alternatives [Feature]

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MobileMepic
MobileMe will be gone in less than a month. Here are the best MobileMe replacement options.
Photo: Apple

On Sunday, MobileMe will be dead, and anyone who is still using MobileMe and not Apple’s replacement service, iCloud, will be forcibly evicted. That means anyone still using MobileMe either needs to transition to iCloud and/or copy all data stored in their MobileMe accounts to their Mac or PC. Any files stored in MobileMe’s range of services that can’t be converted to iCloud will be deleted. If you opt not to use iCloud, all data in your MobileMe account will be deleted.

Although iCloud offers several advances over MobileMe, there are some MobileMe services that don’t have direct iCloud equivalents. These include MobileMe Galleries for sharing photos and videos, website creation using Apple’s iWeb, and iDisk remote storage and file sharing. File and information sync is available using iCloud, but the functionality is implemented a bit differently than in MobileMe. In addition, users still using Snow Leopard also can’t upgrade to iCloud.

It’s a tricky problem for thousands of users. There isn’t a single online service that delivers quite the same mix of features and functionality that Apple offered with MobileMe, but by combining some apps and services, you can get pretty close to MobileMe’s feature set. We’ve gone through all of the main competitors to try to find the best services for the soon-to-be dispossessed MobileMe subscriber.