Let me take pictures!

I was initially assuming that there'd be a separate FlickrExport that would effectively be a replacement for the 'Camera' app. But if it were integrated into Exposure, I think the 'shake' gesture would would be a great way to handle that.

As an iPod touch owner, I wouldn't have any use for upload capabilities—given how much is in the Exposure UI already, I'm struggling to see how capture/upload could be added to the UI and be easily accessible without complicating it unnecessarily for people who have no use for the functionality.

My other concern would be that merging FlickrExport Touch and Exposure would require a bump in the price of Exposure Premium (which I haven't bought yet, but plan to fairly soon as it's well worth it to me)

I think export would be a killer addition to Exposure. Maybe you could add it as a premium-only feature. I know I would totally buy it for that feature combined with the current functionality.

I vote for keeping the functionality separate. I don't have a strong opinion, but it does seem simpler that way.

Upload in Exposure would be the icing on the cake. Would love to see it in there, and shake shortcut sounds like a neat and efficient way of jumping to the camera.

I could only imagine this as being an Exposure Premium thing, personally, and then only for completeness' sake. Great feature differentiator, but on the other hand, I really respect Fraser's original vision for the product map and its focus on doing one thing well. The shake shortcut sounds like a winner, though.

So, who here would feel outrage if this was a for-pay feature only, and not in Exposure (free edition) at all?

Adding shake to take a picture would be great.
It feels like a premium only feature?

Conceivably it would replace FlickrExport, though there might be value in having that as a separate app, but perhaps it is more simple to market one Flickr application for the iPhone and the keep FlickrExporter as a desktop app.

Thanks for making exposure and flickrexport before that.

This is an interesting one. At the moment, the Exposure UI is very familiar and complete but it's also not 'busy' or confusing. The shake gesture sounds like a great way to offer the camera functionality without impacting the UI :)

Like Adam, I too respect the original vision for Exposure (sans Camera) as in my humble opinion it's already one of the best iPhone apps out there. However, it would be truly awesome to have a 'complete package' - even if it is a Premium-only feature (note: I own Exposure Premium, so it's perhaps easier for me to say!).

What about defaulting to the camera on launch or something? That way you could have your 'instant access'.

I am generally in favour of keeping applications on the iPhone small and simple, but in this case, I think it makes sense to add snap/upload functions to Exposure Premium (and only Premium).

The shake gesture shortcut sounds like a grand idea as well; without that suggestion, I reckon I wouldn't have been as positive about combining the two applications.

I like the idea of being able to take and upload pictures from within Exposure - it seems like it would make Exposure a nice central place for iPhone photography. Like some of the previous comments - it might make sense to make it a Premium feature to encourage people to pay the extra (assuming that you want to do this - I guess it depends on what competing products are doing).

I like the idea of using "shake" to call up the camera.

Exposure is nice, but I'm only going to use (and might pay) for the one Flickr app that lets me upload pictures on the go.

That said, I don't need to TAKE the picture inside Exposure, uploading from my camera roll is OK (ala the Twittterrific default) so the "speed to camera" seems like a bogus issue. (Maybe not, my research is indicating that the quality is limited if you pick from the roll)

For anyone worried about missing these aliens that are apparently landing every where... they can always set the home button "double-click" to bring up the camera. Personally, I've configured my home screen button placement so the camera is in a fixed location for quick muscle-memory access (lower left corner, thumb swipe optimized!)

At any rate, I think people are WAY more likely to pay for Exposure with upload, than Exposure without upload($) plus FlickrExport Touch (2x$).

With your competitors already offering apps that do upload (presumably they can improve their current offerings...), why leave it out?

Keep them separate. iPhone apps should be small and do a single thing. You have a Flickr browser and a Flickr uploader. Full client apps are for the Mac, not the iPhone.

Given the interface in Exposure, I think it should be possible to place a camera icon in the upper right-hand corner of each screen in the toolbar just like Facebook application. That solves your easy-access to the camera.

I definitely think there is an expectation of ability to upload though. Flickr is a two-way street: sharing and contributing. So, it's kinda hard to have one without the other in a social medium like Flickr.

I say keep them separate. As Justin says, iPhone apps should be small and simple. Cramming too many features into one app can hurt it in the long run. Making it a premium feature might just confuse the issue even more. While I would love them in one app, I think in the long run two apps makes more sense.

Whether it's separate from Exposure or not...

I think it's important to be able to both take a picture and upload it to Flickr within the same app. Right now, you have to take a picture with the camera and then upload it with Shozu... way too many steps.

My vote is to make them separate applications. I haven't read a compelling use case in the comments above that justifies making Exposure more complex. Exposure is a solid app right now and feels just the right size for a mobile application. Keep it that way!

I'd vote for a standalone uploader. Just choose an already taken image from your roll, add title, tags, etc. and upload.

I think there are two ideas in here. The first one is having access to the camera immediately from wherever it makes sense. Like a Flickr Exporter. :)

The second is that a user assumes that all photos taken with the iPhone will end up in the Photo Library. So at the least, if an app uses the camera, there should be an option to NOT send the photo to the Library as well.

An app that's just a simple replacement for Camera, but saves you the step of emailing to Flickr would be alright but not super compelling.

What I really want to be able to do is as I'm taking photos, add them to a specific album on Flickr. One way to do it would be to integrate it in to Exposure -- while browsing your photos, you can tap "Add a photo" and just take one, bam.

On the other hand, you could easily build a whole application around the workflow I'm talking about -- just taking photos and uploading them to flickr. So it could easily be a separate app.

I will say, though, that including at the very least basic picture taking support in Exposure is probably a good idea, simply to round out the application and give the complete "flickr experience".

Edit: I am somewhat convinced by what Justin said above, however I would like to point out that there is no version of Exposure at all on the desktop (hint hint)

It would be an interesting option to add this. I would certainly pay for the additional features.

Would it be possible to add the camera to the "more" list, with the option of rearranging the bottom buttons a la iPod.app. I don't really want featured or near me as much as I would like a link to the camera app at the bottom.

Edit: I would possibly pay for a separate app too, depending on how much I thought i would use it.

I think considering all the input and Fraser's comments that it's either FE/iPhone OR Exposure with upload support, I would support two separate applications a little more.

Having used my iPhone a bit more, a key feature in an upload application would be the ability to add photos to a batch and then upload them together, rather than one at a time.

I can see sense in having this as a separate application. Perhaps shaking Exposure launches the other app, but you can launch it independently. I know that Safari can be invoked in this manner, but I'm not sure if you can launch one app from another. Shades of Finder 6 Transfer....

I think adding in photo uploading functionality including selecting a tag for the photo taken before upload would be nice. Also being able to just upload pictures, get geo location of them and allow you up tag before upload would be killer. Even AirMe does do that.

As much as I would LOVE to have direct uploading from Exposure OR a separate app, there is one major problem I've observed so far that *seems* to be an API limitation.

I'm hoping Fraser can offer some feedback on the following issues I've noticed from using other apps:

Firstly, in looking at other apps and methods of uploading pictures, it would appear that ALL EXIF DATA is stripped out when sending photos from the iPhone. This applies to e-mailing photos through Apple's own iPhone Mail app, as well as taking photos with Mobile Fotos or other similar apps. This means that things like the camera model and more importantly the geotag data that the iPhone nicely adds will NOT be included if you send to Flickr directly from the iPhone. If this is truly an API limitation, then you're pretty much stuck uploading your pictures via your computer anyway to retain that data.

On the other hand, perhaps the other apps are simply being lazy when converting the photos, and there actually *is* a way to do this (crossing fingers -- AIrMe certainly does add the geo-tag data to apps that are taken directly with it, so I'm guessing it writes its own EXIF geotag data, but of course it provides no way to upload apps from the Camera Roll -- you have to take them via AirMe).

Secondly, it seems that photos accessed via the API from the "Camera Roll" are limited to a 640x480 resolution -- lower even than photos sent via the iPhone Mail app, which go out at 800x600. If this is also true, then this means that you'd be better off just e-mailing your photos from your camera roll into flickr, rather than having an application do it.

Pictures taken with the camera directly in an app still seem to be available at the full 1600 x 1200 resolution, but they still don't include the EXIF data -- possibly simply because it's the app's responsibility to write it to the photo in that case (ie, does the Camera app write the EXIF data on the iPhone, or is it written by the image capture API?).

If the above are not strictly API limitations, then Exposure could jump FAR ahead of the pack by figuring out a way to deal with higher resolution photos AND add geo-tag data. Thus far, the options are quite limited.... AirMe adds the geotag data, but only provides lower-res images and no way to browse the camera roll. Mobile Fotos provides 1600x1200 images with no EXIF geotag data at all, and sends camera roll photos out at 640x480.

@Fraser thanks for the feedback on batch uploading, it makes sense.

The way that mail on the iPhone handles resending failed email might be one approach. The alleged abilities of the 2.1 SDK to support background notifications might allow for a background queue of images to be sent when a 3G or wifi network is encountered I guess. Obviously with the ever helpful NDA in place you can't comment publicly about this.

thanks though

Less applications! just let Exposure Pro enable the upload of photos!

I've been stuck in a hospital for a week without my laptop but with my iphone. I'm starting to understand that the iphone is a bigger vehicle for community online than my computers: it's at where I am.

I'd love to have a photostream of my stay via exposure ... facebook just didn't work. Maybe one photo at a time limitation? "Mobile Foto" promises to do some uploading...but your application looks better built. Even if it's one photo at a time: please allow me to upload photos spontaneously with geotags to build a better photostream. I don't need ALL the photo roll ... I can live with a few or one-at-a-time ... I understand there are limitations with bandwidth and connection reliability. I can live with lower resolution photos (as a limitation from my iphone) so long I can get content online. I can wait for higher resolution photo's when I'm in front of my mac's.

thx!

I think a separate app would be great as it could probably have a lot more useful features. Preserving EXIF, quality settings, tagging and adding to sets, etc. Mirroring FlickrExport for Aperture's quality would be huge for me, and I'd buy another app to have that rather than just have a simpler upload in Exposure.

Shaking is such a good idea though ;)

I bough Exposure a couple days ago, without really reading the Info text, and then spent five minutes looking for the photo upload feature. I thought Exposure was indeed your "everything Flickr" iPhone app.

The last comment was two months ago. Frasier, are you any closer to deciding between FlickrExport Touch and Exposure+FlickrExport?

Fantastic job on Exposure regardless.