500px Apps for iPhone and iPad

500px is the official iPad app for 500px and looks stunning. You can manage your profile information but you can’t upload photos from your iPad. The design of the app is probably its strong point. Features and navigation functionality are really well thought out and the UI is super clean as you would expect from an official app. There is no iPhone version of this official app yet unfortunately. Toggle through all the main 500px sections (Popular, Editors’ Choice, Upcoming, Fresh) and a search box for finding photos by name. Log into your account to get access to your own photos, friends and favorites. Slideshow option allows playing music, 3 transition animations, and timing anywhere from 3 seconds to 1 hour. They are missing the …. effect however. Tap any photo to see get access to the photographer’s profile page, see the picture’s rating, mark it as a favorite, or vote for it. Swipe up to read user comments. The biggest issues with this app are: 1) When you follow a user it doesn’t work (huge bug), and 2) Sometimes you run into a long wait (spinner) before the full size photo loads. There is no option for saving your searches. There is an option to filter nude photographs which is off by default. Overall a great app with a few major bugs that will hopefully get fixed.

500px galleries is an iPad app from PoFactory that focuses on simply browsing photos, and doesn’t have the ability for you to log into or manage your account. This app focuses on creating and saving a gallery of photos and is great if you just want to browse the photos and has a variety of options. Besides the basic main sections of 500px you can also create galleries for any user by typing in their username. This means you would have to go to 500px.com on the web and find the username, but once you do, you can save that user’s gallery for future use. When viewing any photo there are a few sharing options plus an icon for saving the original to your iPad camera roll. There are a variety of app options including nude filters, slideshow timers, and a zoom option using the beautiful Ken Burns effect. Finally you can browse top level categories. What this app really needs is a way to search for photos by keyword to make finding users easier.

500px PhotoBook is another iPad app by PoFactory with a different format. This app uses a photobook theme to display the various photo feeds from 500px on your iPad. You can view your favorites, browse by category, and own photos from your user account. You flip through a virtual album of photos which is populated with a random number of photos per page using a classic photo book design. Unfortunately, the performance in this app is super slow and unresponsive, and the design and layout can definitely use a polish.

PhotoStackr for 500px is a universal app for iPhone and iPad that has a few unique features including the ability to upload photos from your device to your 500px account. You can create photo feeds called “stacks” from lists, individual photos, searches, or people. Your saved photo stacks can be pulled up quickly at any time. Once you are in a thumbnail view you can start a slideshow using a Ken Burns effect with optional music. You can also download photos to your iPad from 500px which in most cases does not work since most owners on 500px have prohibited downloading of their works. Uploading is a great feature of this app. Just select photos from your iPad, Camera, or iTunes File Sharing and upload them to your 500px account. You can type in a Title, Caption, and choose a Category for each photo before uploading. You can’t add tags and or edit the EXIF info before you upload. You can choose the upload size to be anywhere from small to full size in the Settings. Add your Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr accounts to post photo links on your social profiles. Finally you can purchase a $1.99 upgrade which adds Flickr functionality to the app.

ISO500 for 500px is an iPhone application from David Charlec for navigating the various public feeds on 500px from your iPhone or iPod touch. Navigation in ISO500 is done using an intuitive rotating wheel which is a joy to use especially for photographers. Feeds include Editor’s choice, Popular, Upcoming, and Fresh. Log into your 500px account to view your profile, photos, favorites, friends list, and friends photos. When viewing a full size photo on the iPhone, ISO500 lets you flick left or right to navigate any list. Here you can also share, vote, add to favorite, write & read comments, and view user profiles where you can save the user to your friends list. ISO500 is a great looking 500px app with smooth navigation perfect for iPhone users. It is however currently missing a couple of important features including keyword search and slideshow playback.

500px view is a bare bones free universal 500px app developed by Dmitri Roudakov. The app has 3 tabs: Fresh photos, Popular photos and Editor’s choice. There is no thumbnail view at all, and photos are just shown one at a time in each list. While 500px view is a free app, it leaves a lot to be desired.

500px RSS is another minimal free iPhone only app for 500px from Quadecco. Here you have a list of photos pulled from the public 500px feeds that you can browse including Fresh, Editors’ Choice, and Best. No thumbnail view, search, login, slideshow, or save functionality are provided.