Create and customise

C is for Canva, Camscanner and Chrome

A-Z challenge 2016: Apps in April

Canva

Canva is one of my favourite apps for creating graphics for a wide range of purposes including posters, presentations and sites. Choose pre-set sizes for social media posts or customise to the desired size.
Upload your own photos or use Canva’s free backgrounds. There is a small charge should you choose to use Canva images. Use the wide variety of text types and banners to create unique graphics for all your needs.Change the colour and format of any of the provided templates.
Canva has comprehensive tutorials ideal for learning the finer points of design. Save your designs as public or private. Download as jpg, png or pdf or share via email as an editable design. View some of the designs created here.
iOS app, or use in a modern browser on the Web.

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Camscanner

Why use a scanner app instead of a photo? A scanner provides recognition of document edges and provides alteration points to clearly focus in on the content. Once a document is scanned the OCR feature enables search by text recognition.
Choose from magic colour, black and white, grayscale or lighten to enhance the readability of your documents.
Scanned documents can then be shared through a variety of apps and cloud services.
Need to cite some text from a book, use the scanner. Focus on the page you want to scan then tap OCR. The recognised text can then be copied to the clipboard, opened in other apps or simply emailed. To do this you will need to purchase the full app not the free version. Try out the free version to see if this one suits your needs.

Available for Android and iOS.

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Chrome browser

Chrome is free for all platforms. Sign in with a Google account to view all your bookmarks, (favourites) and pages recently visited on all the devices you own. So my Android phone shows pages recently visited on my laptop and iPad. The iPad shows recently visited pages on the phone and laptop, i.e. the browser syncs across the platforms and devices, saves having to type in those pesky addresses.
Search by voice provides quick access to apps and the web as well as searching within your Google contacts. Only you can see the results if contact details are displayed.

Find in Page, located under the hamburger menu (top right-hand side) on the mobile apps, is the most useful function to save scrolling and quickly focus on the required text. If you are a family historian looking through a long list of names use this function to simplify your task. Choose the Go Incognito tab if you prefer to keep your browsing history private.

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Next up D - Do your data a favour

Books and a box

B is for Box, British Library and Book Creator

A-Z challenge 2016: Apps in April

Box provides 10 GB of free online storage for your files. A powerful feature not always available in various other cloud services, is the ability to search within your PDF, PowerPoint and Word docs.
Sync across your computer and devices and have all your files, photos, documents and videos accessible. Share files with a link.  Free for iOS and Android. Box is an excellent service to add to your collection of apps.
Want to know more? View Box for Android or Box for iPhone or iPad or Box for Windows
These short 1 - 2 min promotional videos provide an overview of the service.

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British Library

This collection of more than 45000 books is divided into 25 separate collections. I have used the History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific collection and am delighted to have access to the digital images of the pages in a wide range of historical titles. Only the title being viewed is downloaded to your device. Excellent for background reading for all family historians. iOS only.
If you visit London do go along to the British Library to view the wonderful Treasures gallery which exhibits many old precious tomes.

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 Book Creator

Need an easy app to create a quick book? This one is an excellent tool.
Simple enough for children to use but ideal for photo storybooks that family historians may like to make.
Support for text, images, video, music and narration. Simply tap to add content. Completed books can be exported as ePub, PDF or video. Books can then be shared via Dropbox or your favourite cloud service.  Create the first book free or pay a small fee to create unlimited books. Available for iOS, Android and Windows.

This video demonstrates the app on iPad but it is equally easy to use on the other platforms.

Next up - Create and customise with C apps

Apparently apps

A is for Adobe, an abundance of apps

A-Z challenge 2016: Apps in April

Welcome to an April trip through the alphabet via apps.


1. Adobe Acrobat has for many years been the industry standard for PDFs. One can annotate, highlight, strikethrough, underline, add text, add a note, draw on the pdf, create a signature all within the app. When finished, share the file, open in another app or print. Available free for iOS and Android.

2. Explore Adobe Draw with Tony Vincent’s excellent tutorial here. Learn how he uses photos and converts them to drawings, clipart, and avatars to generate original content. Free for iOS and Android.

3. Photoshop Express – one of the original photo editing apps, improved upon and added to over the years. Choose your photo from a variety of sources then auto enhance, or use a wide variety of filters or adjust all settings manually as available in the finest of desktop editing software suites. Rotating, flipping, sharpening, red-eye and blemish removal, are just a few of the tools available via your fingertips.This is an excellent photo editing app free for iOS and Android.

4. Photoshop fix is a more sophisticated tool incorporating layers and exports directly to Photoshop. if you don’t need native .psd files for Photoshop, there are plenty of other sophisticated photo editing apps.

5. Adobe Post - late to the scene of creating professional looking social graphics and branded across the bottom with #AdobePost not my top choice in the graphic creation apps. Beautiful designs and text variations but the branding spoils the end product for me. Templates for common social platforms with a wide range of font styles, layouts, colour palettes, shapes and filters. iOS only.

The open book seat in the foyer of the British Library
Photo by C Galvin enhanced and text added via Adobe Post

6. Adobe Voice – iOS only, when will Adobe cater for all consumers? Tell a story using icons, photos, and music. This is simple to use and the end product can be embedded or shared via a link. Tell your family stories, choose from a variety of themes, vary the layout and publish. Share on a variety of social platforms.  

View my trip to Greenwich, made with Adobe Voice (2 mins)

7.. Adobe Slate – iOS only Makes images and text move together. Here’s a story about my great-grandparents, John and Maria O’Dea made with Slate. Click on the picture to start. The back arrow will return you to this post after viewing the Slate page.

My great grandparents story - made with Slate

These are just a few of Adobe’s suite of products, have fun exploring.