Is there a Mac App that allows you to create easily sharable digital art boards?

May 23, 2011 10:05 AM

I work with a lot of teams who do concept development stuff for the web and for general interactive design. I'm always having to find visual references for our discussions and our present system of sharing is clunky and requires us to print stuff out all the time so that we can talk about stuff we like or don't like. This is pretty crazily wasteful as well as the fact that trying to convince graphic designers to get enthusiastic about a reference when they can't help fixating on the icky presentation format is getting annoying. So, is there an easy and really nice looking app or programme for the Mac that allows you to save and illustrate pictures, web pages, articles and video in a browsable way? Ideally it would be something that was ipad compatible, if only because then it will have to be easily browsable in a visually attractive way. It would also be awesome if it allowed you to collaborate, so we could all contribute to a single place that would be awesome.
posted by rudhraigh to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Obligatory: Evernote.
posted by rhizome at 10:21 AM on May 23, 2011

by the way, the term of art for these appears to be 'mood boards.'
posted by felix at 10:49 AM on May 23, 2011

Check out Catch Notes (www.catch.com), just downloaded it onto my iPad this weekend, sounds like it might be good for what you've described.
posted by dbiedny at 12:09 PM on May 23, 2011

Dropbox would work - just drop in any videos/images/links/whatever into the relevant folder, which could be shared between multiple people.

Also, if Keynote supports all the relevant media types, you could make quick "presentations" that you can flick through on the iPad version.
posted by Magnakai at 2:56 AM on May 24, 2011

Can you describe what your needs are a bit more? Do multiple people in your group need to be able to access and edit the presentation (over network)? Would something like a nice looking slideshow work? Or does it need to be more interactive or have some special features?
posted by thefool at 3:18 AM on May 24, 2011

Response by poster: What I'm effectively looking for is something that allows me to have a fullscreen app that basically shows webpages, screenshots, images and documents as a manipulatable, zoomable photo cloud that we can collectively add to so that we can discuss them in groups and easily browse them at our own computers. Something beautiful that basically creates digital mood boards that multiple people can add to and display to each other. A slideshow isn't totally ideal for this as you can't really compare two links at the same time. If you can think of the photo manipulation software in Minority Report, that's kind of what we're looking for.
posted by rudhraigh at 12:13 PM on May 24, 2011

Well, if we can boil that down to "...a fullscreen app that [is] basically...the photo manipulation software in Minority Report," I'm a bit pessimistic for you. You can A/B screenshots with GIMP/Photoshop using layer visibility and transparency. Add networked multi-user viewing, iPad operability, multiple format support and all the other gewgaws in here, and you're well into the realm of custom software development. What's your budget? :)
posted by rhizome at 3:41 PM on May 24, 2011

Damn, that sounds great. Make it and sell it. I can imagine it going down a storm.
posted by Magnakai at 4:41 PM on May 24, 2011

You could use a website like Dropmark or Backpack to share images.

To quickly capture screenshots or annotate images, and then optionally share them online, Skitch is great (and free). Or you could use LittleSnapper, which has more features for organizing collections of images.

Alternatively, GrabBox will upload screenshots to Dropbox and automatically generate a short URL for sharing.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 11:31 AM on May 25, 2011