Boost Your Art Biz With 3 New Apps

Looking for ways to make the business side of your art life more productive and more fun? 

These three new apps for OSX and iOS could be just what you need.

1. Adobe Slate

It seems like Adobe releases a new iPad app just about every week. One of their newest, Adobe Slate, offers a great opportunity for we creatives wanting to get the word out about our work. 

To get the idea, imagine a professionally-designed, website-style digital magazine on a specific theme or piece of work that you can easily share with collectors and subscribers or embed into your website or newsletter. Slate gives you a scrolling design with transparent elements and a bunch of different templates to choose from. You can have a design done in less than 15 minutes with no cost!

Here's one I did to test out the app:

And here's a video of the app in action:

At the moment, there are only a limited amount of templates which are going to get stale pretty quickly as you can't customise them.

Maybe Adobe will introduce additional paid themes or customisation in the future, or open it up for designers to share/sell new designs. 

In the meantime, Slate is a great way to get the word out about something you new you have created or a project you are working on.

​If you give it a try, do post a link to anything you create in the comments.
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2. Periscope

My favourite of the three new apps has to be the iOS app, Periscope. 
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Periscope lets you broadcast live video and allows your followers to comment and send you hearts in real time. It uses your Twitter lists to build a network around your broadcasts as well as notifying people when you broadcast and suggesting people for you to follow.
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Limited Replay - Enhanced Exclusivity

When your broadcast is over, you can make it available for replay so viewers can watch later and add comments and hearts. Replays currently last 24 hours (although you can delete your replay at any time) which gives the content an element of scarcity and exclusivity sorely missing in YouTube video.

You can further enhance this sense of exclusivity by choosing who you want to invite to your broadcast - ideal for creating special content for your blog subscribers or collectors.
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Use Periscope for broadcasting:

• a live demo of your process. Viewers will be able to ask you questions and you can answer them in real time.
  
• a guided tour of your latest show or the work in your studio
  
• a tour of a location that inspires your work
  

Painting demo on Periscope by Wendy Macnaughton

3. ArtHandler

UPDATE: THIS APP IS NO LONGER FOR SALE

One of the ongoing issues for visual artists is that of keeping track our inventory - and the harder we work, the bigger that inventory becomes and the more venues it gets distributed to.

Given the elevated costs of web-based art inventory systems - which lock you in to monthly or yearly payments with no guarantee that they'll still be around in five years time after you've invested not only money but all that time in inputting the data - a computer-based database seems the logical solution. 

However if the idea of putting together your own database is just too daunting, ArtHandler offers some hope. The app provides a basic database which allows you to create entries for each piece of artwork. 

Features of ArtHandler

Features of ArtHandler include:

• support for all common image formats including PDF
• support for multiple photos per entry
• automatic conversion between cm and inches (Nice time-saver!)
• export images directly from within entry
• sharing artworks on social media directly from within the app (via Twitter, Facebook, email and message)
• automatic generation of captions (very useful for blogposts and promotional or marketing materials)
• fields for Dimensions (as well Duration for audio/visual media), Price, Location and Sold​​

Martin, the developer, says his overall goal "is to refine existing features" and that he aims for a "minimalist application that is well designed and implemented".

​Two features on his to-do list are printing, and export of both single artworks and the whole database. 
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UPDATE: See my full review of ArtHandler
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10 Copies of Art Handler to Give Away!

Since the $12.99 price tag (Mac OSX only, possibly iOS in the future.) is a little hefty for an app that's still in quite a raw state (though perfectly stable), I'm chuffed that Martin has given me FREE promo codes for the first 10 people who email me with the words Please send me a promo code for Art Handler in the subject line. 

This great offer is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with an app that holds a lot of promise. You can also contribute to its development by emailing feedback to the developer or by leaving a comment here.

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