Tangent Devices’ iPad Color Controller from Steve Hullfish on Vimeo.
Tangent Devices, which is one of the major color correction console manufacturers, came out with a FREE version of its Tangent Devices WAVE panel for iPad. The app allows your iPad to control the Primary and Secondary Rooms of Apple’s Color application WIRELESSLY. I’m sorry for all the CAPS, but I’m as giddy as a school girl as I write this. If you’re on DIGG or StumbleUpon, please pop this up as a favorite. It’s like a little geeky parlor trick.
I learned about this free app from my friend Bob Sliga in a post on the Yahoo group, Colorlist. This is technology that was shown at IBC.
Your iPad becomes a multi-touch control surface allowing you to control the three color wheels and the three tonal range sliders using your iPad. And by MULTI-TOUCH, I mean that all of the dials and color wheel/trackballs can be moved simultaneously, instead of one at a time, like you do with a mouse.
To use your iPad to control Color, download vWAVE-Lite from the App store for free. It takes about a minute. Then you have to go on to Tangent Devices website (www.tangentdeviceswave.co.uk). Click on Products and choose vWave-Lite. There is a link to provide your email and Tangent Devices will email you the information to download the 3.8 Tangent Color Support Package. When you get the email, download the linked app (along with a pdf Quickstart Guide and manual, if you want) and follow the simple instructions to install it. Once the app is installed, you launch Apple Color and one of the first dialog boxes you’ll see is the Control Surface Dialog. From the pulldown menu, select Tangent Color Plugin v3.8. As long as your Mac running Color is on the same network as the WiFi that your iPad is using, they will automatically be linked! It’s like magic. I just love it.
You can even set the trackball and ring sensitivity on the iPad.
Check out the video to see it. There’s really no other way to appreciate it other than just trying it for yourself.
Tangent Devices promises a “pro” version shortly. For now, the LITE version offers the three trackballs and three rings with the reset buttons. All are fully multi-touch capable, so there’s no little “mouse dance” as you first adjust shadows, then they move as you adjust midtones. You can pull one down at the same time you pull the other up, just like using the full-on Tangent Devices WAVE or one of their higher-end CP200 controllers.
I have no clue what the PRO version will include, but I’ll be interested to see. Obviously, the WAVE is much more practical and powerful, but this little iPad app is … well, magical. And did I mention FREE.
DISCLAIMER: Yeah, Tangent Devices gave this app to me for FREE but, then again, they’ll give it to you free too! Why do bloggers have to report that they received a FREE app, and Congressman and Senators don’t have to state which lobbyists they took tens of thousands of dollars from each time they vote on a bill? It might go in some crappy little report, but why don’t they have to stand up when they vote and say, “I think this health insurance provision is GREAT. Let’s make it law! By the way, the health care industry flew me to Hawaii to have sex with underage hookers for a week.