For those wishing to add a little flash and pizazz to their photo edit process, Loupedeck may be the product for you. Created by the Finnish company of the same name, it’s essentially a mixing desk for photo editing and is currently seeking funding on Indiegogo.
With a board of various dials, buttons and wheels, Loupedeck’s similarity to a DJ deck is absolutely no coincidence. The original idea for the device came from CEO and founder, Mikko Kesti, who when struggling with a pile of Christmas party images to edit, wished he’d had a hands-on tool similar to the DJ boards he worked with as a hobby. Collaborating with a design team of friends with an impressive collective background at Nokia, the end result is a remarkably clean and intuitive layout.
/Loupedeck /Indiegogo
Loupedeck is about the size of a keyboard but thankfully isn’t supposed to be an extra accessory to juggle alongside one. The deck actually replaces use of the mouse and keyboard when editing, and is USB plug and play functional with Apple and PC. “The traditional mouse and keyboard is neither practical nor ergonomically efficient,” says their campaign pitch, “and that workflow is continuously interrupted when your eyes can’t stay on the image. ”
In addition to fixed mechanical locations for the most common tweaks (brightness, saturation, shadow etc), the Loupedeck features an entire row of wheels that can each be tailored to different functions of your choice. Undoing a change is simple, and can be achieved simply by pressing the dial rather than cycling through your change list. Best of all, there’s a function to copy over all your settings to another image in a button press, which will save a lot of time in batch projects.
/Loupedeck /Indiegogo
This isn’t the only recent physical photo editing device we’ve seen as of late. Brushknob, Pallete and Microsoft’s Dial for the Surface Studio all come to mind. The call for physical interfaces may seem regressive but that kinesthetic and truly reactive feel is hard to replicate on a digital screen. Loupedeck say that though their deck is only usable with Lightroom at the moment, they will be working on making it compatible with other photo editing software.
The Indiegogo campaign for Loupedeck launched just yesterday and at €29,870 (US$33,200) at time of writing, it has already earned close to half of its €75,000 (US$83,400) goal. It therefore has a very good chance of getting the rest of its funding in the next 30 days. If the crowdfund is a success, Loupedeck has a projected release date of September 2017 with a suggested retail price of €369 (US$410).
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As someone with some experience in radio production, my heart glows when I have some buttons to press, wheels to roll, and dials to turn with creative work. The satisfaction is palpable with every move, as opposed to the mundanity of click and drag. Seriously, I want to play with this.
You can find out more about Loupedeck's Indiegogo project here
. digitalrev.com2016-11-3 03:00