Avid Studio is a new app that lets you edit video, audio and photographs right on your iPad. And if you think Apple’s iPad version of iMovie has just gotten some real competition in the video editing space — you’re right.

Avid and Apple have been battling it out for years now in the professional space, with Avid’s high end movie editing kit seeing competition from Apple’s much lower priced Final Cut Studio. Several prominent directors switched from Avid to make high profile movies using Final Cut. Following Apple’s recent re-invention of the digital editing model with Final Cut X, they faced a lot of push back from unhappy editors who missed features or simply didn’t like the new software. Apple did, however, achieve some consistency across their editing software, with everything from iMovie on iPhone and iPad, to iMovie on Mac, to Final Cut Pro embracing similar user interface and design concepts.

Now Avid is bringing the battle back to Apple, and on Apple’s mobile turf for a change. We’ll have a full hands-on, and a side-by-side comparison with iMovie coming your ways soon. In the meantime, here are all the details on Avid Studio for iPad.

Big-screen moviemaking comes to the touchscreen with Avid® Studio for iPad. We’ve distilled the world’s leading film-editing technology into an easy-to-use app that enables you to edit video, audio, and photos at the speed of your creativity. Swiftly arrange your clips in the Storyboard, make precision edits using the Timeline, and add high-quality transitions, effects, and a soundtrack. Then share your movie directly to YouTube, Facebook, and more—or export your project to Avid Studio for the PC and continue editing with even more advanced tools.

Easily Access Your Media

• Work with any media on your device—video, audio, and photos
• Access media from external devices via an iPad Camera Connection Kit (sold separately)
• Capture video and photos from within the app
• See your media organized by Albums, Events, Faces, and more

• Get started quickly with how-to materials
• Easily navigate your project with intuitive gestures
• Swiftly arrange clips in the Storyboard
• Make precise edits and trim individual frames in the Precision Trimmer
• Use the Razor Blade tool to cut on the fly and delete or replace the second half of the clip
• Easily replace one clip with another

• Quickly create multi-layer 3D animations, transitions, and titles with included Montage templates
• Easily composite video tracks to create layered looks
• Add high-quality fades and dissolves to help your story flow
• Generate professional-looking motion titles and graphics with full control over text, font, color, size, position, and rotation
• Create amazing Picture-in-Picture effects with full control over position, size, and rotation
• Pan and zoom on your photos to create high-impact slideshows
• Enjoy full-screen playback

• Use your own audio or choose from the included sound effects
• Trim audio to any length, set levels, and fade audio in or out

• Easily share movies via YouTube, Facebook, email, and more
• Export projects to Avid Studio for the PC

• Created by Avid, the maker of the world’s leading film and music editing technology
• Easy enough for the hobbyist, powerful enough for the pro

• App Store link

With iOS 5, Apple has moved the powerful CoreImage framework from OS X over to their mobile operating system, allowing the Photos app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad to do some basic image editing work. Now, by tapping on the edit button at the top right, you get access to several iPhoto-like tools:

• Rotate, to turn your image in 90 degree increments
• Auto-enhance, which waves a magic wand and tries to balance your image
• Red-eye removal, so you can just say goodbye to flash-induced evil possession
• Crop, which lets you cut away the parts of an image you don’t want, and includes all the standard presets

As is the case with most built-in functions, it provides the basic set of tools but is by no means a feature complete photo editing app. Still, it’s free, its bundled, and very many it will be good enough.

Screenshots after the break. Think any dedicated photo editing apps are in trouble?

Wondering how to take better pictures with your iPhone camera? Ever found yourself taking a picture with your iPhone only to discover the photo came out less than perfect? Sometimes you only have one opportunity to capture a moment, so you want to ensure everything is right and your photo doesn’t come out looking like it was taken with a cheap and flimsy digital camera. The iPhone camera has come a long way since the original iPhone in 2007, currently sporting a 5 megapixel sensor with flash in the iPhone 4, but there are still a few things you can do to make sure you’re getting the best shot possible.

In this tip we’ll go over a few pointers to help you in taking better pictures with your iPhone — find out how after the break!

Ready, steady, go!

I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to quickly whip out my iPhone in order to snap a photo on the go, but sometimes I wasn’t keeping my hand steady enough (hello Mr. Blurrycam). One thing you can do is use a tripod, but not everyone keeps one handy when out and about. Camera+ ($1.99 — iTunes link) helps by including an image stabilizer, monitoring how steady your hand is and taking the photo when you’re making the least amount of movement. However, if you’re using the default Camera app then you’re on your own. As such, keeping your iPhone as steady as you can is a good way to make sure you’re getting the sharpest image possible, especially in low light conditions. Speaking of lighting…

Light is your new best friend

Lighting is a big factor in taking great pictures, and it’s important to understand the basics when using your iPhone camera under certain lighting conditions. Taking photos where there isn’t enough light can heavily impact the overall picture quality, so make sure there’s as much light as possible. Although the camera baked into the iPhone 4 is (in my humble opinion) the best in its class, you’ll still notice some noise in low light conditions.

If you’re in a dark environment, make sure you’re taking advantage of the iPhone 4′s built-in camera flash. For older iPhone models without flash, getting a usable photo in low light may take a little extra work but you’ll be glad you made the effort… Take a look at Darkroom (free — iTunes link) to help you out with this problem. Just like Camera+, it features a ‘Steady Mode’ to help avoid blurry photos in low light conditions.

In addition, you’ll want to make sure your subject is properly lit. For example, the light source should be directed at your subject (not at you) to help draw focus on whatever you’re shooting.

Get up close and personal

The iPhone camera features tap-to-focus in addition to decent macro ability with the iPhone 4, so don’t be afraid to get up close and personal with your subject. This is especially true when shooting portraits or close-ups, where letting your subject consume the majority of the photo really goes a long way.

To zoom, or not to zoom

Most point-and-shoot cameras feature an optical zoom of around 3x-5x, which is great for shooting at a distance. However this unfortunately isn’t so with the iPhone (and all smartphone cameras, for that matter). When Apple released iOS 4 they threw in a digital zoom feature for the Camera app, but I’ve never found myself actually using it due how the pictures usually turn out. When you use the digital zoom feature you’ll be losing a significant amount of quality, so unless it’s absolutely necessary, try to stay away from using digital zoom as much as you can.

Edit, edit, and edit some more!

The iPhone has a number of awesome photo apps in the App Store, some of which we mentioned above, but which ones should you use for editing and refining your photos after you’ve taken them? Using the iPhone touchscreen to manipulate photos can be a rather delightful experience, so here are a few photo editing apps we recommend checking out:

• ColorSplash – ($0.99 — iTunes link) ColorSplash lets you take any regular photo and turn it into a colorful work of art. You start off by selecting your desired photo or taking a picture from within the app, to which ColorSplash strips away the color and turns it into a black and white. You then touch whatever area of the picture you want to fill in with color, creating unique images that really stand out from the crowd.
• PefectPhoto – ($0.99 — iTunes link) This app really shines when it comes to the number of options and effects you can work with. My personal favorite is the Spot Healing feature which lets you fix any blemishes or artifacts in your photo. Have a great shot of you and your best friend but want to get rid of that horrible zit that’s taking all the attention? PerfectPhoto is the editing app for you! You can also crop, align, edit exposure and gamma along with a number of other great editing options. There’s even a few noteworthy effects like Bloom and Vintage, taking your photos to a new and fully personalized level.
• Adobe Photoshop Express – (free — iTunes link) Photoshop Express for iPhone is a gem of a photo editing app, and to top it off it’s completely free! A good example of its editing power is reducing noise and smoothing out your pictures so they’re easier on the eyes. This is another great solution for taking pictures in low light conditions, letting you smooth out those darker photos in your collection and making them much more attractive.

Know of any other iPhone picture-taking pointers or suggestions we might have missed? Also let us know what your favorite photo editing apps are, or apps that can help get around some of the issues we mentioned above in the comments!

Bonus Tip: Clean your lens! Having a dirty camera lens can dramatically lower the quality of your pictures, so take a microfiber cloth and some screen cleaner to your iPhone to help your photos look less washed out. We recommend the iKlenz Cleaner Solution Kit to get the job done. You’ll immediately notice a difference, so give it a try!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

360 Panorama for iPhone just issued a large update to their popular panorama app that uses the built-in gyroscope feature. This essentially allows you to capture more accurate panoramic photos much easier. It can take a bit longer than a standard stitching app but the overall quality seems to be better. As iPhone photography becomes even more prominent and mainstream, good photography apps tend to do well. 360 Panorama is definitely an app to check out if you enjoy editing and taking photos on your iPhone.

iTunes Link

When you first load the app you’ll be presented with a 360 view grid with an image in it. You’ll simply select capture and the app will capture what you’re viewing as a panorama in real time. The app has built-in light sensing too as well. This will automatically help the app adjust for low light settings. In good light settings, you should have no problem panning continuously to get a pretty good shot. In low light, I tended to go a bit slower to prevent seeing seams in the image.

Occipital has also mentioned that holding your phone at an angle also allows you to maximize capture area. This is a great feature if you have good light quality. In a low light setting, this feature wasn’t too great and I’d still recommend holding it in portrait.

After you’ve finished creating your panoramic shot, you can view it live in the app as a 360 view image. Simply rotate your phone and the gyroscope feature will automatically pan the live shot for you (refer to video for example). You also have the option to save the image to your camera roll as a regular image, e-mail it, or upload. Some uploads allow the full 360 view as well. Nice little add on for those who want an interactive photo.

Overall, I’d say this is one of the better pano apps I’ve used on my iPhone. The only issue that really bugged me was that when you attempted to move the phone up and down a bit in order to maximize a capture area, the image didn’t line up very well and you’d be left with overlapping elements. But for a simple 360 shot, this app will be a great addition to anyone’s photography app portfolio.

Pros

• Extremely easy to use
• You have options when it comes to sharing your photos in-app
• Rendering time is faster than other similar panoramic applications
• Overall quality is much better (in most situations) than stitching applications

Cons

• When creating a pano, if you move your phone up and down, sometimes the seams don’t match up properly
• In low light settings, seams can be noticeable if you pan around too quickly

This week I am looking at QuickOffice HD for iPad. In my ongoing pursuit of productivity apps, I am very pleased with what is coming out of the development community for iPad. Does QuickOffice HD raise the bar again? Let’s dive right in and take a look.

Getting documents into QuickOffice HD is a relative snap. First you have the familiar ability to sync from iTunes. Just add your documents and when you sync, they appear in the app. However, the more useful feature is the ability to sync to the cloud. QuickOffice supports the basic usual suspects: MobileMe iDisk- both public and private, Google Docs, Dropbox and Box.net. You enter in your login credentials and QuickOffice will sync the folders to your iPad, but not the content. The folder content will give a preview but only load when you access the document. Once accessed, it stored locally. You can also open and save documents from email and that is always a bonus.

Folder navigation is very similar to the Macintosh Finder column view. It is my preferred view on the Mac, so I was very pleased with this and it was instantly familiar to me. You can create new folders with a simple tap of the plus icon and deleting and email documents is a breeze, just tap and hold the document and drag and drop it on the respective email and delete icons on the bottom of the screen.

To open a document you can tap on the name or rename it by tapping the blue arrow indicative in iOS for more information. Navigation within documents is easy and innovative. For example in a document you can pinch out to zoom and you are presented with all of the pages. You can then quickly flick to the end of your document. However, a great alternative is to tap and old on the right side of the screen. You can then slide your finger down and are presented a preview of each page in the document via the Mac OS X dock- style preview with magnification; very, very nice. For the spreadsheet application, pinching also zooms and you are given very convenient  selection handles for selecting cells. I prefer the feature over what some competitors offer. There is also nice built-in safety feature; the app auto saves your work every minute. So if you forget to save and close the app, your are safe.

Creating documents and spreadsheets is easy and fun. All of the basic formatting options are available. Bold, colors, fonts, underline, alignment, formats, etc. For any sort of lite editing, this application will fit your needs. However there is one glaring omission: a presentation document. That’s right, QuickOffice HD does not support PowerPoint or any other presentation application document format. This is such a shame as it is very close to being my favorite document creation and editing tool on the iPad. However, not having this support is a a serious hit for me in productivity and the competition has a leg up here. However, Quick Office does so many things right, I find myself going back and forth between iWork for iPad, Documents to Go for iPad and QuickOffice HD depending on what I have to do. Competition is good and all of these apps does something better then the other.

[$9.99- iTunes Link]

Pros

• Takes advantage of iPad’s screen real estate
• Innovative scrolling methods
• Easy interface to understand and use
• Opens many other documents, but in view-only

Cons

• Missing PowerPoint functionality
• Not a lot of advanced features

As a user of Dataviz’s Documents to Go product for years, I was ecstatic for the iPhone release and now even more so for the universal binary for iPad. Documents to Go is a mobile office productivity suite that allows you to create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint formatted documents and file types on your iPad.

Let’s first look at how we can access our documents, there are a few different ways. First, you can create documents on the iPad. Next, you can sync with your desktop (PC or Mac). You can install a free desktop sync tool. This allows you to pick a folder on your computer and sync those documents to the iPad, or use the built-in iTunes sync if that is your preference. Last but not least you can connect to a few different web services in the “cloud” and edit your documents and save it right back to the cloud. Documents to Go supports these services:

• Google Docs
• Box.net
• Dropbox
• iDisk
• Public Disk (iDisk)
• Sugar Sync

Editing your document is a breeze (see included screen shots for examples). For the most part, documents rendered properly with minimal formatting impact due to DataViz’s In-Tact technology. Instead of Documents to Go guessing what a feature/format is, it tells you if it is unsupported and advises you that if delete it, the feature will be gone from the original document. I feel this is a fair compromise between the desktop and mobile versions of a document; it doesn’t even try to guess if it is unrecognized. The bottom of the screen gives you all of the tools you need in portrait or landscape including formats, spacing, inserts, bookmarks, slide types, formulas, indents, tabs and more. Need to send an email with attachments? You can do that directly from within the app too, you can even pick your outbound email account and it will accept and attach multiple files.

For all of the great things Documents to Go does well, there are some shortcomings, though not deal-breakers, I feel you should be aware of. First, you can’t access email attachments. Some programs out there allow you to access files in your email via IMAP directly from within the app. This feature is missing. It looks like it is only supported on the iPhone, but seems to be missing on the iPad. When searching outside of a document you have an option to search you entire folder hierarchy or downloaded files only- but not their contents; that is a missed opportunity.

Documents to Go is a stable release with much needed support on the iPad in a few areas. For the average user I feel this app is absolutely fantastic, but for an enterprise user, there are a few features that are missing. I really can’t recommend this app enough, but the lack of enterprise support makes me lower the score as I think the majority of users that would benefit from this are road warriors that need access to their work documents when visiting a customer. Sure they could sync before leaving the office, but that negates the value of syncing to the cloud.

If you want a very good robust document creation/editing tool look no further than Documents to Go. Looking for an enterprise solution that will sync your documents over-the-air? Keep looking. Video and screens after the break!

[$14.99- iTunes Link]

Pros

• Create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Several cloud based services for syncing
• Excellent format compatibility
• Multiple desktop syncing options
• iPhone OS document handling

Cons

• No enterprise network drive access
• No attachment syncing with email

Looks like Google still isn’t done giving us mobile goodness this month. To the list of Gmail Tasks, Latitude, Google Books, and Google (Active)Sync we can now add editing, sorting, and filtering to Google Doc’s spreadsheet WebApp. Says Google’s blog:

Today, I’m happy to announce that we’ve made mobile access even better by adding new capabilities with List View for spreadsheets. You can quickly view, edit, sort, and filter your spreadsheets on a variety of mobile devices including Android-powered devices like the T-Mobile G1, the iPhone and iPod touch, and the Nokia S60.

And to think, the month is only half over. Google, what else you got for us? Readers, what else you want?