Continuing from Monday's review of Portfolio for iPad, today we're taking a look at Xtrafolio. Then, on Friday, we'll do a head-to-head comparison of the apps and whether the built-in Photos app is the best choice after all. We'll also summarize a few more options our readers gave us after Monday's review.
Interface
Xtrafolio starts out with a flowchart indicating how a portfolio is made and provides the very important shortcut of making sure to tap the bottom left and right corners at the same time to bring up settings. In the settings view, all the options are anchored in a menu on the left.
After the first time setting up the app, a logo page will be visible when it's launched. If you don't have a logo, you get a blank screen. To access your portfolio, single-tap the initial screen. The options are layered in different sections and go into a good bit of detail about what you can do with the app. Since the options are all in one location, it makes it easier to jump back and forth between different sections of the portfolio.
Use
You can add media to Xtrafolio from the iPad, iTunes or via Dropbox. Xtrafolio will accept images, videos and PDFs. Instead of galleries with different portfolios, you can subdivide a single portfolio is subdivided into categories, then folders within that category. It's useful for when you specialize in different things. In my case, I set up Xtrafolio for my newspaper design work and comics writing. Within the categories, you can drag around files to customize the order. However, there is no tagging and no ability to edit the file name.
While there are a lot of customizations, it's fairy basic when it comes to presenting the portfolios. You can set up a sideshow with basic transition styles and enable high-resolution images. For some reason, song selection only works in portrait mode. Captions are available, but they're hard to read. One really nice feature is that you can enable a watermark so no one tries to rip off your work if you email it out. You can also set stuff back to default with a single tap if you're unhappy with your selections.
Xtrafolio has a single layer of passcode security, and this is to prevent people from accessing settings. You also can't enter settings while browsing a portfolio. You can add a basic resume and set it as your info page, which is a good way of showing a client right off the bat what you can do. There's a save stage option where Xtrafolio can return to the same position where you were if you close out of the app.
Xtrafolio is $16.99 in the App Store, which is a bit pricey for this category. With its feature set, I'd price it more around $14.99. Like Portfolio for iPad, it's well-recommended for the amount of options it has, even though it doesn't have quite as many importing options or tagging features.
Xtrafolio is a useful, yet a bit pricey, portfolio app originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/28/xtrafolio-is-a-useful-yet-a-bit-pricey-portfolio-app/
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