One of the best ways to build sincere, productive relationships is to meet face to face, share a beer, maybe a Coke, possibly a glass of wine—anything’s an option when there are no margaritas in town. Call me old school, but great relationships are founded on more than tweets, hashtags, and Facebook posts. Such was the case last week when the Mylio crew met myself and a few of our intrepid NE Explorers at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. We were there to photograph the annual snow goose and crane congregation and share our individual photographic workflows with our friends from Mylio.
Sandhill cranes silhouetted against the waters and the setting sun. Bosque del Apache, NWR, New Mexico. Lumix G85 12-35mm F/2.8
We had three solid days of great photography and spent several hours sharing with JP Duplessis and Marcus Donner– the Mylio boys– the way each of us currently use other pieces of software to process our pictures. Currently, for most, Lightroom is the software of choice, so it was important for Mylio to understand why most photographers are still using Adobe’s well entrenched product.
JP giving a lesson on Mylio.
JP threw out a big surprise by giving us each a FREE iPad. His goal was to showcase Mylio’s exceptional ability to sync across numerous devices. I thought he was joking about the iPads—but he wasn’t. Freddy Kurtz, Shiela and Dave Glatz, and Dave Easton all walked away with a brand new iPad. JP spent a couple of hours getting them set up along with a tutorial on how Mylio works.
Dave and Shiela getting Mylio setup on their new iPad.
During our class time I mentioned the need to be able to grab an Album of Mylio images and “Open With” an external editor. For me, the external editor I prefer is DXO Optics Pro 11. Currently Mylio can only open one image at a time in an external editor, which makes tweaking a series of pictures very time consuming. That’s a big disadvantage when compared to Lightroom that has
JP lines up his monster bazooka. Freddy and Sue can’t believe what they’re seeing.
the ability to work on them all within the program. I’ve been struggling with this drawback since switching to Mylio. All it took was me showing JP what I was up against during our day of workflow sharing and within 24 hours he had written an update for Mylio to open any number of images, all at one time, in ANY external editor.
JP looking towards the sky, hoping the leaving geese don’t decide to unload like they did earlier on him. As I told JP, wildlife photography is not for the faint of heart.
That’s the beauty of having the ear of the lead coder building a great piece of software. This isn’t the first time JP has jumped in with both feet for a special request. He’s been unbelievably helpful on other ideas like writing a program within Mylio that imports many items from Aperture. He custom built an option I requested to add watermarks to images when exported. He wrote
A pair of sandhill cranes in flight heading out to feed. Photo shot with the Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark ll with Leica 100-400mm zoom
my own personal photo re-numbering system that is currently in beta and will be available to others in the near future. I could go on with several more ideas that he’s either coded or are currently in the pipeline. The point is, these guys are responsive! Two years ago I started a post on the Adobe Lightroom forums asking for the ability to add a watermark to photos when using Lightroom mobile. The thread has 43 other comments, all requesting the same idea, yet to date it’s still not possible within Lightroom Mobile.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, one of Mylio’s greatest strengths is its speed, but equally important are its people. Not just JP and Marcus; they also have a superb team working the phones in Customer Support. And that’s huge! I won’t name names but until recently, the biggest company in photography software wouldn’t even let you call them. The only help available was
Mylio support crew from left Matt Vollet, far back is Mack Collins, and on the right side is Matthew Bonhage.
online, chat, or email. Not Mylio. Mylio has several ways of getting you help including connecting directly to your computer via the internet to sort things out. Mylio’s support is second only to Apple Care which is the finest support I’ve ever used. Mylio doesn’t have a huge team but they certainly have a dedicated one.
In closing, all I can say is that if you haven’t tried Mylio for yourself, you should give it a spin. For me it all began with Mylio’s speed. No program, up until now, has been able to handle my nearly 1 million image library. Mylio does so with ease. Speed was my initial reason to use something different but in the end equal importance is the terrific people and the dedicated staff. I can’t wait to see how Mylio progresses. Support Mylio by signing up for their FREE version. Or you can go all out with the more powerful paid subscription at www.mylio.com.