Photo Diagrams is a free, easy to use tool that creates professional looking photo and lighting diagrams. Once created, you can either print the diagram or export it as an image.
If you have any questions, feedback or comments about Photo Diagrams, please post them in the comments below. Or, e-mail me at breyman [at] professionalsnapshots dot com.
Photo Diagrams On the Web
Click here to use Photo Diagrams right now.
You’ll need the free Flash Player 9 or above installed to run it correctly, though! You can download it free from Adobe here.
Photo Diagrams Offline
Need to create diagrams but aren’t always connected to the Internet? Download and install the desktop version of Photo Diagrams below.
When you use the Offline version, though, you won’t be able to export images. That piece requires help from your web browser. You’re still able to print them, though! If you install a PDF creator, you’ll be able to print your diagram to that for future use.
Please upgrade your Flash Player at http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer. If that does not work, you can download the application at http://www.professionalsnapshots.com/PhotoDiagram/AIR/PhotoDiagrams.air
*Will work on Windows and Mac.
Feature List
Photo Diagrams allows you to create fast, professional looking diagrams. Some of its features include:
- Quickly drag a dozen different photography items onto the diagram. Position and rotate them to your heart’s desire.
- Add custom notes to the diagram that allow you to update the text.
- Change the color of the background. Add or remove grid lines.
- Print the diagram to any printer installed on your computer. If you have a PDF creator, you’ll be ale to print to that.
- Export the diagram to an image for easy posting on your web site or use in other documents.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Maybe some screen shot be useful?
June 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Wow…this is a great tool and so easy to use. Nice work Brian.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Hey Brian - I’ve had a chance to put some more time into looking around and really kicking the tires - could you add a snoot and a hair light? Also, it might be kind of neat if there was an option to rotate objects in set degree increments: (90-180-270) - I don’t know how difficult that would be, but just a thought…
(Oh, and in IE7 the blog looks fine for me, but FF 2 still missing the white central background…
June 18th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Thanks for confirming the FF 2 Jason - I just installed FF 3 and noticed the same thing. I updated some of the CSS and it now displays correctly for me - hopefully it does the same for you.
I’ll add those few items for addition when I do another set of photo item additions. The rotation suggestion is a good one, but is a bit tricky. I really wanted it to allow you to drag to rotate, but that didn’t work out. I could add larger increments, but that would require either 1)to not have smaller increments or 2) to add another icon, which might get confusing. I’ll definitely put it on the list and consider it for future revisions, though.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Hey, no software is perfect. This is great for a beta version - certainly beyond anything I could muster together in Flash. I am gonna have to pick that brain of yours once I get out there…
June 19th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
This is great. I’m at work, but all I want to do is create lighting diagrams.
This is an idea generator. I just move stuff around and rotate it and get ideas for my next shoots.
In the near or far future it would be nice if you could “turn the lights on” and show the path of the lights with a nice gradient for the fall-off. But it’s great as it is now.
Well done.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Thanks for the warez - I’ve downloaded it - now off to play.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
Looks very nice. I’m going to give it a try.
RL
http://www.photographyandthemac.com
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:27 am
A great tool and fast & easy as well. Can I suggest some enhancements ?
Photo Diagrams would be even better if everything would be at more or less the same scale.
What I mean is, if your grid is 1 foot (30 cm) the paper background should be 9 cells wide (9 feet is standard paper width). Also assuming that 1 foot grid, the strobes are huge and should roughly be only 1/2 to 2/3 the size they’re now.
It would be fantastic to have :
- A paper background with a longer sweep.
- Scaled octas (3, 4, 5 and 7 feet) and softboxes
Ivan
July 4th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Thanks, This is very helpfull for clients, And this work great!! Even on my mac
July 7th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Ivan, thanks for the detailed suggestions.
In response to each suggestion:
Longer paper background: [my response] very doable - I’ll put this on the list for the next version.
Additional soft/octabox sizes: [my response] also very doable - I’ll put this on the list for the next version.
Scaling issues: [my response] I definately see where you are coming from. When creating the sizes, I tried to keep scale in mind as much as possible. You’ll notice that many of the items are proportional to each other (the paper and soft boxes, for example). Some of the smaller items, though (like the speedlite and strobe head), I had to make a little larger than is truly proportional. Doing so makes them easier to see and ultimately more usable. One potential feature for a future version might be to allow the user to scale each placed item up/down as much as desired.
Thanks again,
Brian