Bonsai Album (盆栽アルバム) is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
After 3 months of effort, I present my third iOS app, Bonsai Album. Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with iOS 4.0 or higher, Bonsai Album is an indispensable tool for keeping track of your bonsai or penjing tree collection, pots, and notes. Bonsai is the ancient Japanese art of growing miniature trees in containers, similar to the Chinese tradition of penjing.
The highlight of the app, in my opinion, is the ability to store multiple full-screen captioned photos for each tree, pot, or log entry. The photos are captured either via the device camera, or from the photo library. They are stored internally in high resolution, scaled up or down when displayed depending upon the capabilities of your device. Bonsai Album takes full advantage of Retina and iPad displays, but also works great on previous generations of hardware.
The Bonsai Album database itself is portable between your various devices, so you can back it up to your computer over a local WiFi network from either an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, and restore it onto another Apple device. You can also import or export data without modifying the existing data on your device.
The first three tabs of the app display thumbnail images in table form for each bonsai, pot, or log entry. In addition, the bonsai and pot thumbnail images can be viewed in a scrollable grid. This makes it easier to locate an item in your collection visually, or based on the title or species. As with my other apps, the Bonsai Album user interface has been customized extensively, ranging from the distinctive navigation and tab bars, down to minor details like the buttons and table section headings. Besides providing a fancier, more polished appearance, I hope these customizations improve the user experience and encourage bonsai enthusiasts to share their collections with others.
You can find more details on the main page of my website or on the Bonsai Album Facebook page. If you’re not entirely convinced Bonsai Album will work for you, there’s even a free Lite version you can try out. This version is limited to 3 bonsai, 3 pots, and 3 log entries with 3 photos each, and only supports backup and export over WiFi. Otherwise it’s identical to the full version.
In case you’re curious what prompted me to create such an app, you can read all about it in my earlier blog post.
If you’re into the art of bonsai or penjing, I hope you find Bonsai Album useful, and I welcome any feature suggestions and comments you may have. Enjoy!