How to sync images between iPhone and Mac in a local network

Question

I am working on a design of an iPhone application. I create some screen, then save it as a PNG file and want to see how it looks on the actual iPhone screen. So I need to transfer PNG versions of my designs to my iPhone as easy as possible, may be even without a cable connected. Both Mac and iPhone are in a local network with a wireless router.

I need to do this routine constantly so I am looking for the most transparent and easy solution, like - Save a PNG to Mac -> Instantly and automatically send to the iPhone some way.

What are your suggestions?

Answer 1

I use an app called LiveView. You run the server on your Mac, and the app on you Phone. It creates an iPhone-sized area on your Mac's screen, and broadcasts whatever is inside it to your phone.

I work in Illustrator when I'm doing this, but that doesn't matter. Here's the best system I've worked out:

1. Create a second window of whatever your working on (Photoshop and Illustrator both do this).
2. Zoom that window so that my artboard fits the window perfectly (in Illustrator this will be 100% or 50% depending on whether you're testing on a retina device).
3. Position the LiveView window over the duplicate window (I toss this onto a second monitor, or tile the windows if you only have one monitor).
4. Work in the original Window.

You may now zoom in and out of the window you are working on, all while enjoying a perfect streaming vision of what it looks like on your phone the whole time.

Once I need to take the app to the device to show people, I use a service called InVision (invisionapp.com) to create touchable prototypes.

Answer 2

You could do this with PhotoStream, and create a watched folder with Automator so that new files saved in a certain folder would be added to iPhoto's PhotoStream.

I've done something similar with a DropBox folder so that any new photos from my Android phone are automatically added to iPhoto, and I can see them from any device with PhotoStream.

Answer 3

The easiest way to do this is actually use iPhone's built-in WiFi sync and sync photos with it.

If that doesn't fit your need, there are apps that can transfer photos to iPhone, just take a look on the AppStore.

Another way is to play with Apache and WebDav, and have apps like Documents from Readdle to download them for you. I remember ReaddleDocs had sync features, but I don't know if it's removed.

Answer 4

I recommend using Cubby for transferring your photos over. It doesn't have an upload limit so as long as you don't exceed the 5GB storage limit, you don't have to purchase a better plan. One of the features of Cubby is the ability to DirectSync™. This allows you to transfer data over a local connection without ever going to the cloud. This doesn't even affect your Cubby storage limit.

Basically you first install the app on your computer and iPhone. Then you point Cubby to a particular folder and save your work in there. It automatically creates revisions so you don't need to worry about having a different file name every time you save the document. Just save the document, and it is instantly uploaded, and viewable on your iPhone in the Cubby app.

If you use DirectSync™, that process will be slightly different but largely similar.