Photo District News has rightly enough reported on the helpful imaging applications of the smart phone for the on-location photographer.

“For the photographer, and especially for the on-location shooter, the smart phone is the latest tool to help you not only stay connected when out of the office, but also to keep ahead of deadlines, to show off portfolios, and to help find shooting locations.”

The article praises the iPhone as the “most talked-about” devices, which “runs an increasingly large collection of third-party software, has built-in 3G and GPS capabilities, can work with WiFi and offers a truly ‘realistic’ internet experience.”

In fact, imaging companies are starting to notice the utility of Apple's phone. At last month's Photokina trade show, BJP was shown how the iPhone could be used with the Leaf camera system. Leaf developed an iPhone version of its image capture and processing workflow application, the Leaf Capture Remote.

A photographer using a Leaf AFi medium format camera can, instantly, send to his client's iPhone the photographs he is taking. The client can then edit the image on his iPhone if he wants and send live feedback to the photographer. Leaf told BJP that the application would be regularly updated with new editing tools, with the goal to have a full-fledge portable editing suite.

What's next? An iPhone version of Photoshop CS4? The idea is not that far-fetched. Adobe already has an online version of the photo editing software. Adapting it to the iPhone would not be that difficult.