april2021 - 31

APPS WE LOVE

By Gail Perry, CPA, Editor-in-Chief

Photos and Video

by Gail Perry, CPA

ALMOST EVERYONE CARRIES a camera and a recording device nowadays in the

form of a smartphone, a tablet or both. Some use the camera sporadically, and
many of us aren't taking advantage of the vast array of apps that are available to
make our pictures and videos more professional. First, be sure to learn the ins and
outs of your own camera and video software - there are plenty of tools right there
for editing and augmenting. Meanwhile, we surveyed members of the CPA Practice
Advisor community to find out their preferences in using photo and video apps.
Drew Carrick, CPA, director of operations at
EvolveNow, recommends Pixlr X. " Specifically,
Pixlr X is an excellent free online tool for editing of images, graphics, and more! Essentially,
it provides an intuitive watered down version
of Photoshop, but for free, and enables users to
create or design just about anything they can
imagine. I have been using this application for
years and it has helped me go from just a CPA
into a full on content creator! "
Angie Grissom, Owner, The Rainmaker Companies, told us, " I use Moldiv. I love the editing
features including the ability to make different
collages, edit the colors and filters, even the
film style so you can view pictures with various
looks! "
Rosalind Sutch, CPA with Drucker & Scaccetti, PC, said, " I use an app called Mideo which
allows me to film while listening to music. This
helps because I film my workout lifts and using
this allows me to keep listening to music while
I lift and film. "
" Here is the one I love - BoomBomb, " said
Sandra Wiley, president, Boomer Consulting,
Inc. " I can take quick videos on my app and send
them directly to clients in their in-box. So much
better than a normal email. I try not to overuse
it, but it is very effective when I want to make
a statement. "
John Higgins, CPA.CITP, chief partnership
officer at CPA Crossings, LLC, said, " We use
Camtasia from TechSmith for all of our video
production. There isn't anything we have found
that it cannot do. "
Garrett Wagner, CPA.CITP, founder and CEO
at C3 Evolution Group, recommends Adobe Premiere Rush. " Video content is king, but like most
of us accountants and CPAs, creating it is not part
of our technical wheelhouse. I love Premiere Rush

because it is very straight-forward and simple.
With just the basics, I can create high quality
video content for any media platform. "
" I often use Google's free Snapseed app on
my iPhone to touch up photos, " said Blake Oliver,
CPA, marketing director at Jirav. " The 'Selective'
tool lets you adjust the brightness or contrast of
just parts of a photo, which is really helpful when
you have an otherwise great photo where people's
faces are in shadow due to a bright background,
for instance. "
Sandi Leyva, president of Accountant's
Accelerator, reports that, " My team uses Adobe
Creative Cloud since many of them are professional artists. They are able to do quite a bit with
clients' photographs. We have edited team shots,
adding new people and removing terminated

people, for clients. We have also created our own
from-scratch graphics for our major blog posts.
We also design and refurbish client logos. I am
not as sophisticated. I have been able to do what I
need to - crop, recolor, resize - using PowerPoint,
and then pasting or saving the graphic as a file.
The go-to app in this category is Canva. It's pretty
much the market leader. And while it's quite
archaic, Paint, that comes with any Microsoft
operating system, is quite useful and probably
highly underutilized. "
Caleb Jenkins, EA, CQP, leader of client
accounting services at RJL Financial Services,
Inc., said, " I use Scannable on my iPhone to
quickly take high-quality images converted to
scans for items like Receipts, Documents, and
Presentation Slides, and then I organize them
in Evernote. "
Lindsey Curley, CPA, CGMA, senior manager,
firm services at AICPA, told us, " I love creating
and sharing videos with Animoto. With zero
video editing experience, you can create professional style videos with their simple editing features. And while they offer tons of stock images
and music, you can also customize your videos to
make them your own. I always turn to Animoto
to quickly create both personal and professional
videos and have never been disappointed! "
Shehan Chandrasekara, head of tax strategy
at CoinTracker, said, " I use the inbuilt photo edit
app on Twitter. Nothing fancy. Since this is integrated into Twitter, it's extremely user-friendly. "
Share your favorite photo and video apps in
the comments. ■

APRIL 2021 ■

www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

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april2021

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