Sony’s Visual Story Photo Storage and Delivery App Now Supports Video

Sony has updated its Visual Story mobile application to now support video. The app was designed for wedding and event photographers but has expanded functionality to aid hybrid content creators.

The Visual Story app was originally pitched in December of 2020 as a cloud storage service for wedding and event photographers that would allow them to deliver story galleries to clients immediately after an event concluded. Sony says that the app simplifies the process of delivering photos and videos to clients using artificial intelligence assistance for faster and easier selection and delivery of images.

Version 2.0 of Visual Story adds support for videos, which can now be added to a Story Gallery and shared with clients along with photos. Once the video files are transferred to the app, users can also easily edit video in the Visual Story app by manually trimming unnecessary portions of each video file that has been uploaded. This new feature is compatible with the Alpha 7S III, Alpha 1, and FX3 camera models.

In addition to video support, Visual Story 2.0 also allows users to select and import photos via an SD card reader and USB storage. Photographers can connect those storage devices directly to a camera in mass storage mode with a USB cable or with an Apple SD card reader connected to an Apple device and then select and import them into the Visual Story app.

The app can now also automatically reconnect to a user's smartphone and camera if the connection has been interrupted and Sony says that the number of items that can be copied from the smartphone to the camera via Bluetooth has been increased.

Sony has also updated a few usability features:

• Optimized import destination settings
• App can now reconnect when FTP connection is lost
• Simplified the number of steps to create a Story Gallery
• Displayed the original file name in a Story Gallery
• Supports individual downloads for photo and video in a Story Gallery
• Increased the expiration time for a Live Gallery for up to 24 hours
• Added background color options in a Story Gallery

The Sony Visual Story app is free and only available on iOS and is compatible with select Sony cameras (Alpha 7C, Alpha 7 III, Alpha 7R IV, Alpha 7S III, Alpha 9, Alpha 9 II, Alpha 1, and FX3). Support for Android devices is coming later "this fall."

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Sony Updates Visual Story App for iOS With Live Gallery

With the increased demand for remote participation of weddings and events, Sony has updated their Visual Story iOS app to offer Sony camera shooters a Live Gallery viewing experience for guests.

Since the release of Visual Story in December 2020, wedding and event photographers have been able to connect compatible Sony cameras to the app and automatically transfer photos to their iPhones, iPads, or Sony’s cloud service. Further, the transferred photos are then automatically sorted and filtered with the power of AI, allowing the photographer to keep focus on shooting and still have a curated batch of images at the ready once finished for instant delivery.

Now, with Live Gallery being added to the latest version of Visual Story, “instant delivery” takes on new meaning. With the same level of automated curation and specified filters, photo galleries can be updated and viewed in real time by the client’s guests as the event is still happening and the photographer is still at work taking photos. Guests to the Live Gallery can also “like” photos, information that may later be used by the event photographer to make choices on which final images to deliver to the client.

Live Gallery inside the Visual Story app.

Sony has added more selection options for photographers inside the app in order to more quickly find specific images through the use of a new object detection filter. Examples for a wedding photographer would be searching for images that show cake, food, tableware, or jewelry.

New object detection filters in the Visual Story app.

The Visual Story app has a free tier for testing the waters, however there are limits in place including number of projects, galleries, images, and cloud storage space. Two paid tiers are available to increase these limits. The Basic plan runs $20 per month while the Power plan will cost $50 per month. A breakdown of each plan’s offering can be viewed on the Sony website.

Visual Story v1.1 with Live Gallery functionality is now available on the Apple App Store. Photographers will need to have a compatible Sony camera to connect with the app, which includes the a1, FX3, a7C, a7R IV, a7S III, a9, a9 II, and a7 III running the latest firmware.

Sony claims app development for additional platforms is “under discussion.”

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