Everyone wants to take great photos, yet many photos look "flat." That flatness usually comes down to one thing: the light. Photography is the art of using light, and landscape photography is the art of using natural light. That's why landscape photographers chase the light — the moment when the Sun, the Moon, or the Milky Way and stars hit the best angle or the ideal position. Our other app, PlanIt Pro / PlanIt Earth, gives you a powerful tool for pre-planning these moments. But on location everything changes — you're racing the light, with no time to fiddle with your phone. That's why we created PlanIt Live: the best experience for photographers in the field.
PlanIt Live isn't only for professionals. Anyone with a camera — even a phone camera — can benefit, and so can anyone who simply wants to witness a beautiful scene under ideal light. We designed Live around a single use case: you need a piece of information, you take out your phone, open PlanIt Live, get the answer at a glance, and put the phone away — the whole thing takes just a few seconds. In most cases you don't even need to tap anything. And with reminders, you often don't need to take the phone out at all: set alerts for the ephemeris events that match your style, and the app will let you know when the moment arrives.
So what does PlanIt Live offer?
CAMERA CONTROL Shutter Release: tether Sony, Nikon, or Canon bodies over USB and shoot from the app — live view with tap to focus, shutter/aperture/ISO wheels, video recording, interval shooting for timelapses, and several cameras at once (Bluetooth: shutter only).
SUN, MOON AND MILKY WAY Daytime photography: sunrise/sunset, blue hour, golden hour, and moonrise/moonset times and directions. Night photography: dark-night start/end times, the Milky Way Center's position and timing in the sky, planets, star trails, and the Bortle dark-sky scale. Real Milky Way: rendered as an actual photographic image across the sky dome, precisely placed for your location and time, with an optional H-alpha view emphasizing the nebula regions. 3D Compass: directions to the Sun, the Moon, and the Milky Way Center at any time of day.
SKY EVENTS AND SPACE WEATHER Calendar & Events: open it from the menu or by tapping the date in the header — Events, Moon, Night, and Aurora views, each with per-day indicators and day details. Space weather & aurora: free cards for Live Sun, solar flares, solar wind, short- and long-term Kp forecasts, storm probabilities, and Aurora Tonight. More planning: Light Pollution Visualizer for city-glow impact, Satellite Position and Satellite Pass for tracking, plus Tide Model and Tide Station for seascapes.
AUGMENTED REALITY Probably the most powerful field-planning AR available. Multi-lens switching and smooth zoom, teleconverter and wide-adapter support, and overlays for the Sun, Moon, Milky Way, stars, constellations, and focal-length framing, plus rainbow, moonbow, terrain-outline, and light-pollution layers. Aim at a celestial object and tap Calibrate to align instantly, and capture photos/video in AR with an info strip of place, direction, and Sun/Moon/Milky Way details (Beta).
TOOLS AND EXPERIENCE Photography tools: calculators for depth of field, exposure, ND filters, panorama planning, timelapse, focus stacking, Avoid Star Trails (max shutter before stars streak), and single-star polar alignment. Reminders: event reminders, fixed-time reminders, and interval reminders. Card-based interface: a redesigned card menu with multiple pages, customizable card order, card search, and top-of-page shortcuts to jump to any card.
This is just the beginning. Longtime PlanIt Pro users know how many features we added over the years — Live will be the same, adding what photographers need in the field. To thank everyone who has supported us, PlanIt Live is free to download and use for now. Please download it, use it, and share your feedback — let's build the most useful field app together.
