Category Archives: Editing

Editing pictures on the iPhone

Another iPhone HDR photo app, this one with a ton of fine tuning tools

I have covered several HDR photos apps for the iPhone. Some create a HDR like photos by applying filters to lighten the dark areas and push the bright colors with a bit of a boost. Then, there are a few that take actual HDR photos which is to say they take multiple images and merge them together.

A new option (to me) is iCamera HDR. The developer claims it is the first true HDR photo app in the iTunes store… I’m not sure about that claim since I have been using a few options for years now. What intrigued me about iCamera HDR was all of the fine tuning that app lets you do to the images. After you snap the photos (manual or automatic) and the pictures are made into one, there is a long list of adjuster sliders to tweak your iPhone photos to really bring out the strong parts.

The settings area is pretty extensive too if you want to get defaults set up. Then, when getting ready to take the image, there are last second options through the buttons around the camera button for stabilization and auto/manual.

Making your iPhone Photos square without cropping

Personally, my real retro film camera is 35mm, with images being wider than tall. But, the choice of most ‘social’ photo sharing services use square images. This makes the management of photos by the service much easier, they don’t have to worry about the presentation of wide vs tall images.

Unless you have a ‘square’ frame of mind when taking a picture with your iPhone, or specifically using one of the social apps to take the picture, you will be cropping every image to fit the format. This can mean the loss of some of the photo message.

A free app, Squaready, takes the opposite approach to the square problem than cropping. It gives you a square area to work in. Placing your image in that work area, you can expand to the edges, then fill in the area around the image with a color (tons available through picker). Squaready also offers a few tuning options; rotate, mirror, and manual resizing. When you have the image as you like, you can directly post to Instagram, save to the iPhone photo library or ‘sent to’ another app. A variety of image size and formats are available too.

The app is free, but has iAds taking up the lower edge part of the screen. There isn’t an in-app purchase option to remove the ads, but the developer claims that if you tap the iAd you won’t be bothered with it for a few hours.

Quick picture and note from the iPhone to your free Evernote Account

There are many options to jot notes down on the iPhone as well to keep ToDo lists. I find that I have much of my quick notes spread out amongst many apps. This causes problems trying to make sure I use the right app for the right project and that I check that app later. In an attempt to get everything in one place across my iPhone, iPad and notebook, I have been playing around with the free cloud notes system, Evernote.

An app I have been playing with over the last week, ShotMemo is helping with that process rethink. ShotMemo let me take a quick photo, resize it, add a bit of text and send it to my Evernote account. Super quick!

ShotMemo does have a lot of fine tuning features too for those times it’s more about appearance or more info is needed. You can choose to have the date/time auto inserted into the note. As well, Geo location can be auto entered. The background of ShotMemo’s notes area (resizable) can be changed to any of the 16 (I actually counted 17, but the dev says 16) options. If that isn’t enough, there is the option to in-app purchase 23 more.

When you have your shot and text, then choose to send, you have the option of the size of the image… which is handy when there is only slow internet available. Sending to has more options than just Evernote, you can also choose to attach the image/text to a email, or share through Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Flickr. In the case of Evernote, the last screen gives you the option of which folder you want the note sent to. So, while I say ShotMemo is super fast to get a photo and note to my Evernote account, there are tuning options that can stretch the sending out a bit. It all comes down to what you need at that time.

 

iPhone Obsessed – the iPhone photography book I wanted to write!

The concept was simple, but to pull it off meant a lot of work. I set about taking photos with my iPhone and editing them with a variety of iPhone photo editing apps. I then showed the original and the final options with effects applied. It has been a lot of fun over the last year, and it has been a serious lot of work for a year.

Over the holidays, I found and purchased “iPhone Obsessed“. A book that shows finished images and the app/settings it took to get the image. The author claims it took them a year of hard work to take the photos and work through the best solution to get the effect they were looking for. Having lived a similar year, I can say I believe them. The book is a very nice item to grab (found it on Amazon here) to save yourself many hours to playing around. It is still best to experiment to learn what you can do and equally what doesn’t work. But iPhone Obsessed takes a lot of guess work out of getting to the finished result you may be looking for. It’s a great way of ‘seeing’ ideas around what is possible when you frame up a shot too.

SnapSeed iPhone Photo Editing App – Free Today Only

Grab SnapSeed while you can for FREE, Dec 31st only. I had no problem paying for this app due to it’s huge list of photo editing features. TiltShift effect area can be stretched rather than only round/straight, Apply image tuning to a single point rather than always the full image, Add filter effects, Twist – Crop… well, the list is pretty long, take a look at it.

The use of SnapSeed is a bit different too… you select the type of tuning, then move your finger up/down the screen to choose the specifics, followed by moving your finger left/right to adjust the strength of the change.

 

iPhone Photos printed on cards and mailed… for you!

There are a few options for creating printed Holiday, Birthday and Than-You cards on my iPhone. Most apps are for creating cards that you email, but there is a growing popularity in doing the creative work myself, then letting someone else print and mail for me. Sincerely is a company that allows developers to add their code so photo apps can offer the printing of the images you took with your iPhone. “Sincerely Ink” is an app they offer themselves for free (Universal so it works on your iPad too).

Sincerely Ink has over 30 layouts to choose from. There are card templates that have illustrated art on them, and others that allow me to insert my own photos. All have editable text. After the card is as I like, I can manually add a name/address to send to or choose one/multiples from my iPhone Contacts area. Through the app, Sincerely charges $1.69 per card to print and mail for me. I’m sure all of my relatives will just love a photo I took on the Thank You cards.

 

All-in-one iPhone Photo app TopCamera kicks it up a notch with latest release

TopCamera is an app that ‘has it all’. It allows you to take pictures with Stabilizer, has a true multi image HDR, does burst photography shooting, slow shutter for low light and even  a timer to get yourself in the image. The only ‘negative’ for me so far is the user experience for editing photos within TopCamera. It has all the features to tune/enhance photos, it just isn’t very natural. What the app is for me is the single app to launch for just about any photo I need to take.

In the update, TopCamera lets’ you choose what the app launches with – the camera, image enhance area or ‘the last used’. Also in the update is smoother zooming, and more selective focusing if your shooting video. I may have missed that above, TopCamera does both photography and video recording… it really is that first app you launch when your in any visual recording situation, then think about how you want to save to share later.

Oh yea, and the new launcher icon update is really nice too!

Cutting down the time of experimenting with iPhone Photography

There are options, oh so many options, when it comes to enhancing a photograph taken with an iPhone. From simple touch ups, cropping, adding filters, to advance curves and multi-imaging. For many folks, like me, it’s part of the fun with taking photos with the iPhone. There is tuning, testing, changes and learning. Even when an image looks about right, I’ll try something else just to see if I was missing anything. One image will end up with a dozen versions in my iPhone’s photo library.

To get a better idea of options and seeing suggestions from the pros, there is a book I found: Create Great iPhone Photos. You can find it at a variety of online and local book stores.

The book has it’s 200 pages of tips divided down into a few key areas:
iPhone Camera Essentials
Customize You riphone Camera
Photoshop in Your Pocket
Filters, Effects and Recipes
The Retro Look
Fun and Offbeat Effects
Snap – and Share
Your Photoblog
For Inspirations

Great gift idea if your know someone with an iPhone and a Photography interest –

 

Making stereographic photos on the iPhone

I keep seeing these photos where a room has been wrapped around a center dot, some cool… some not the right room. I thought at first they were using panoramic software and pulling the lower part in to meet it’s self. While that is supported in some pano software (I’ll cover that in another post), I found how it’s done with a single shot.

Simply put, there is an app called Tiny Planet Photos. From a single iPhone photo, you can wrap the image into a circle with the bottom being the center point so the image looks like a small globe. Depending on the photo, this can be very cool. After the initial price of the software, it doesn’t cost anything to apply the effect to every iPhone photo quickly so it won’t take long to see what works and what doesn’t.

Another effect the same Tiny Planet Photos does is the reverse wrap, so that the outer edge it pulled around giving the photo a ‘tube’ effect.

 

Top Camera for iPhone gets 9 new HDR filters

I have mentioned HDR (high dynamic range) photography before… two photographs of bright and dark merged together for a single image. The photos can be rather energized since your able to see a full range in a single photo.

Previously, I talked about an app that snapped two photos and merged for you. The Top Camera app developers recognize that there isn’t always enough time to take the two photos and wait for the merge. The app offers true HDR photography, but with this update you can ‘fake’ it a bit. The app now comes with 9 filters across a range of HDR and Clarify enhancements. Each effect can be applied and then adjusted with a slider to get the desired impact you were looking for in the single image.