Tag Archives: apply filters

Maximizing Color Splash editing with Color Splash+ FX on the iPhone

It isn’t a secret how angry I get at developers that release apps with light features and names close to other full featured apps. The generally get pretty creative with their descriptions too. So, when I first saw Color Splash+ FX, I was doubtful it was going to be much more than creative marketing. Perhaps, that helped me be even more excited when I started to use the app and found it to be the best of several Color Splash type apps all wrapped into one.

Take a photo, import from the iPhone photo library or from Facebook to get started with Color Splash+ FX. Right off, three tools that are not normally all in one app. Red View lets you see the area your coloring so you aren’t dependent on being able to see the seperation of color and gray. Usually an app has to save the image before you see that you didn’t get an area right. Zoom Preview is a magnification loop next to the area your coloring so you can see more detail of what is happening under your fingertip. And, Image Auto Rotate so you not having to always work in the iPhone’s portrait view, a pain I have long felt with other Color Splash app options.

A few of the Color Splash apps allow for different brushes and others have multiple brush tip sizes. Color Splash+ FX has a sliders for the tip size, Softness and Opacity. When I split color/gray areas of a photo, I’m always challenged by the different apps and their ability to fine tune the line between the two. Color Splash+ FX allows for zooming in (way in!) and out and the personalization of the brush means I’m not ending up with a photo where the whole shade is where it shouldn’t be along the edges.

The ‘FX’ in the name of Color Splash+ FX is because of the many Filters included to further tune an image. It is an extra tweak that some photos might lend themselves to once it has had it’s color/grays separated. ‘Layers’ is another option in the ‘FX Effects’ area. If you prefer doing enhancements outside of filters, choose the ‘Adjust’ button along the top of the screen.

Change the color of areas of a photo by colorizing via a color picker.

Once a color is chosen, color with your finger or stylus the area you want to colorize. The feature is always available across the lower edge of the Color Splash+ FX work area. There you will find your ‘Undo’, Colorize, Show the original color, Convert color to Gray… the last is handy for touching up small areas where you painted too much of the original color.

When the photo is as you like, you can use it to create a postcard, save to the iPhone photo library, email and even share with many of the popular social services. Another pleasant surprise with Color Splash+ FX was the slider on this screen to set the resolution the image will be saved or shared. Like I said, the better features of many apps into one.

PicShop iPhone Photo Editor 2.0 – with “Tons of Editing”

When I first saw PicShop iPhone Photo Editor claim to do ‘Tons of Editing”, I had to chuckle. I actually went on past the app, but then returned to take a look later. This must of course be a light weight filters application app… happy to report that it is much more. While the app offer a few common found filters, the actual more detailed tuning options are nice with their enhancement sliders and pickers. That is to say, you can customize your photos pretty quickly without getting into a full photo editor like Laminar.

After importing a photo, the areas of turning are buttons across the bottom of the screen. Each will show it’s group of effects applied to the image in the thumbnail for quick reference. The Picshop 2.0 groups include: Edits, Filters, Frames and ‘Extras’.

Like in the screen shot below for writing on the photo, PicShop offers sliders to fine tune each effect and enhancement. The changes are shown in real time then they can be applied or discarded. This allows for many different tuning effects to be used without saving and reloading an image.

Color pickers are supplied by PicShop when the choices are needed.

The variety of focus options is nice as a quick way to pull an object out or create depth.

On the ‘cute’ side, there are stickers, writing, meme, and other photo customization options that are beyond the normal filters found elsewhere. Sharing with PicShop is through email, twitter or Facebook. Saving to the iPhone’s photo library in a variety of resolutions is also supported.

Creating and sharing moving Gifs on the iPhone with a Instagram like service – Gifture

I have mentioned a few fun ways of creating Gifs on your iPhone. One creation tool has taken it to the next level by supplying a free sharing service for those Gifs. The app and the service is called Gifture. As you can see below, the layout is very ‘instagram’ like. Most people post up actual Gifs they created with Gifture, but some are single photos. The majority of those Gif files are not small stop motion movies rather a series of separate images that appear like a slide show. Be warned, a lot of content is NSFW!

The photo taking screen has all the basics you need. Notice the shaded area around the square center box, only what is in the box gets recorded. You can choose which camera your using and if you want to have the flash on. The orange ‘a’ at the bottom is saying I have the app set in auto mode so Gifture will snap a series of photos for me rather than me having to tap the shutter button for each image. The number to the right is how many frames will be captured.

You can import images from your iPhone’s photo library, you can snap a shot at a time manually, or you can have Gifture automatically snap a series of photos. You choose how many you want to have taken, so the use of recording becomes more like recording a short movie.

Filters! Yes, you can apply filters to your Gifs you create in Gifture. Selecting a filter takes a couple seconds to apply as the feature has to update each individual image in the series that will be pressed into a single file at the end of the process.

The ‘frames per second’ is quick to use so that your animation can appear smooth or if your using completely unrelated images they don’t jump around radically, rather appears like a little slide show.

The Gifture app makes it very easy to move and remove images in your animation. In the case of the windmill, I deleted the last two images so there wasn’t a overlap, thus when it plays for other people the blades just turn and turn without any funny jumping backwards at the end.

When the Gif is as you like, simply choose to upload it to the Gifture social service for others to enjoy.

When viewing a Gif you posted to Gifture’s share, there are a couple small dots on the lower right corner, tapping brings up these options. A few items on these options. ‘Save to Camera Roll’ saves the animated Gif as a movie file, which if you share from the iPhone’s photo library is a small movie that plays once through. ‘Copy link’, ‘Email link’ and ‘Tweet’ all send links to the Gif on the Gifture’s site. The visitor can only see that one image and it not able to see the rest of your stream or other people’s either. Basically, the Gifs you create are locked to the Gifture’s social network unless you want it as a movie file.

Adding Depth and Movement to your iPhone Photos

In my early days of shooting film, I spent a lot of money on film as I took shot after shot, learning about different focal depths. It wasn’t that I was going for a particular look, I was trying to learn what visual impact the photo made depending on how what part of the photo was in focus. Recently, there has been a lot of attention to the Lytro camera in the area of being able to set the focus of the shot later (and a lot of other light versus color cool technology). The idea is that you take pictures with everything in focus, then say what depth you want in focus and everything else blurs to give the brain the idea of how far away you where looking when you snapped the shot.

On the iPhone, you can set what depth a item is away that will be in focus by tapping it on the screen. This makes a big difference for close up shots but for photos more than a few feet away, everything is in focus. So, how do you get the effect of depth focus like you could do with a old film camera lens?

One way is through apps like AfterFocus. Many of the options just blur the background, similar to a TiltShift effect so read the feature list prior to buying. AfterFocus actually has some ‘smarts’ and offers a lot more options while being at the same price as those ‘simpler’ solutions. AfterFocus lets you ‘color’ in the area you want in focus, or you can use the Smart tool… which offers you the capability to put a quick line in the area of in ‘focus’ and ‘background’. The app will calculate the outline of the focus point area and split for you. Completely removing the back and forth of trying to get a perfect line around a object with your finger.

After the areas of focus/blur have been applied, you can fine tune the type of depth on the next screen. Here also, AfterFocus lets you add a vignette or sharpen the image to bring out the details.

After the areas of focus has been chosen and applied, you can adjust the level and type of blur too. AfterFocus has a ‘motion’ blur option that will give a slight movement to the background like you would get if you where taking a photo of a person running. Also, below is the ‘Fading Background’ applied where the foreground is brought back into focus. Normally apps require you to go back and do that manually, otherwise you end up with a camera floating in air when the blur is all around it.

What iPhone photo app would be complete without ‘filters’? Yes, AfterFocus lets you apply a variety of filters too.

Normally I would cover what the output size of the image is at this point of the post. AfterFocus lets you choose that sizing, everything to small Web graphic to full resolution size. Sharing is through saving to the iPhone’s photo library, as an attachment to an email and through the social sites Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa.

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Tag Archives: apply filters

PicShop iPhone Photo Editor 2.0 – with “Tons of Editing”

Adding Depth and Movement to your iPhone Photos