The Bokeh effect is a blur… with a bit of classic flare. Not the blur I have been covering in the past where your attempting depth, rather the blur you get a lot with old Polaroid photographs. A flash of light from a source you didn’t expect that causes a artistic wash out. I use it a lot with my black and white photography, In the case of the art of Bokeh effect photography, the bright areas get some flare with shapes. These are those fun circles, hearts, stars and streaks of light dancing around a photograph. Not for everyone’s taste, but done right the images can be unique and thought provoking… oh yea, and cute fun too.

The Lumiè app (iPhone only) takes the uncertainty of getting the effect right when photographing and moves the effect to a series of filters. You can take a photo through the app or import from the iPhone photo library. Lumiè wants a square photo so the first step after import is to crop the photo, than onto the ‘effects’. Sweep your finger across the screen to choose an effect… there are many to choose from. Tap one to select, if you don’t like the effect, just tap the image to bring up the chooser again. There is also a picker in the lower left corner for the the image to be ‘normal’, ‘dark’, or add ‘sparkle’ to the filter.

The final image can be save and shared by it’s self or with a ‘paper’ frame similar to those old Polaroids. Sharing can be done directly from Lumiè to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Timblr, save to your iPhone photo library or attach to an email.