Tag Archives: focus and exposure

Snapster – an iPhone photo app that is just enough different to be fun again

I’m been covering plenty of free iPhone photo apps for taking pictures and applying a variety of filters/effects. So, when Snapster showed up today I didn’t move very fast to download it. Once I did though, the Free app proved to be plenty of fun.

Snapster takes square photos so it’s output is all ready for the variety of photo share social services you might be using. Separate focus and exposure can be used.

Photos are saved to the app’s library, opening a image gives you the ability to use Snapster’s unique list of editing tools. The first button on the lower left brings up a list of ‘filters’ to use. A few look familiar as ones in other apps, but the majority are fun new options. A small percent of filters have padlocks which can be unlocked (along with a few other enhancements) through a overall in-app purchase. No need to memorize which filters and other enhancements you used to get the final result to use later, you can save your complete setup to apply again later.

The full range of color curves tuning is available. Or go all out and convert to black and white.

A selection of frames can be applied, interesting to see the majority are only available after the in-app purchase. Textures are also available to be applied. Snapster provides a group of color and enhanced light textures.

The photo output size is selectable, all square: 820, 1240, 1640, 1880 and 2448. Saved to the iPhone photo library, a variety of social services like Instagram, or open directly in other apps without having to save and reopen. If you used a group of settings that you want to use again, the ‘filter’ can be save to use on future Snapster iPhone photos.

Big updated to one of my favorites iPhone Photography apps – Camera+ goes 3.0

Camera+ gets used a lot. That is to say, I have a large selection of iPhone Photo apps I use every day. They go from very specialized to very generalized. There are a couple that are ‘do it all’ apps that I can shoot with, as well do my final edits in. Camera+ is one of those apps that I shoot with very little but turn to when I do edits  and enhancements. It isn’t like SnapSeed for tiny spot changes, rather for editing the full photo.

With this update, I will be using Camera+ for more of the actual photography too.

The list of updates to Camera+ is long, thus it is now version 3.0 (on sale right now!). To start, the ability to have focus and exposure as separate spots is now supported. What is nice is the way it was implemented. When frame up a shot, you may tap the screen to choose the focus area like normal. In other apps, you have to choose if you want to do a focus spot or a focus/exposure difference. Notice the small ‘+’ on the focus box, just tap that if you want the split.

Camera+ doesn’t require you decide up front through a setting if you want to do focus or focus/exposure, you decide on the fly.

The filter selection continues to be a quality area of Camera+. With three screens of 9 filters in each area, there is also an additional specialized 9 for a 99 cent in-app upgrade. The best known of the enhancements offered by Camera+ is the ‘Clarify’ which received an upgrade in this update too. Below is a shot that was cropped, clarified, and filtered within Camera+… whole process took less than a minute including saving to the iPhone photo library.

Knowing that not all people work the same, Camera+ lets you: take a single picture and edit it right away, take multiple pictures to edit later and import one/many photos from the iPhone’s photo library to edit.

Along with the above, the folks that created Camera+ have opened an API to other app developers that may want to use the photo editing powers they provide. Titles like WordPress, Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Foodspotting, and Twittelator Neue apps.

The sharing speed has improved too… done via email, attach directly to a ‘message’ (cool now that Messenger works on the Mac too), through social services like Facebook and Twitter, as well now the creation of Web Links is supported.

 

 

iPhone photographers interested in video? FiLMiC Pro is free for a limited time!

Funny, I’m involved in the movie making industry, yet I record almost no video with my iPhone. I lean more towards taking photographs and playing with a snapshot of history.

An app I have had on my iPhone for those times I do want to record video is FiLMiC Pro. I bought it the first time I saw one of the team’s creations using it on their older iPhone. It’s list of features is much longer than I will most likely use in the near future. As I keep playing with it around town on photo walks, the features start making more sense to get the movie effect I was hoping for. With FiLMiC Pro being FREE right now, if you have ever thought about doing video with your iPhone, grab it quick. Share directly to YouTube, DropBox, Vimeo, Facebook, Tumblr and even to a FTP Server

From the FiLMiC Pro Developers:

– 3 separate shooting modes
– 4 selectable resolutions
– 26 different variable frame rates
– Audio monitoring levels
– Stereo recording support
– Custom slate configurations
– Grids
– Front Facing Camera Support
– Import Button for easy editing
– Overlays
– Colorbars up to 15 seconds
– 6 different upload destinations
– 4 bitrate options per resolution