Tag Archives: iPhone editor

Desktop level photo editing on the iPhone, kept easy to use

There are two extremes for photo editing on the iPhone. Simple application of filters to multi layer actual editing of parts of the image. Imagine, actual editing of a photo on the iPhone without dealing with layers and masking. I have mentioned SnapSeed before, well… it just got even better.

The actual bits included in this update is at the end of this post. As a reminder, SnapSeed is a universal app so the middle of the range pricing gets you a license to install the app on both your iPhone and iPad.

A particular fine tuning feature, ‘Selective Adjust’, is one that provides a way to fine tune small areas of a photos. When you have a photo in the app, choose the Selective Adjust feature, then tap the ‘+’ button to allow you to select the spot you want to tune. Touch the photo to drop a tuning point, using two finger pinch you can make the turning area as large/small as you need. The dot will stay centered on the tuning area and won’t grow/collapse to match the side of your tuning area. Drag you finger up/down to choose to tune Brightness, Contrast and Saturation. Then, slide left/right to adjust the amount of the tuning to apply.

Multiple points of tuning can be done without having to save between. Tap the ‘+’ (it will turn blue) then select the spot on the screen. Tapping a earlier placed dot will re-activate that spot for adjusting. The small picture icon on the upper right corner of SnapSeed shows you the unedited photo to compare how the tuning is going. If you decide to not use the changes, tap the left arrow at the bottom of the screen to go to the previous screen, or the right arrow to apply the changes. All of the tuning directly on the photo without having to add layers to make each small change.

Color is important, but SnapSeed actually has a lot of specialized features for touching up black and white photos. From filters to full photo enhancements and fine point tuning.

As promised, the new/updated features in the latest SnapSeed Universal app:

New crop size: 5 X 7 and direct share with Instagram!

Center Focus magic—Taking a cue from our professional filters product, Color Efex Pro, we’ve improved Center Focus to make it even more powerful. You can now draw attention to the subject of your photo by adjusting the brightness of the inside or outside of your image. You can enhance the overall effect by blurring, or turn it completely off to create vignette effects with ease. Oh, and did we mention that we’ve added presets to give you a starting point and save time?

Beefed up Black & White—We love monochrome a lot, having developed the world’s leading professional black and white software in Silver Efex Pro. Snapseed gets even more of that mojo with new algorithms and color filters for superior enhancements and control. Plus, presets will help you get started faster

The fun of film toy cameras on the iPhone

When I first started playing with the iPhone camera app PictureShow, I mostly used it for breaking single photographs up into multiple parts. It was a lot of fun for a couple concept photo shoots I was on then and got people thinking outside of the box.

Now I find myself using less of the fun splitting feature and more of the tools to produce the plastic camera effect. Both work very nicely in PictureShow, it all depends on the final desired image impact.

Using the pull down, you can choose to apply a long list of filters. PictureShow was one of the first apps that I really started deep diving into the effects of filters and photo tones without using a desktop photo editor.

More often now though, it’s the effects in the area of ‘style’ and ‘color’ that I tap PictureShow to help me with. As the popularity of Lomo cameras and iPhone photo sharing services increase, more people ask for photos in their designs to have a older, less tuned look.

Touch up the area around the focal point with a vignet and add a bit of noise since this picture has been sitting in the drawer for a while.

PictureShow even handles TiltShift and software HDR effects.

When the image is as you hoped, getting the image out of PictureShow has a lot of options. Share out to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr, post on a Tumblr or Blogger site, send as an attachment to an email or save to your iPhone’s photo library. The photo I edited in this post was exported at: 3265 × 2449 although you can export in: 450 x 600 px, 600 x 800 px, 900 x 1200px, 1200 x 1600 px if there is a need for smaller.