Tag Archives: iPhone photo

Presidential Black And White Photography For The iPhone

The Hipstamatic folks keep at it… introducing a new HipstaPak called The District. If you enjoy black and white photography, this will be a nice add to your iPhone camera options. As usual, if your a Oggl social share subscriber, you have access to this film/lens at no extra charge (within Oggl, the Hipstamatic version is still 99 cents when purchased within the app).

One of the example shots for The District lens/film HipstaPak (all are toward US Historical sites, but there is a lot of fun posts on Oggl showing the Pak being put to good use):

As the Pak appears on Oggl

As I promised, here is a shot I took using The District film/lens bundle (defaults to 2448×2448):

The Free iPhone Photo Editor Inside of Google+ App

Google+, the social sharing service from Google, has its lovers and haters. Google has tweaked it from time to time to get it to match a plan they have. While I post there and enjoy viewing many photographers work, it has never caught on as my first social solution when I want to get the word out. That is just me, your milage will vary.

Many updates appear to be to tie Google+ more directly into Google’s other services, and in some cases for enhancements to replace the need of those other services. One area of enhancements has been the improvements to the photo editing features. There is still the ‘quick filters’ for effect, but now there are other enhancements in the area of pinpointing photo turning.

The photo editing features are available on either the iPhone or iPad via the free Google+ app. It does require you have a Google+ account, but you are not forced to ever post any of your images to Google+. That said, inside of Google+ is the feature to auto sync all of your photos to the Google online storage if you would rather use another service than the iCloud/iPhoto builtin option.

Starting off, the app lets you take a photo or edit one you took previously. Across the top is a Cancel (exit without saving any edits), an undo, a mirror flip and ‘Done’. After you complete your edits, the photo can be saved to the iPhone’s photo library or shared for others to see on Google+. Across the bottom of the first screen is Google’s Auto Enhancement too (it does allow a slight bit of control over the amount of ‘auto’ applied), then the Crop and Rotate tools. I’m amazed at how few photo editing apps do not include a ‘rotate’. A quick win for Google+ photo editor.

Swipe across the bottom of the screen’s menu to go to the pre-configured filters.

Choosing a Google+ photo editor effect filter opens to a group of finer detailed options in that area of filters. Generally, these can be selected to fine tune the amount of the effect applied too.

The pinpoint editing option allows for taping a location, adjusting the size of the area to be impacted, then swipe left/right for the amount of the effect. A swipe up/down offers more options for the tuning. The app allows for multiple points to be selected and tuned (individually) without having to exit and return to the photo like other pinpoint solutions do.

Sochi Games Are Over, Do We Still Need The iPhone HipstaPak? Sure!

During the last Winter Olympic Games, the group behind Hipstamatic released a film/lens pak named after the Sochi city. It was interesting but would it live up to staying on the iPhone after the end of the games. As I looked over a few recents shots I took, it would appear it is standing up to time.

If you are a Hipstamatic iPhone camera app user, this is a HipstaPak with a lens and film bundle. Rather than a vintage film look, it produces images that have a feel like new film in a vintage camera (I shoot a lot with new 620 film in my Kodak Hawkeye so I recognized the results pretty quickly).

The photos provided by Hipstamatic show colors are still bright, with a cool light effect.

As usual, here is a couple shots I took with the combo so you can see the Sochi HipstaPak in real life usage:

If your a subscriber to the Oggl photo sharing app/service also provided by the Hipstamatic group. You have access to the lens/film at no additional charge (within Oggl, not the Hipstamatic app). At first, the lens/film bundle on Oggl under the name of Sochi was different than the HipstaPak in the Hipstamatic app. It has been corrected now, but you can see the above shot as it looked via Oggl below.

With SteamZoo Closing, Where Will You Share Your iPhone Pics

There is a lot of options to share your photos with the public. Many started up long before Instagram but have not had the buy-in from the masses. And, if they did get great quantities of visitors, they were unable to turn eyes into money to pay for servers. SteamZoo is a recent but amongst many, photo sharing sites to close up shop. When a service shuts down, where do you go?

Recently, many of the services I have used for storing and/or editing photos online have been bought up and shortly there after shut down. A person builds relationships and workflows around services only to have it taken away. I don’t believe it is an easy decision for a small shop to shut down, it always feels like the funding gods are just around the corner. For big corporate buyouts though, it’s a shame they can hide behind their big visitor counts and push through the few folks they have caused to rethink how they do things. On the subject, while sharing photos is fun and builds friendships from far away places, the biggest impact to my life has been Task Managers shutting down and causing work successes to slow as a whole new system has to be learned.

OK, back to StreamZoo. Since they did give warning, most folks posted up what their ID was on other services so folks could rejoin. Lost is the groups that StreamZoo encouraged for the building of like photos within a area (like Views of San Francisco, Black and White, HDR, etc…).

I thought I would toss up a couple screen shots of the UI so months from now we don’t forget how we interacted with others via this service. Perhaps, a lessons learned for other services to use when thinking about how their visitors like to interact with each other’s snap shots of life.

iPhone Photo Booth Prints Without The iPhone

I’ve talked about the many print services that work from apps on the iPhone. Today I received an email from one of those services, Printstagram. Instead of a slightly different size print or a print on a special material, they where introducing a Photo Booth looking prints service. Like their other offerings, prints are chosen via the Web site from my Instagram posts.

Printstagram has the offering available through the site’s Products drop down. But, reading about the service, it is mentioned that may or may not be a long term offering. All of the printing is being done out of the San Francisco office… I wonder if they mind I drop by to say ‘hi’.

The particulars:
– Each package contains a set of 9 strips, with 36 photos (like a roll of film!)
– The photostrip is 1.75″ x 7″
– Each photo is 1.5″ x 1.5″

Once I logged in and chose the service, Printstagram presented me with thumbnails for my Instagram photos, offering the opportunity to choose 36 to have printed. I quickly saw I need to upload a few photos that look more like people squeezed into a small booth in the bowling alley.

iPhone Photography For Art And Creative, Grab The Free Behance App For Inspiration

Looking through photography displays created by others can at times help open a person’s mind to new angles or views. Most often, I find people go right out and try to duplicate the photo with the equipment and location they have at hand. While this can be helpful to try new things, I find two extremes happen as a result. The photographer take a similar photo to one in an exhibit and feels it is ‘just as good’ because their brain already has the energy from the original. Or, they fail to match the mood exactly and they move on.

I tend to enjoy photography exhibits but gain creative energy from people’s creative design projects. Looking at what an individual managed to pull together with a few scraps of paper, a pen, glue and patience. Or, the photography of a creation either in the studio or out in the wild. Color combinations and contrasting elements either in a 3D creation or a drawing can expand a view that will help notice similar points to capture through my camera. There is no matching a packaging idea when out taking photos in the park, but the lines and colors of the package opens the mind to seeing trees and grass slightly differently.

One free online tool to see the creative work from people around the world is Behance. Anyone can create an account to show what they are working on or have finished. Allowing others to comment and possibly compliment. I’m sure there are many talented people that have been found and given work due to their posts.

Behance is a very large mix of creative work. There are photograph posts as well as logo designs, product packaging, hair styles and the list goes on, seemingly endlessly. And now, Behance offers a free app to remove the need to only view posts when sitting at the desktop. The app isn’t just for viewing, it also allows commenting and posting to your own account.

Projects, or people’s creative work, can be viewed by the state of the project.

Viewing Projects, note the filter options along the top of the page to narrow the view of the group. Then, sweep top/bottom to see a thumbnail/name/creator for each project.

Search and viewing Projects by the Field of work is a surprising long list.

This is the view narrowed to Photography projects posted to Behance.

Select one to see the individual items within that particular project. There is more details on the person that created the post as well options to share your find out through social networks.

Behance allows the favoriting of projects and creators. Along with the creation of Curated lists of both so others can see your interesting finds.

Google Discontinues ‘Bump to Transfer Photos’

A magical app in the early of the iPhone called Bump gave us the ability to bump two iPhones together and transfer contact information. It was a nifty solution to handle the lack of IR transfer between devices that earlier PDAs had. After a while, the app advanced to more things to bump transfer between phones, the most popular in my circles was photos.

The bump action was basically a moment in time that the app could use to match the two phones together then wirelessly transfer what was being asked of it. Photo transfer didn’t require a Web site, social app, or anything more than two people with their phones, the app, the photo and the desire to share.

The company producing Bump offered methods for other developers to use their technology in their apps to transfer information beyond what the Bump app did. The group also created a social photo sharing service called Flock.

Last September, 2013, Bump announced they had been purchased by Google. No claims where made, but the hope had been that we would find the Bump action in the many other Google offerings. Naturally, Google would want that additional data point of the phones and files transferred. Sadly, they didn’t agree with this thinking and according to the Bump Web site, the app is being taken down and service will be End-of-Lifed on January 31, 2014.

I can imagine the horror a developer that was using that technology in their app is going through right now. Like the many other photo sharing/storing solutions that have gone away over the last year, this just adds to the concern about becoming dependent on any service, if they are not making the cash flow they need to, you loose too.

Oggl Retro Photography Sharing App and Service Updated With A Little From Everyone

Oggl, heard of it? It is one of the iPhone photos sharing service, that seems to have people that don’t know about it or people that use it. Few are between those two extremes.
The photo sharing service comes from the same folks that did Hipstamatic. Rather than just a few filters, Oggl gives the user access to the film and lenses that are available through the retro photography app Hipstamatic. Where Hipstamatic locks the image to the lens/film selected through the app when snapping the photo, Oggl offers the changing of those ‘filters’ to find the look the user was hoping for. Then, share it out to the world of Oggl users. There is a yearly subscription upgrade available.
The original Oggl had a unique workflow and limits on photos, outside of the changing filters after the shot. Now though, the service allows the importing of photos from the iPhone photo library, which is frowned on by the loyal users. Also, the UX has changed this week to be a more Flipboard News Reader type of feel. Will those changes chase away current users or add more new users?

The updated Oggl seems to be less about grouping of photos by the Oggl team around their challenges and lens/films used and more about groups created by users. These aren’t groups that people join, rather the grouping of photos for viewing under a few quick pick rule sets.

A nice addition in this Oggl update is a quick reference indicator showing how many likes and re-shares has occurred to photos uploaded by the account holder. Tapping each photo uploaded will show the quantity of likes, re-shares and who did each.

When a photo is being taken, the current (or last used) film/lens combo impact will be shown for a second then return to the unfiltered view. Choose one of the pre-built, custom combo or saved combo to see the impact again prior to snapping the shot.

Just sweep through the Oggl lenses and film options to see each one’s effect on the photo, save or discard. If a combo is used more often, they can be saved as a quick access. Also, when viewing photos posted by others, the combo they used can be added to the quick access options.

Yearly Hipstamatic RetroPak Released For Holiday – Discounted

Is this the fourth year Hipstamatic has done the RetroPak grab bag of film and lenses? Just announced is a discounted RetroPak Four with lenses and film that are normally only available through other groupings. “Discounted” is 99 cents for the whole Pak, where normally 99 cents would get you one or two films with a single lens.

Here is the RetroPak Four list, available within the app (7 films and 5 lenses):

Each lens and film detail can be reviewed. It is a Pak though so you get all or nothing, even if you own a few of these Hipstamatic add-ons.

EyeEm Updated With Tools For More Fun Through Sharing

EyeEm lives in the world of photo sharing, amongst the well publicized Instagram, with it’s own unique thoughts on what sharing is. In the case of EyeEm, photographers can be followed, but mostly people follow tags that photos are arranged by.
If you are a fan about EyeEm or a new users, you may want to look at the first issue of FLTR (covered here:iPhone Photographer Magazine To Read On The iPhone), where there is a nice interview covering the path foreword for the app and supporting service.
The free iPhone EyeEm app was recently updated. If you have an iPad, the UX is customized for the larger screen. In the case of the iPhone, the text on each photo has been resized for easier reading.

I’m happy to see the quick like (Heart in the case of EyeEm) feature. From about any photo view, double tap to let the photographer know you enjoyed their photo. Must quicker than always having to go to the photo’s detail view (above). When someone marks one of your photos with a comment, heart or follows, the number in the upper right corner of the screen changes to Red and shows the quantity of new influences. Tap to view and clear.

Three new filters have been added to EyeEm as well. Below is each of the filters applied to the same photo to see the filter’s impact. Leonie (popular right now as a ‘mission’ tag contest), Eva and Don.

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Tag Archives: iPhone photo

iPhone Photo Booth Prints Without The iPhone

Yearly Hipstamatic RetroPak Released For Holiday – Discounted