Tag Archives: iPhone photo

Hipster on the iPhone – New free holiday templates

There are many options in the land of sharing photos taken with your iPhone. Some have cool ways of finding friends to share with, others have unique user experiences for showing of your pics with. In the case of Hipster, the fun is how the image wrapped. Instead of square images like Instagram, Hipster has the images wide in order to fit on their electronic postcards. I say post cards not because they print and mail, rather because the user experiences is flipping the framed image over and writing on the back.

Other photographers on Hipster can see where you took the picture, like, and add text. There are many templates to frame your image with which include different locations for the location text. For the holidays, Hipster has added a few fun frame templates for your ‘postcard’ images.

Remote activation of the iPhone’s camera shutter

A technique I learned with my old film cameras was to snap photos with one hand holding the camera, usually so I could get a shot from up high looking down. Attempting this in the beginning with the iPhone proved to be challenging. I would miss tapping the button and this miss the shot. Then I found that the action to take an image using the iPhone was the release of the shutter button, not the pressing. Just sit my finger on the button, raise the iPhone up high and release when I wanted the shot.

It didn’t take long for the feature in camera apps to include the ability to tap anywhere on the screen to snap the photo. With iOS5 came the ability to use the + volume hardware button to snap photos. Cool feature… I just never remember to use it.

I will be covering a couple photo apps that work particularly better if your iPhone is in a tripod. Even with the iPhone in a tripod, tapping the up volume or screen can be enough to cause some garbage to be introduced into a photo shoot. Since my iPhone’s Apple headphones have a volume control, I tried snapping a photo using the + on the headphone wire… it works!! In fact, the photos snap pretty quickly using this method.

 

Remembering contacts through their picture on the iPhone

Evernote has released a new free app they call ‘Hello’. The app is for exchanging Business cards. I’m not sure about ‘exchanging Business cards’, but it is a fun way of meeting people and exchanging contact information.

The idea is that you hand someone your iPhone, they fill in the slots for their contact info and snap a photo of themselves. You could enter the data for them and snap the picture if you would rather not hand someone your iPhone. You don’t have to have a picture of the person in order to create a contact, but then why would you put them in your visual contact app?

The folks you add to Evernote Hello are automatically synced and backed up to your regular free Evernote Cloud location so you can see the info on any device you have syncing to your account.

Can people legally tell you to not take a picture of something with your iPhone?

I snap pictures… pictures of just about everything. About the only exceptions are where I think I might make someone uncomfortable if I aim my iPhone camera at them. You can usually tell when someone doesn’t want their picture snapped. There are the general good rules of thumb too… don’t make parents uncomfortable by taking pictures of their kids without asking them, avoid trying to take pictures of things that have ‘no photos’ posted, and when your driving. I guess that is more than just one exception to the ‘take pictures of everything’.

I have heard that in some areas around the US, it is illegal to take pictures of people in public places. I have also heard that if the person in the photo is recognizable, you need to get a release signed. So many laws that might be laws or might be urban legends. Searching on the Internet doesn’t result in clear answers very quickly.

Luckily, I found Photographers Rights app. It has the rights of the photographer broken down by countries. The other areas, Your Rights, Copyright and Privacy has similar information, just divided down a bit differently so you can find the information you need quicker. I won’t be trying to use it to fight a court case about if I should or shouldn’t have taken a picture. It will be handy to double check anything that I am curious with little searching.

Making stereographic photos on the iPhone

I keep seeing these photos where a room has been wrapped around a center dot, some cool… some not the right room. I thought at first they were using panoramic software and pulling the lower part in to meet it’s self. While that is supported in some pano software (I’ll cover that in another post), I found how it’s done with a single shot.

Simply put, there is an app called Tiny Planet Photos. From a single iPhone photo, you can wrap the image into a circle with the bottom being the center point so the image looks like a small globe. Depending on the photo, this can be very cool. After the initial price of the software, it doesn’t cost anything to apply the effect to every iPhone photo quickly so it won’t take long to see what works and what doesn’t.

Another effect the same Tiny Planet Photos does is the reverse wrap, so that the outer edge it pulled around giving the photo a ‘tube’ effect.

 

Top Camera for iPhone gets 9 new HDR filters

I have mentioned HDR (high dynamic range) photography before… two photographs of bright and dark merged together for a single image. The photos can be rather energized since your able to see a full range in a single photo.

Previously, I talked about an app that snapped two photos and merged for you. The Top Camera app developers recognize that there isn’t always enough time to take the two photos and wait for the merge. The app offers true HDR photography, but with this update you can ‘fake’ it a bit. The app now comes with 9 filters across a range of HDR and Clarify enhancements. Each effect can be applied and then adjusted with a slider to get the desired impact you were looking for in the single image.

 

The iPhone Social Share Place for Photographers

Oh great… another photo sharing social network. And this one must by fly-by-night because the icon is a black camera stamp on a white background. Well, actually, it’s ‘the’ place to share if your serious about photography and expanding your ideas through the work of others. The simple entry just keeps the kids away.

EyeEm is a photo social app I had on my iPhone for a month before actually setting up a login. Now, it’s the place I go first for a fresh perspective. There isn’t pages and pages of self face shots or images to just get high ranking. Sure, there will be a few of those, but mostly it is folks from around the world that are there for the same reason, to try things and share.

The same as other options is the list of filters you can apply to a image, the difference EyeEm brings is the way you tag each photo by the Topic, Place and Event. So, you can quickly find a particular type of photography image to view one or many images in that group. A an app to use to be inspired by others with a like mind.

No, that isn’t me… just someone who has a nice group of pictures that says how I see the app. EyeEm does have a Web page interface too that you can log into via your desktop.

 

iPhone photo item for Buy Small Saturday

I seem to have missed, or it is actually a new thing, Saturday after Black Friday is ‘Buy Small’ day. The idea is that everyone who has bought all the big things with big discounts on Friday should buy at least one item from a small company.

Last year, on Kickstarter, a couple guys had a little plastic gadget they called the Glif. It is a tripod mount for the iPhone 4/4s. Rather a simple idea, the iPhone sits snuggly either in portrait or landscape mode for those shots you need to be really still. Yet, a quick little twist and the iPhone is free. No, it doesn’t work with any iPhones in a case and even a thin vinyl skin makes it a rather tight squeeze. These are still for sale on their site studioneat.com .

Visiting their site today, they have added to the original Glif. A package that includes: The Glif, Serif, and Ligature (no idea where they come up with these names!). It amounts to a Glif, a addition strap that wraps around the iPhone and Glif for a really solid lock on your tripod, and a keychain loop so you can keep your Glif with you handy. The keychain loop is neat, since you can use the Glif to hold your iPhone on the table for hands free viewing too, not just as a tripod mount.

 

iPhone social photo sharing app that wins on user experience design

Everyone should know by now that I post a lot to Instagram (look on the right column, at the bottom for last 20 posts), but there are many many more social photo sharing options than just the one. Sadly, most are just passing through and will be a lot of fun for a while then everyone will move on.

One that I found recently through a friend is Chumkee. While there is the usual finding of friends, post up pictures, comments and thumbs up for the photos you like. This option has a great interface for seeing what is new. The app starts up with a area of tossed together recent photos. You can tap on one to see more info or zoom in it, or flick is off the screen to be replaced with another.

One item of note, I’m finding more and more people are posting up little movies of themselves talking, singing or doing a stunt rather than just photos. It’s all for fun so take Chumkee as another option to share with friends no matter where they are around the world, through a much nicer interface. (update – just got a couple emails from readers… service doesn’t seem to be filtered so consider it ‘not safe for work’)