Tag Archives: iPhone Photos

Fotor CameraBag brings many iPhone Photo Apps into one

I have covered a couple apps written by the developers EverImaging LTD. One in particular was their HDR app. Now, get the power of their many apps into on with Fotor CameraBag. Launching Fotor CameraBag gives you many options to highly customize your iPhone images.

One of the key apps brought into the Fotor CameraBag is the HDR features that is one of the developer’s most popular stand alone apps. There is many adjustments to the way the multi images are taken that make up the HDR, including a step to check the dark/bright images prior to merging the two. Anti-Shake, timer, zoom and on-screen grid are a few of the options through the gear icon next to the shutter button.

After taking your photo, HDR or other, Fotor CameraBag takes you to many fine tuning options. Rotate, Crop, Brightness, Saturation and Contrast are a few. There is not need to save the photo off to another app, adjust the image then move onto other enhancements all within the same app.

After you have completed all of the fine tuning of the HDR photo, save to go out to the list of image tuning like ColorSplash, FX, Frames and Collages.

Each of those ‘included’ photo enhancements can be found in individual apps, rather Fotor CameraBag bundles all into one iPhone app. Like below, ‘Big Aperture’.

Similar to Tilt Shift effect, the depth adding by using a set lens aperture will change the way a person focuses on the image. We used to buzz around town with a set lens to challenge the world around us to have a single item distance set to be in focus. Rather than offering the adjust the percent of blur found in other apps, Fotor CameraBag has you choose the lens opening similar to a physical lens, then adjust the location and transition circle outside of the main focus object.

iPhone photo editor, Photo Power, updated to 3.0

Some iPhone photo editors start out looking the same, then you dive in deeper and find your first impression was right, it’s the same ol bunch of filters wrapped in a different name.

A free (doesn’t say how long it will be free) solution I was playing with this week is Photo Power. It is very much not the ‘norm’. There are very few simple filters to add, everything else is adjustable and the final result is full resolution even on the 4s!

Across the bottom of the window is Crop/Resize/Rotate, then three scrollable lists of tuning options to use with the photo. Photo Power lets you apply and undo as many as you like so you can spend a lot of time getting just the right effect or clean-up the particular photo is in need of.

In this case, there are a few ‘filter’ options given to apply. Choosing one applies the effect right away. Photo Power lets you tune the amount of the filter applied by sliding your finger left/right across the image. Note the ‘%’ for the effect being used in the upper right of the screen.

Where needed, Photo Power offers sliders to tune the enhancement application to your photo.

Yes, I am applying many different filters and adjustments to the photo without having to stop and save a copy of the image along the way.

If you know you don’t need a full size image at the end, why take the time for an app to pound through the process of working against a high resolution image. But, your output need isn’t always the same from one photo to the next. Photo Power gives you the option when starting off your editing to choose what size you will need at the end so you work with the image in that dimensions from the beginning. The small, the faster the adjustments are applied, letting you move onto the next tuning option.

The Settings is all about getting the finished product your looking for. Usually this area in other apps is filled with how to tune the camera for taking the picture. With Photo Power, the adjustments are in the area of what you expect out of the app when done. Preset your resolution as well the file type. EXIF has to be chosen if your concerned about keeping all of the meta data with the image. I used JPEG so I didn’t have to convert the image later when posting to 500px.

When the ‘save’ button is hit in Power Photo, the app sets out and applies all of the adjustments you made to create a final image. I had chosen to save the final as a JPEG using the above setting. This meant that the finished creation didn’t show up right away when I exited the app, but it did show up on full resolution after a short time.

Was Google’s graphical update to Google+ for the iPhone enough for you to jump in?

Google has been trying, trying very hard, to get you to jump on board with their Google+ social sharing. A lot of the big names in just about every industry have dipped a toe into the Google+ waters. A quick search will result in names you will know. Digging a bit deeper, you may find very little quantity of posts behind that quality of names.

The biggest change to the iPhone app for Google+ was making the string of posts from folks in your ‘Circles’ more graphical. Gone is the headline text, small icon, and teaser text on a plain white background. Now, the posting person’s name and image appear larger, with the headline or teaser text over the top of the key image of the post. This means that searching visually for text your interested in is more difficult, but swiping through the posts and seeing related images is quicker. It’s a interesting path change from a company that has the simplest of Search starting and listing pages to now a almost completely graphical UI in their mobile social app.

In the update prior to this one, a occasional issue was introduced where uploading photos in a post wasn’t always successful. Photos can also be uploaded to libraries on Google+ that you create. A feature that was introduced between the last and this update was the ability to have photos automatically saved from your iPhone to Google as a cloud storage option. This feature is similar to Apple’s Photo Steam, except with Photo Stream the photos sync back to your desktop while with Google they stay on their storage… a couple gigs are provided at no charge, adding more carries charges.

When viewing your photo libraries on Google through Google+, you can choose a single photo to look at comments others have made (those you chose to share). Swiping a photo takes you to the next in the series.

Photos are grouped by Google+ into areas that are similar to what you would see on other social share services. Multiple photos can be attached a post, which you can make viewable to no one, your friend’s circles or the general ‘public’.

Automated download all of your Instagram photo posts directly to your iPhone

Whether you are thinking about reclaiming all of your photo posts, need to have access to upload to another service, don’t like the new owners of Instagram or want to have the photos all in one place – the Instasync app on the iPhone gives you the power you need.

The free iPhone app downloads your Instagram posted pictures to a new library folder on your iPhone called ‘InstaMe’. You can start/stop as you like or kick it off and let Instasync download all of your posts. The app originally let you grab photos others posted too, but that feature has been removed. So, only the left button on the screen works.

You get more than just your photos with Instasync. Data is preserved with the photos; description, location, date and time, keywords, filter used and link back to the Instagram web-page.

Using the iPhone to stumble upon interesting Photography articles

I follow a variety of photography twitter accounts and everyday hit a handful of blogs regularly on the subject. Some sites post content multiple times a day that is light and on the general subject of photography. Others, post less often with more specialized content.

Some of the best articles don’t come from the usual places or the expected sources. It is nearly impossible to follow everyone and watch what they are saying. A method I use to keep up on interesting stories without having to sift through every post from people to find their mention of a great article between their posts about what they had for lunch is StumbleUpon. Great site and even a handier free iPhone app.

StumbleUpon works via people finding interesting articles, then sharing to individual categories. This way, you only get referred to articles that you will want to look through. There are iPhone news apps that are great at giving you news with regular scheduled information, some are very nice, but all depend on the usual providers. Since StumbleUpon provides links narrowed to your specific interest, and anyone can suggest links, you end up reading people’s ideas and techniques outside of the main stream agency content.

Launching that free app for the first time, you can see what others are saying are popular areas of interests. You can choose one or many from this area, though they are at a high level.

Using the StumbleUpon’s Categories button along the bottom, you can see all of the areas of interesting, then drill down to particulars so you can get more or less specific content.

After you have your interested ID’d, SumbleUpon will show you your selected area to choose from. No lists of links or people to follow, just a button to go to a article on the subject your interested in.

Choosing of the buttons will take you to an article that someone has linked to on that subject. The service is called ‘StumbleUpon’ because you don’t know anything about the actual article till you get there. If you like what you read, give it a rating thumbs up or down if it isn’t worth anyone’s time reading. The article can be viewed in mobile Safari, shared via email and Twitter too. Rather than going back to the ‘Interests’ page, just tap the upper right corner StumbleUpon button to go to the next article.

Lomo photography on the iPhone doesn’t have to be square, Lo-Mob provides options

When it comes to specialized apps for taking images that look like they were taken with a low end film camera, the list is long of quality and junk options.

The majority of the apps take square photos and offers a few filters. That may work for posting to a few of the popular photo sharing services. There are many other things I like to do with my photos so when I saw the app Lo-Mob offered effects and a variety of image formats, I was happy to give it a try.

Import a photo or take one through the Lo-Mob app then scroll through the options of enhancements to use:

39 vintage and experimental photographic filters for all your pictures
Classic square vintage photography
35mm experimentation : sprocket photography
vintage 35mm slides
square Through The Viewfinder (TTV) simulation
AE-1 Through The Viewfinder
old and modern emulsions
glass contact photography
classic format instant photography + reversed + deconstructed
square, tall and wide instant photography
photocards

After choosing a filter/size, some minor tuning can be done. Lo-Mob also supports the changing of the applied effect if your not happy with the direction you chose.

Sharing is big with me so it’s nice to see all the usual social options are available.

The ‘Send to app’ is a nice feature I mentioned in HalfTone. No need to save the photo output from Lo Mob then re-open in another editor, just ‘send’ it photo directly. If you did choose a square format, post directly to Instagram too.

HalfTone for the iPhone updated with Dropbox, Photo Stamps and Send To Camera+

As a reminder, HalfTone is the iPhone app that lets you convert your photos to newsprint dots. You can adjust the quantity and quality of those dots, add caption boxes like cartoons have and change the background ‘papers’. At first glance, my thought had been it was an app that has very limited uses, but places to share the photos keeps coming up.

The update has a few items that jump right out as ‘much needed’. The first is the addition to the stamps area, where you can choose an image to use to paste onto your HalfTone converted image. The image stamp can be rotated and resized.

Another item is sending the photos your working on within HalfTone directly out to Camera+. The feature has been available before to send photos directly to other enhancement apps rather than saving to the photo library then importing it to another app. The addition of Camera+ to HalfTone’s Send To options lowers the quantity of steps and number of photos half done on my iPhone.

The full list of HalfTone updates includes sending photos directly to DropBox too:

Creating and sharing moving Gifs on the iPhone with a Instagram like service – Gifture

I have mentioned a few fun ways of creating Gifs on your iPhone. One creation tool has taken it to the next level by supplying a free sharing service for those Gifs. The app and the service is called Gifture. As you can see below, the layout is very ‘instagram’ like. Most people post up actual Gifs they created with Gifture, but some are single photos. The majority of those Gif files are not small stop motion movies rather a series of separate images that appear like a slide show. Be warned, a lot of content is NSFW!

The photo taking screen has all the basics you need. Notice the shaded area around the square center box, only what is in the box gets recorded. You can choose which camera your using and if you want to have the flash on. The orange ‘a’ at the bottom is saying I have the app set in auto mode so Gifture will snap a series of photos for me rather than me having to tap the shutter button for each image. The number to the right is how many frames will be captured.

You can import images from your iPhone’s photo library, you can snap a shot at a time manually, or you can have Gifture automatically snap a series of photos. You choose how many you want to have taken, so the use of recording becomes more like recording a short movie.

Filters! Yes, you can apply filters to your Gifs you create in Gifture. Selecting a filter takes a couple seconds to apply as the feature has to update each individual image in the series that will be pressed into a single file at the end of the process.

The ‘frames per second’ is quick to use so that your animation can appear smooth or if your using completely unrelated images they don’t jump around radically, rather appears like a little slide show.

The Gifture app makes it very easy to move and remove images in your animation. In the case of the windmill, I deleted the last two images so there wasn’t a overlap, thus when it plays for other people the blades just turn and turn without any funny jumping backwards at the end.

When the Gif is as you like, simply choose to upload it to the Gifture social service for others to enjoy.

When viewing a Gif you posted to Gifture’s share, there are a couple small dots on the lower right corner, tapping brings up these options. A few items on these options. ‘Save to Camera Roll’ saves the animated Gif as a movie file, which if you share from the iPhone’s photo library is a small movie that plays once through. ‘Copy link’, ‘Email link’ and ‘Tweet’ all send links to the Gif on the Gifture’s site. The visitor can only see that one image and it not able to see the rest of your stream or other people’s either. Basically, the Gifs you create are locked to the Gifture’s social network unless you want it as a movie file.

I bought Cartoon Camera FX for the iPhone… so you don’t have to

If you have not figured it out yet, I pay my hard earned cash for every app you see covered on this site. The liberty of paying for apps is that there is never any pressure to review an app in a positive light if I don’t feel it is worthy.

In the case of Cartoon Camera FX, the description about the app in iTunes is light and there is a reason. The feature set of the app is light as well. The app is for creating cartoon like effects with photos taken with the iPhone. Those photos can either be taken through the app or imported from your iPhone’s photo library. If using the app to take the picture, what you see is what you get, the effect is applied on the screen. Press the center bottom button to snap the photo.

Rather than taking a picture, you can select the button on the lower left corner to choose an image to use from your iPhone’s photo library.

You can apply the effects to the images via the little face button in the lower right corner of the screen. Just select one of the effects and Cartoon Camera FX returns you to the photo with the effect applied.

When you select the center checkmark button, the image is saved to your iPhone photo library. Cartoon Camera FX mentions you can share the resulting images on Facebook or as an email attachment, that doesn’t seem to be via the app rather out of your built-in photo library. The resulting image is 3264 x 2448.

ProCamera for the iPhone on sale this weekend… and Wide Angle Photography

In the world of social services that want only square photos, a lot of iPhone photographers I talk to spend time thinking about the center of their photos knowing that is all that will be used. What is lost is the possible full wide view. I have used pano apps before to get a wider than normal view without going 360 degrees. But, the iPhone in landscape view alone is nicely wide. I found a nice article over on Photos Tuts+ that covers things to consider when taking wide photography. It covers things like framing, edge blur, depth of field, and more. The post is positioned towards a stand alone camera instead of a iPhone camera, but it has many important items you should keep in mind when framing up a iPhone shot.

If you have been sitting on the fence about whether you should buy the ProCamera ‘all-in-one’ iPhone camera app, now might be the right time. ProCamera is showing as only 99 cents in the iTunes store right now.

Quick reminder, the ProCamera solution was covered here before –Fine tuning how pictures are taken with the iPhone, before worrying about filters.

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