Tag Archives: 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.

Linking emotion to social photo sharing

While a picture is worth a thousand words, a hint sometimes helps. On most of the photo sharing social systems, a bit of text can be added to expand on the photo message. Hash tag keywords is popular too so viewers can group photo viewing.

A ‘newer’ offering to the social photo sharing options is Pudding.To. While it was new to me, it has a very large following already, enough that the young company has occasional overruns on their servers as everyone jumps in at once. Popularity might be based on a few features they have over other options.

First, a uploaded photo doesn’t have to be a single photo. Pudding.To lets you pick up to four photos at a time and will build a collage out of them for you.

Each of the images can be moved around in their Collage spot. Also, Pudding.To will redo the order the photos appear via the ‘Layout’ button. Across the bottom is filter choices you can cycle through/apply. The ‘locked’ filters are unlocked via the quantity of ‘Likes’ and ‘Follows’ you do.

If you are uploading a single photo (rather than a collage), there are options to rotate, add tilt shift effect and Frame.

When you have the photo as you want it to be for sharing on Pudding.To, tap the ‘next’ button for access to the ‘Mood’ options to assign to the photo. It can be tough if you are having fun in a vacation photo… is that ‘Travel’ or ‘Happy’? Oh yea, it’s all for fun, don’t over think it!

After you choose the emotion associated with the photo your uploading, hashtag/location can also be added. These all tie into how you can find other photos with the same interest as yours. Pudding.To lets you view list of not only the hashtags but also the emotions people assigned to their images. ‘Travel’ is fun to see… great way to see fun spots around the world.

Free Hipstamatic Americana Lens and Case for Fashion Week

Now, through the 16th of February, in honor of Fashion Week, Hipstamatic is offering a free pack of the Americana Lens and Case. After the 16th, the pack will be an extra charge through in-app purchase.

For Hipstamatic fans… which I wasn’t till I started playing with lens/film combos and found a few set ups just great for my everyday shooting… the Americana case will be a nice change from the old camera look to a more retro camera.

The Americana lens offers a bit of a softening effect. I found it brings out the brown coloring a bit more than other lens options I have in my iPhone’s Hipstamatic film/lens options.

To grab your copy, just launch Hipstamatic on your iPhone, go to the cart area (via the little shopping cart icon) and you should see the Americana FreePak to click and download. Watch that area after February 16th for two new films to be introduced.

Update to Instagram for iPhone – changes you can really see!

The folks from Instagram (the social iPhone Photo service!) shot out an upgrade today. It’s full of what seems simple but will make a huge impact. A new filter, a new enhancement and a new UI!!

So, 2.1 includes the Lux photo enhancement. You may notice that it is very similar to Clarify in other apps I have mentioned before. It sharpens the colors and and brings the dark areas up to level with the lighter areas. There is also a new filter for your photos, called Sierra. It is a brighter, more colorful Earlybird.

Lastly, the Instagram buttons along the bottom have matured and the simplified look lightens up the whole experience. All fun stuff, looking forward to sharing my iPhone shots.

A DIFFerent case for the serious iPhone photographer

I’m always on the watch for a new case idea. The problem being is that I like the portability of the iPhone without a case, but like the features of many of the specialty cases. The Survivor from Griffin Technology is the case I use when I might be someplace the iPhone will get handled roughly. It does bulk up the iPhone 4 a lot though.

New to me is the Diff Case. The case is less about drop protect, which it does, rather it is more about protecting the faces and being able to mount your iPhone to a tripod. The Diff Case is currently $30, available directly from the manufacture.

The main ‘features’ of the Diff case is the doors that cover the flat sides of the iPhone 4, which can be opened tall or wide, and has a opening for the camera to work with the case still on. The two tripod mounts make it easy to set up for still or long exposure photographs.

Pixelating Parts of iPhone Photos Right On The iPhone

Popular in reality TV shows is the pixelate company logos of offensive images. You often see a person wearing a hat or tshirt where the logo is blurry. From time-to-time, a similar need might come to a photo taken with your iPhone. A license plate or someone in a window of a building that should not be there. Cloning or soft blur if you have the time is best, I’ll cover here shortly how best to do both of those. If your in a hurry though, a quick pixelation method is the app MosaicTouch.

You can select an area with two fingers or just swipe across with one finger to apply the pixelating effect. To lessen the impact of the area, there are 18 base colors to choose from as well you can adjust the size of the pixels. MosaicTouch is quick, simple, and even lets you share directly out to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, email or save to your iPhone’s photo album.

Fun to blur out friends at a party pictures too for a humorous ‘what stays in Vegas’ look.

Getting the Tri-Filter Effect with your iPhone Photos

The Tri-Filter Effect, also known as the Harris Shutter, is where three photos are taken and merged together. Unlike TiltShift, the Tri-Filter takes the three images with different color filters: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta (some refer to as the Red/Green/Blue). Since the three photos are taken one after the next, any areas that move will show as a ghost on the final photo in a particular color. Imagine a person walking across the street, if you take three photos quickly, the background and road are still but you will have three of the people as they progressed between the time you snapped the shot.

Take that idea and apply it to anything that moves a bit like water or clouds. You can also move the camera to cause a color shadow on the objects in the photo. A few examples sites/pages: Tri-Filter Landscapes, Harris Shutter Flickr Discussion, “Apply Filter” looking at Tri-Filter photo options.

Since we have a iPhone in our hand and don’t want to haul around a bunch of filters to change out, there is an app to handle that magic for us. HarrisCamera will snap the three photos with digital color filters across 1, 2, 5, or 10 seconds. Then, save the image to your iPhone Album, email or share on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Hipstamatic camera for iPhone updated with Foodie SnapPak

When Hipstamatic came out, I had a tendency to not use it. While the ‘retro’ camera effect was fun for many shots, it took so long to get the image from snap to library, I moved on. The app offers all sorts of ‘lenses’, ‘films’, and ‘flashes’. Which, act as filters, but adds to the romance of photography. The setting up the shot prior to taking it rather than enhancing a photo afterwards.

The Hipstamatic app offers the lens/film/flash options in little bundles, or as they call them, ‘packs’. A new pack was released in time for the holiday dinners, Foodie SnapPak. The SnapPak bundle includes Loftus Lens, DC Film and Tasty Pop Flash. Below is an image I took without the flash on. The flash adds a washout to the white areas of the image to add to the effect. In my house, espresso is in the food group. The Foodie SnapPak is positioned around the photography of your feast food items.

Paper photos to an online family tree using your iPhone

A family tree site is offering a free app to get your images from paper to digital. The idea is that you take a picture of the printed picture using your iPhone. The 1000memories app then lets you align the image on the iPhone so it is straight and clean. You can add text to the image as well as keywords, then upload to the online family album. So far, I have yet to see where they are charging for the iPhone app or the online service. Maybe bigger accounts of shared accounts carry an upgrade charge. I have yet to see that though.

Everything iPhone Photo

Where iPhone Photography has a home