Tag Archives: photo editing

Photography Week, this week is the iPhone Photographer issue

There is a lot of chatter on the Internet from Pro Photographers explaining how an iPhone camera can never replace a high end DSLR in a Professional’s hands. I don’t try to put them all into one group. Even a smartphone camera in the right hands will result in photos ‘better’ than those produced by someone without the experience.

Rather than choose a side, why not explore the options to get the most out of a iPhone camera. There are going to be a lot of times opportunity presents it’s self and the full digital camera is sitting back on the kitchen table. Photography Week, a Universal app digital photography magazine is offering suggestions on getting more out of that iPhone camera that is always available in your pocket.

This week’s issue is an ‘iPhone Special’. There is a few apps covered, the usual group you have seen elsewhere (no new surprises), I enjoyed the articles they included on doing more with the iPhone than just photo adjustments. Lighting, angles, views, coloring and other interesting perspectives are covered.

Yahoo buys GhostBird Software which means no more KitCam and PhotoForge2

A quiet announcement happened today that many iPhone photographers may have missed. On GhostBird Software’s Web site is a page of text explaining that the development team has joined Yahoo to work with the Flickr team. The company is best known for PhotoForge, PhotoForge2 and KitCam. The last two has gotten a lot of press as well I covered it in the past. The apps all had lost of power for editing iPhone photos. More than just filters (arranged as ‘lenses’ and ‘film’), there was also fine tuning adjusters too.

The majority of the filters where an extra charge. The app as it was initially loaded onto your iPhone did a few things, but to get the full potential realized, a person had to spend some bucks for the extra bits.

From the GhostBird Software site, you can continue to use the software but the team will not be working on it anymore so it will interesting to see how the apps fit into the future iOS7 world. While people new to the apps wont be able to purchase, current owners can always reload the last copy they had updated to via iTunes unless deleted from there too.

“If you already have the KitCam or PhotoForge2 apps on your devices, you will be able to continue to use them in their current versions. However, we will not continue to update the apps as future versions of iOS are released. Anyone who previously purchased GhostBird Software’s apps, including KitCam and PhotoForge2, will be able to re-download those apps through iCloud. As of today, KitCam and PhotoForge2 are no longer available for download from the App Store.”

A few screen shots from KitCam as a reminder of the apps capabilities. How much of this will appear in a future Flickr iPhone app?

Streamzoo update lets you share your photos faster

Streamzoo is a photo social share service I have covered in detail before. It is one of the places I post and see the world via other people’s shares. As a reminder, the service leans more towards ‘streams’ that are basically hashtags, meaning the experience is a bit different from just following a long list of people.

The update this week is for letting a person post photos faster by being able to jump around the included photo edit tools. Normally, you can snap a photo, import from your iPhone’s photo library, or create a collage. After a photo is selected, the normal path takes a person through cropping, frames, filters and other enhancements.

The update first shows up via the little dots in each of the options to bring in photos. Swiping across the bar changes the action of the buttons. The middle changes from importing and going through the steps, to an ‘express’.

Streamzoo’s Express jumps past the edit options to the posting screen. Here you can enter a title and hashtags, or post without either. Also, pulling down on the screen exposes the photo that will be shared. Since I normally shoot and edit outside of Streamzoo, these changes mean a lot of saved time from launch to share!

Getting photos off film into the iPhone for sharing using the Smartphone Film Scanner

You have not heard of the SmartPhone Film Scanner? Well, that would be because it’s new item from the folks at Lomography and isn’t shipping till March. The idea is simple: make a mount for the iPhone that is pointed down a dark tunnel and allow film to be placed at the far end to take pictures of. There are some fun parts in making such a simple looking device of course. Alignment, backlighting, distance between the iPhone and film is just a few. In this case, the Lomography team had a head start since they offer a similar device for an earlier project (transferred ‘movies’ from film to the iPhone where people had recorded short movies using 35 mm film, called LomoKino).

If this looks interesting, and a bit of fun. You can jump in now and get your name on the list to receive one through their Kickstarter Project. The projects is already fully funded with two weeks to go till it wraps up. The solution might not be the best answer to that big box of 500 rolls of developed film in the corner, but for grabbing a few photos off of a roll now and then, it could be very handy. A quick method to get a film image into the iPhone that can then be edited and shared. The project is also outlined over on the Lomography site too.

MoPho app update – creating printed dog tags using your iPhone photos

Rather than waiting to get home to use the computer, the app MoPho allows you to create print products all on the iPhone. Using photos you have taken with your iPhone, the app offers a long list of items that can have your photos printed on. Choose a product, select one of your photos (you can pull photos from Instagram too), adjust the photo on the product, pay and MoPho service will print and ship the item for you. Great fun but also a life saver when you forget to send a gift to someone or need to have something for a special event like a company co-worker going away get together.

In the latest update, the MoPho app has received the addition to it’s product list… a Dog Tag.

Lesson for better Depth of Field Photography – works for iPhone too

This is post isn’t about an app for the iPhone, rather a nice video I saw that covers tips for better Depth of Field photography. I have covered a few apps where you can add the effect to a photo on your iPhone after you have taken the photo (eg. AfterFocus). You can still use those apps or use the focus ability of many iPhone camera apps (like ProCamera), there is more involved than just grabbing a photo and blurring out everything but your key object.

The video, Depth of Field by Cristina Mittermeier is about framing an image to tell a story. This can apply to taking the photo with your iPhone perfect when you hit the shutter button or later in your editing. The tips hold true whether your using a digital camera, a film camera or a iPhone. I’m not able to imbed the video here on this page, but you can jump over to Digital Photo Magazine and watch it there. Hope you find it as helpful as I did.

PicShop iPhone Photo Editor 2.0 – with “Tons of Editing”

When I first saw PicShop iPhone Photo Editor claim to do ‘Tons of Editing”, I had to chuckle. I actually went on past the app, but then returned to take a look later. This must of course be a light weight filters application app… happy to report that it is much more. While the app offer a few common found filters, the actual more detailed tuning options are nice with their enhancement sliders and pickers. That is to say, you can customize your photos pretty quickly without getting into a full photo editor like Laminar.

After importing a photo, the areas of turning are buttons across the bottom of the screen. Each will show it’s group of effects applied to the image in the thumbnail for quick reference. The Picshop 2.0 groups include: Edits, Filters, Frames and ‘Extras’.

Like in the screen shot below for writing on the photo, PicShop offers sliders to fine tune each effect and enhancement. The changes are shown in real time then they can be applied or discarded. This allows for many different tuning effects to be used without saving and reloading an image.

Color pickers are supplied by PicShop when the choices are needed.

The variety of focus options is nice as a quick way to pull an object out or create depth.

On the ‘cute’ side, there are stickers, writing, meme, and other photo customization options that are beyond the normal filters found elsewhere. Sharing with PicShop is through email, twitter or Facebook. Saving to the iPhone’s photo library in a variety of resolutions is also supported.

Using Twitter like Instagram for photo sharing with the iPhone – TwitPic has an app for that

A bunch of us was wondering why Twitter didn’t do more for photo sharing on the mobile years ago. There was a couple outside apps produced but the twitter apps never did more than let you add a photo or access photos in tweets via three taps. When Instagram hit the market, we felt it was a sign we were right and Twitter lost that game.

Now, a free solution from TwitPic has showed up to help you take photos, do a bit of editing, then post to your twitter stream.

After you snap a photo, or import from your iPhone photo library, TwitPic provides a few filters and image editing tools. These are from the Aviary free tools collection that developers can embed in their apps. Not sure why the app doesn’t use the full offering from Aviary. When the image is as you like, ‘Done’ takes you to a screen to add your 140 characters then post for all to see on Twitter.

Photos that are posted to Twitter can be seen in a scrollable, arranged by either Timeline (folks your following) and Popular. TwitPic does crop the images in this view so you see just part of the whole. Thus, you have a limited view and still have a extra tap to see the full image. The ‘profile’ icon in the upper right corner takes you to view your profile, images you have posted and comments on those images.

Select a photo in the stream to see it full size. If you do nothing for a bit or tap the screen, the upper/lower info bars disappear for a unrestricted view of the image.

When viewing an image, you can see in the lower right corner how many people have commented on it. Tap that area to open up the comments to add your thoughts and read text from others. There is another oval in the upper right corner of the screen, selecting it does nothing. TwitPic is a bit of a head scratcher where so much is possible but looks rushed to get out the door. Some people will post it’s a clean interface, I’m sticking with my feeling that it’s half done.

Thumba photo editor for the iPhone, is less about cute filters and more about serious editing

Thumba starts off looking a bit different from other photo editors and keeps going from there. Take a photo or import it results in a full image view and simple buttons. Thumba Photo Editor lets you grab another image, save and share, filters/effects, more information and a view of the photo before/after changes.

The tools are arranged differently than most photo editing tools on the iPhone. Thumba has rows to sweep through aligned in groups for: Image, Adjustments, Filters and Effects. Where most photo editing apps offer crop, borders and filters, Thumba has extended the options with more tuning in the more professional area. Pro like tools, yet still simple to use.

Depending on the tuning tool chosen, Thumba presents sliders for more customizable adjustments.

More info can be found on the image through the Thumba’s ‘i’ button. I like the adjustable resizing of the overall image. This is handy when I’m going to use the photo in a blog post vs sending to friends.

Just FYI, the full list of the tuning options from the developers:
Image
– Crop
– Rotate
– Flip
– Borders
. Burned
. Broken
. Cherry
. Film Strip
. Grunge
. Happy
. Holga
. Light Leaks
. Old Photo
. View Finder
. Year 1944
. Year 1967
– Colored Border
– Instant Camera
– Mirror
– Aspect Ratio in Crop function

Adjustments
– Auto Fix
– Brightness&Contrast
– Hue&Saturation
– Local Contrast
– Exposure
– Sharpen
– Red Eyes Removal
– Black&White
– Color Balance
– Shadows & Highlight
– Colorize
– Multiply
– Posterize
– White Balance

Filters
– Color Selection
– Cross Processing
– Glow
– Gradient Blend
– Grain
– Gray Scale
– HDR
– Infrared
– Lomography
– Retro
. Broken Camera
. Burned
. Dodged
. Extreme Damage
. Lovely
– Sepia
– Skin Treatment
– Soften Portrait
– Sunny Day
– Tilt Shift
– Vintage
. Eighties
. Glamour
. Schizo
. Seventies
. Vintage
. Warm Summer

Effects
– 3D Glasses
– Blur
– Invert Color
– Night Vision
– Pencil Sketch
– Solarization
– Vignette
– X-Ray
– Color Filter
– Diffuze
– Night Vision
– Silence Movie
– Stamp

Free solution to create movies using photos and audio all on your iPhone

I have used a few solutions on my Mac to quickly assemble short videos using images I took on a road trip, add a bit of audio, then share with family and friends. It has always seemed like something I should be able to do on the iPhone, quick and easy, but nothing built-in offered the ability.

Interesting, the solution I found is free. The app is from the Blurb folks that offers a great site for uploading your images to, which they will create a print photo book for you. Their Blurb Universal app is just as easy to use. Simply launch the free app, create a new ‘project’, then start importing photos from your iPhone photo library. Photos can be simply placed next to each other or in specialized layout templates.

After your iPhone photos have been added, you can add text, adjust the size of each and rotate to create the effect your going after. It is also possible to maximize the photos beyond a square where the image is actually wider than how Blurb imported it. There is a nice selection of transitions choices for how the end movie stitches the photos together too.

Each image can actually be tuned individually. Blurb’s editing tools are powerful enough to adjust photos to better match each other. While I do a bit of clean up prior to adding to the app, actual editing with the images next to each other makes it easier to get the brightness and colors closer to each other.

When you have the images flowing as you like, move over to add your audio. The whole set up Blurb is providing is great for recording your voice to the video of your iPhone images. When ‘done’, the completed video is saved to your iPhone’s photo library to share as you please.

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