Tag Archives: photo effects

Creating those cool Clone photos using only the iPhone

A year ago, I was involved in a fun movie, “People in Motion“. The movie follows several very talented folks as they Parkour their way around the US. That is to say, they leap and jump their way around city obstacles while making it look so easy. When I first decided to get involved in Producing the movie, I was taken by a single photo where a person is doing a summersault in air. The single photo had the artist at several spots in the action like they where frozen in time at different stages of the leap. A special photography technique was used for the shots, which is now available to do with an iPhone!

The above photo was done using the iPhone app Clone Camera. A full feature, yet amazingly easy to use app. While there are a few tuning options, the app is ready to use right upon launching. You take 2 to 4 images, either manually or let the app auto snap for you. Then, trace the part of each photo that you want to carry forward to the final image. Clone Camera then uses the single background and pastes in the parts you chose into a single final output.

The ‘camera shake correction’ is a nice feature. Just because everyone else does, Clone Camera also includes 27 filters to apply to the output image. When done, save to the iPhone photo library in high-resolution or share out through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Flickr.

A new option for iPhone Photo Bokeh Light Effect Fans

If you have the need to add light effect dots or shapes to your iPhone photos, I have found a new option. An option that is offering more tuning than is found in other Bokeh light apps. Bokehful still has the randomness of the dot or shape location on the photo, but lets you have better control of the placement by painting with your finger.

Choose a shape to have the lighting appear in on your iPhone photo. Then, choose the colors and gradients for the lighting. Bokehful makes the process quick via it’s pickers and pre-assembled light color groupings. You can even choose the direction the gradient effect is applied.

When done, the image is saved at full resolution, or share with others through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or as a eMail attachment. As an extra, this is a universal app so when you buy for your iPhone, you can install on your iPad to use at no extra charge too.

Alien Sky app… for those times you really need a planet in your iPhone photographed sky

I mentioned earlier a couple apps that allowed you to add sun flares to your photos so you create iPhone photos with light washout (LensLight and LensFlare). The development team that delivered those enhancement apps have now increased their offerings with Alien Sky. Instead of bright light areas on your photograph, you can add:

Alien Sky Features:
– Space Objects such as Planets, Moons, and Galaxies
– Bright Suns and Distant Stars
– Futuristic Lens Flares
– Gradient Filters

The familiar object picker screen still has a few light bleeding effects. Now though, the selection of images to ghost into your iPhone photos has grown to cover about any ‘alien‘ impressions you need. Instead of the moon being a small round bright dot or saturn being a tiny spec, photos can have planets in the sky large enough for anyone looking at the photo will know exactly what they are looking at.

Those fun iPhone Photo Effects using PowerCam – On Sale Today

Aside from the normal filters group offered by many apps, the app PowerCam offers more than 50 real time effects for a fun twist to your iPhone photography.

As the overview help screen shows below. PowerCam offers video and photo modes, quick access to Adjustable Modes as well a button to open the Effects options to sweep through. All Effects are show in real time when your taking the photo.

Tap the magic wand button to bring up the variety of effects you can apply to the photo. Rather than choosing a filter later, PowerCam shows what your resulting photo will be as your taking it. This is particularly important since most of the options are true effects rather than a tone changing filter.

Some effects require tuning rather than just applying to the whole image. Like in the case of TiltShift shown below, PowerCam has onscreen tools showing in real time to get the effect as you want it to be in real time rather than editing later.

Whether it is a movie or photograph being taken with PowerCam, all of the on screen controls are easy to access when using the iPhone’s camera.

I had fun with the little guy using the PowerCam sketch effect:

Creating photo mosaics on the iPhone… for free

Normally, mosaics are a job for the desktop computer. Software has to look at a photo, examine the bright/dark areas and finding pictures that reflect the right coloring. An app that does basic cropping and image filters also offers several levels of mosaics.

The app, Fotoyaki, is a free iPhone app that produces some very interesting effects. Like any specialty photo app, some pictures produce great results, others not so much. The free price of Fotoyaki means it’s on my iPhone that I toss pictures at to see what works.

Along with the mosaics processing, there are also to levels of dot effects that can really be fun. The Fotoyaki dots have proven to work best on images I have taken with straight lines. Sharing the finished result is done by saving to the iPhone photo library, email, Twitter and Facebook.

iPhone Obsessed – the iPhone photography book I wanted to write!

The concept was simple, but to pull it off meant a lot of work. I set about taking photos with my iPhone and editing them with a variety of iPhone photo editing apps. I then showed the original and the final options with effects applied. It has been a lot of fun over the last year, and it has been a serious lot of work for a year.

Over the holidays, I found and purchased “iPhone Obsessed“. A book that shows finished images and the app/settings it took to get the image. The author claims it took them a year of hard work to take the photos and work through the best solution to get the effect they were looking for. Having lived a similar year, I can say I believe them. The book is a very nice item to grab (found it on Amazon here) to save yourself many hours to playing around. It is still best to experiment to learn what you can do and equally what doesn’t work. But iPhone Obsessed takes a lot of guess work out of getting to the finished result you may be looking for. It’s a great way of ‘seeing’ ideas around what is possible when you frame up a shot too.

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.