iOS Tip: Basic Photo Editing In iOS

[sparkyscott21]

Diptic is an app for iPhone and iPad that makes creating diptych and triptych photo collages easier than ever. With a ton of layouts, filters, basic editing tools, and customizations, you can quickly build a visual story using either freshly taken photos or pictures stored in your iPhone camera roll. When you’re finished, Diptic let’s you send the collage directly to Facebook, Instagram, Camera+, Tumblr, Twitter, and a variety of other services, so you can share your creation with the world. This is a fun app and if you’ve ever wondered how people were making quick diptychs while on the go, this very well could be the answer.

Usually costing $0.99, Diptic is the App Store free app of the week, get it while you can:

Get Diptic free this week from the iOS App Store

This app fits right in with the camera tips we’ve been posting lately to help you take better pictures with the iPhone. Grab it while it’s free and have some fun.

7-17-12

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[sparkyscott21]

Have you ever noticed that iPhone video gets recorded according to the orientation of the device? If you haven’t noticed that yet, pay attention to it now, because you’ll create significantly better videos if you just rotate the iPhone into horizontal orientation before hitting that record video button.

The image shown is a humorous look as to why this matters, and unless you’re living in a zero-gravity space station somewhere, do everyone and yourself a favor and just orient the iPhone properly before shooting video. This applies to iPad and iPod touch as well, take advantage of the orientation lock if you must and start recording the right way.

To further beat the point, here’s a ridiculous video.

7-18-12

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[sparkyscott21]

Aperture, meet Instagram.

Remember those neat Lightroom presets which would add Instagram filters to your big grown-up photos? Now the author Casey Mac is back with versions for Photoshop (snore) and Aperture (yay!).

All of Instagram’s filters, from the excellent X-Pro II to the more pedestrian Kelvin, and they all manage to get very close to the originals. I have Casey’s Lightroom set which I love, and the filters also make a great starting place for further tweaking.

Like the Lightroom set, the Photoshop and Aperture sets come in at $5. And if $5 is too much for you to pay for a bunch of image filters, then hush your mouth. Why don’t you just head over to Android where everything is cheap or free, including the user experience?

8-1-12

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[sparkyscott21]

There are more than a few hardware camera kits and peripherals on the market that extend the capabilities of the iPhone’s built-in cam. We recently reviewed the Olloclip camera lens kit that provides three external lenses for iPhone 4S. Today we introduce you to another that has just been announced by Mophie and combos with a dedicated companion app for managing and sharing footage. According to Mophie, the goal of its new action sports “Outride” camera kit, which integrates a wide-angle lens with 170 degrees viewing angles and a waterproof, impact resistant casing, is to eliminate “the need for a dedicated device such as a GoPro or Contour camera.” The kit will also include several custom, quick-release mounts for attaching the device to a variety of sports equipment and capturing footage at various angles.

To go along with the camera kit, Mophie will also launch the Outride iOS app that provides users with a profile and the ability to capture and share footage with other users:


· Capture, View and Share—Free on the iTunes store, the OUTRIDE app is a place for the action sports community to search and share videos from around the globe, on-the-go:

· Personal Profile—Get started by uploading a profile picture and adding in your location. From the personalized profile, users can view captured videos and photos, find and follow friends, and customize categories

· Capture—Allows the user to shoot both vertically or horizontally

· View—Custom settings allows for a unique viewing experience, and provides notifications of “friends” updates

· Share—Community-based sharing allows users to discover new users and connect with the “mophie” community within the app and through other social networks

If you are interested in the Outride, you can sign up at Mophie’s website to learn more when it launches sometime in mid-September. Prices will range from $129.95 to $149.95 for the various bundles, and we will bring you our first impressions when we get our hands on one.

8-2-12

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[sparkyscott21]

Take stunning 360 panoramas everywhere. 360 Panorama turns your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad into a full featured 360 degree panoramic camera. Easily capture immersive panoramas in seconds and instantly share your 360 view with the world. Simply pan the camera and watch as images are stitched seamlessly. 360 Panorama captures the scene in a way you never could with a traditional camera.

occipital.com/360/app

8-2-12

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[sparkyscott21]

Recording video is one of the great features of the iPhone and iPad, but before you send it out to a friend or upload to YouTube, you can make some quick edits and ditch unnecessary parts of any recorded video by using the built-in Trim feature. It’s just like trimming in QuickTime but it can be done right on your iOS device:

From the Camera app or Photos app, find and select the video you want to trim

Grab the handle on the left or right side and move inward, adjust to accomodate the portion of the movie you want to shorten the clip to

When finished, tap the yellow Trim button

Now you have two options; trim the original video clip down to size, or split the trimmed selection out into a new video clip

For sending small videos out from a much longer video, saving as a new clip is recommended. For editing out shaky video or parts of a movie that aren’t worth keeping, trimming the original is suggested.

Both of these options will lead to smaller file sizes because the video is shortened. To get the full HD quality video onto a computer you’ll still need to copy the video using a USB connection between the iOS device and the computer.

Keep on shooting, and remember to hold the camera horizontally for best results!

8-17-12

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[sparkyscott21]

As promised, Adobe will be updating its latest Photoshop CS6 image editing software to support HiDPI screens like the one found in Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina display, with an expected rollout scheduled for this fall.

In a blog post on Thursday, Adobe announced both Photoshop and Lightroom will be getting HiDPI functionality "in the coming months," specifically naming Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina display as an example of what to expect from the high-resolution support.

When Apple announced the MacBook Pro with Retina display in June, the company said Adobe was already working to bring HiDPI compatibility to the professional photo editor but fell short of mentioning when to expect the update.

While the free Photoshop CS6 update is slated to reach existing customers this fall, the launch schedule for Lightroom 4 appears to be up in the air, as Adobe said it will release the software "as soon as work is complete."

In another post specifically regarding Adobe's work in relation to the MacBook Pro with Retina display, the company said other programs are expected to follow suit but notes the process of updating software to support such a high-resolution screen is more involved than just tweaking UI elements.

From Thursday's blog post:

The increased resolution of these displays requires that each product update the interface of the application and ensure that the content or the creation itself is displayed accurately with the appropriate level of fidelity. As an example, to enable HiDPI display support in Photoshop requires the replacement of 2500 icons and cursors and other engineering work which will be complete and ready for customers this Fall. […] Therefore each product team will be releasing support for HiDPI display for Apple’s Retina Display as soon as the development is complete and tested for each individual product.

Currently, Adobe plans to bring HiDPI support to Dreamweaver, Edge Animate, Illustrator, Photoshop Touch, Prelude, Adobe Premiere Pro and SpeedGrade. The updates will be free to CS6 and Creative Cloud users.

The blog post points out that Photoshop, Lightroom and the iPad-centric Photoshop Touch will all support Retina display quality screens, but Photoshop Elements will not be HiDPI-compatible in the near future.

Also mentioned Creative Cloud members should expect to receive "new features" soon, though the company failed to give further details on what those could be.

8-30-12

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[sparkyscott21]

When you’re stuck staring at the grey lens shutter graphic for 5 to 10 seconds before you can even take a picture, you’ve likely already missed the shot you were hoping to get. Obviously the quickest way to access the iPhone camera is using the lock screen camera swipe instead of manually launching the Camera app, but what if both methods take a long time to open?

If you constantly find yourself looking at the lens shutter graphic and waiting forever for the slow camera to load, all you need to do to speed up Cameras launch is delete all the iPhone photos.

How you clear out the pictures is up to you, though it’s fastest if you connect the iPhone to a computer and delete them from there rather than deleting them in iOS itself. Also, if you establish a USB connection you can easily transfer all the pictures to the computer before ditching them all, which is certainly worthwhile if you have pictures you care about.

By clearing out the Camera Roll, you’ll dramatically speed up the launch time of the Camera app. Why does this work? Maybe because it’s not loading thumbnails or having to calculate the number of pictures stored on the device, who knows, but it seems the more images you have stored in Camera Roll the slower the Camera app takes to load. This is a problem that is felt much worse on the gradually aging hardware of iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, so trim back on the stored images and get your speed back.

9-5-12

Source:osxdaily.com

[sparkyscott21]

The folks at iPhone 5 mod are offering a 3-in-1 Lightning Camera Connection Kit just for the photo geeks in the crowd, allowing you to upload pictures and video to a Lightning-enabled iPhone or iPad. Available for $23.90, the connector packs a USB cable that connects directly into a camera via USB, an SD card, or micro-SD card. While Apple offers a camera connection kit — not supporting Lightning — that connects with a camera via USB or an SD card (also better 30-pin versions on Amazon), this seems like the better offering supporting three formats and Lightning for a cheaper price. Additionally, iPhone 5 Mod also offers the 3-in-1 Cable Pro supporting users to charge their devices with Apple’s Lightning or 30-pic technology, or standard microUSB for $13.90.

12-5-12

9to5mac.com

[sparkyscott21]

If you've wanted to play with High Dynamic Range Photography but want to step beyond Apple's included HDR feature, HDR from Lucky Clan Software is worth a look.

HDR is free for a limited time. The app takes two pictures, one light and one dark. It then aligns and blends them into one image with wider dynamic range. Unique to this app is a feature that shows you 4 options for the final image, labelled Auto, Optimized, Vivid, and Contrast. The app also allows you to bring in two images for processing that are already on your camera roll. Native resolution of your photos is maintained, which is a positive feature.

In my tests I found the app to be very fast at rendering the new image. The blending options make it more flexible than the Apple provided HDR feature. What the app lacks is the extended dynamic range of some of its competitors. That's easily tested by shooting from an interior room toward an open window. The HDR app loses a lot of detail in the shadows, while some of the other HDR apps don't. You can see some examples of this in the gallery attached to this article. I compared HDR to the Apple HDR feature, Pro HDR, which sells for US$1.99, and the $1.99 HDR3.

All the apps had strengths and weaknesses. ProHDR and HDR3 could see more detail in the shadows. ProHDR also did better on keeping hot spots from appearing in the sky. The Apple HDR feature also rendered the skies more smoothly. Apple does better at this because it doesn't push the HDR rendering as far as some of the other apps. Of course that can also be a negative. I didn't change the saturation on any of the images, and used the auto mode on the HDR app.

HDR is a good app that will take you beyond the feature set that Apple offers. On the other hand, it doesn't measure up to some of the paid apps that have better dynamic range and some more editing features.

HDR requires iOS 5.0 or later, and is optimized for the iPhone 5. It is a universal app.

www.tuaw.com

2-24-13