Parsley - 2 Ways

by Linda



Wasn't August Break nice! I enjoyed taking some time to breathe in the last of summer and enjoy the days. The start of a new school year always feels like a new beginning. New routines and new friends. My morning walks take me past an elementary school and I walked slowly by on the first day so I could watch all the children with their new shoes and new backpacks getting ready to start a new school year with big smiles, great anticipation and probably a few butterflies! The air around the school was just electric that morning!

 

As I took time to think about my photography journey and wonder about what is in store, I remembered that something I enjoy doing, and is really a lot of fun to me (like playing), is to take a picture of the same thing with my DSLR and my phone and then edit each one, then compare them.

 

I am one of the few people that edit DSLR pictures on my computer and phone pictures on my phone. Call me crazy old fashioned. So that is how these pictures were edited, respectively.

 

Today, I'm showing you the parsley I photographed with my DSLR and edited with Lightroom and the same parsley I photographed with my phone and edited in Snapseed and Phototoaster.

 

Can you tell which one was taken with a DSLR and which one was taken with a phone?

 

How about if I show you what they looked like before they were edited.

 

Did that help?

 

Take a look at the top diptych and this one just above. Decide which one you think is DSLR and which one is phone. I'll give you 10 seconds (more time than Usain Bolt needs to run 100 meters)

 

Ready? 1-mississippi 2-mississippi 3-mississippi 4-mississippi 5-mississippi 6-mississippi......

 

World record!

 

What did you decide?

 

If you guessed the picture on the left is the DSLR and the picture on the right is phone, go to the head of the class! Winner winner chicken dinner!

 

Here's the DSLR SOOC/edited side-by-side comparison -

Gently edited with Lightroom, auto tone, kk_still preset, slight vignette

 

 

Here's the phone, actually 2 different apps so 3 pictures-SOOC/app/app

top left-SOOC,

top right Snapseed-HDR, Glamor glow, minor Tune Image (prbly an ambience adjustment),

bottom Phototoaster-Silver Light Preset

 

Easy peasy but always fun.

 

Have you done any two-fisted shooting?

 

Share it with us in the gallery! Another way to use a diptych (or tryptich!)

 

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iPhoneography Silhouette

by Linda

 

 

"Delusional"

 

iPhone photo taken with Hipstamatic (Salvador84/Black keys extra fine)

edited with Repix

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Taking a silhouette shot with an phone camera can be difficult. That smart little camera wants everything to be as well lit as possible with every shot.

 

When taking a silhouette with my phone, I have had luck using Hipstamatic and through trial and error, selecting a lens film combo that gives me what I'm trying to achieve. For this shot, I wanted a silhouette with a double exposure. I positioned myself in front of a bright window and shot away until I got what I was looking for.

 

In Repix I added all the big and little bubbles and birds as well as adjusted the overall tone of the picture.

 

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Silhouettes can be very mysterious or evoke different emotions which is what I love about them. Taking a silhouette through one or two different apps can add just that much more to the shot!

 

Try it sometime! It's a lot of fun!

 

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App Review-Hipstamatic DSPO

by Linda

 

Recently Hipstamatic released a new app called Hipstamatic DSPO. (pronounced dis-po, for disposable)

This app is completely separate from their well known Hipstamatic app. Hipstamatic DSPO is a fun little app that allows you to share a camera with friends. A "disposable" camera, since it is set up for one time use. Think about all the events (weddings) where there have been disposable cameras on the tables, put there so you can take some photos. DSPO is much like that, but Hipstamatic amped it up a little.

With DSPO, you set up a camera, add a timer, invite your friends and shoot away.

You name the camera and give it a photo of it's own-either take a new one or import one from your camera roll, set the timer (which is really camera duration)-you have choices of 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 hours, 3, 7, 30, 365 days, invite your friends via your contact list, facebook, twitter and start taking pictures.

Once you begin taking pictures, that's where the fun begins. There are several filters you can add to your photo for different looks, you can caption your photo, you can write on/highlight/underline your photo and you can assign a mood to your photo (sad, merry, happy, sexy, yummy) 

The write/highlight/underline option is a fun one but when you're at an event, you may not have time to use it.

None of the photos you or your friends are taking will be visible until the timer is off. They aren't even in your photo album on your phone. But, everytime someone takes a photo, there will be a message in the message center inside the app. It will tell you who took a photo, where it was taken and what kind of mood it was. In this message center you can also chat with all your friends.

I thought all this sounded like fun and wanted to try it but there were no weddings, birthdays, anniversaries in my near future so I asked my Life Sisters if they wanted to play. I got overwhelming support from them because they are the best! We decided to play on a Saturday. I set up a camera, set the timer for 12 hours and invited them. Once everyone was on it was so much fun being able to chat with them and seeing they were taking pictures. Not being able to see the pictures at the exact moment they were taken added to the excitement!

At the end of the timer, we were able to scroll through the pictures that everyone had taken. You can comment on pictures and you can save any or all of the pictures to your camera roll. You can also share the pictures on social media.

It was a nice way to spend some time virtual photo walking with my Life Sisters who are spread out across the country!

Overall, I think Hipstamatic DSPO is a fun app that would work very well at any event. The drawback is it is for an IOS device only. (I have a dream that someday soon, all apps will work on all phones, regardless of their operating system!)

Besides the IOS only thing,
-it would be nice to be able to set up a camera and not have the timer start until the event begins (right now, the timer starts counting down as soon as you set it up)
-I would like to be able to change the timer once the camera is set up (no do-overs now)
-this app uses a lot of battery, it makes sense because of how much is going on but it would be nice if it wasn't such a battery hog

Give Hipstamatic DSPO a try. It's free in the app store. There is an in-app purchase (the pens to write on the photo and a few more filters) it is 99 cents.

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Thank you Terri, Dotti (Dorothy), Deanna, Carol and Leigh for playing along with me! It was such fun! Does anyone recognize the camera cover photo?

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When Size Matters

by Linda

 

 

Printing our pictures is one of the more satisfying parts of this whole photographic experience. Whether you are scrapbooking, framing, selling or giving, holding the pictures in your hands and viewing them in the real world and not just on the computer can give you a sense of pride and accomplishment in what you have created. And I hope you are printing them. Even the ones on your phone.

The little cameras on our phones have come a long way. The one on my current phone takes pictures with amazing clarity. We all know how important image size is when it comes time to print our pictures and sometimes you might wonder if the pictures on your phone are big enough to print clearly. They probably are in most cases, unless you cropped it or used an app that degrades the pixels.

It's easy to see how cropping will reduce pixels, you chopped them off! There are some apps that will degrade the pixels of your picture just by adding the effect that you went there for in the first place, whether you crop it or not. You take a perfectly good picture and you want to run it through a favorite app and that favorite app will spit out a reduced pixel image. Why is that? I have no idea! (if you do please explain this to us in the comments)

So how do you know if your picture is big enough? There is a handy app called "Photosize" that will tell you. (for iPhone) It's sole purpose in life is for you to put a picture in it and it will tell you how many pixels wide and how many pixels tall and what the total pixels are.  That's all it does. After it has shown you the pixels of that picture, it simply asks for another.

This is useful information, but what do you do if you have a picture that is too small? One way I resize/resample a picture is with another app called "Filterstorm". (for iPhone, coming soon to Android) This is a good app with a lot of other uses, when saving a picture you get the option to tell it what size to save the picture and at what resolution. (try Photo Resizer for Android)

I cropped the above picture to show the pixel degradation from the cropping then I ran it through Filterstorm and show the resize/resample size.

After cropping -

You can see the total pixels are reduced by more than half.

After resizing/resampling in Filterstorm, there are mega pixels! Over achiever! I input 3000 pixels wide and 3000 pixels tall which is bigger than the actual image and I input maximum image quality so that is why I got so many pixels.

If you're interested in converting total pixels to megabytes, there are way too many variables to explain, compression ratios, ppi's, calibrations, whether it's Tuesday and so on, so rather than give you a headache, let me just say, try to save your pictures at the highest resolution possible. If you have to resize/resample, start with width and height of 3000 pixels each. This way you will be sure to get your pictures printed at the size you want, and they will look mah-velous!

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Who Would've Thunk

by Deanna

Ok I have to start this post with a major mea culpa, aka oops or confession time.  Last year at this time and for months before and months after I literally pooh poohed taking pictures with my smart phone.  My argument was "why would you take pictures with your phone when you have spent hundreds of dollars on a good camera and good lenses?", a valid argument I thought convincingly. And then in October I upgraded my I-Phone to the new 6 and wow did that change my thinking completely.  Number one the Apple people got on board with improving the "native" camera (the camera app that comes with the phone) and omg number 2, there are hundreds of new apps out in the App world that take an ordinary image and transform it into little pieces of art.

You know I have no little children at home so posting my everyday life is not filled with gleeful children taking baths, or riding bikes, or performing their 2nd grade Christmas concert much to the delight of Moms and Dads.  My ordinary life captured in I-Phone images is usually the everyday beauty of my surroundings, nature, the seasons, interesting structures, my kids (aka dogs).

So today I want to share with you some of my favorite apps.  This will not be a tutorial, since I am still figuring out some of these apps myself, but I do recommend them. Just download and play, there is always a delete or back button, so come on let the merriment begin.  Now I will tell you that not all of these apps are free, in fact most of the really good ones are not, but after spending $$$'s on lenses, $2.99 is literally a drop in the bucket.  And yes, it is a one-time charge....I asked that same question when I began this new I-Phoneography adventure.

OK first up "Waterlogue".  This was the very first app I downloaded because it is just too darn fun and turns an ordinary picture into a little water-color like beauty.  I said this will not be a tutorial but I will add this, I always do a little editing in the "camera" app usually just lightening and then once you have brought your picture into the Waterlogue app, I always choose "illustration" to transform my images.

I know you saw this one on my last FOL post, but I have to brag just a little, this was chosen by the Waterlogue site as the "image of the day" last Sunday.  I beamed.  Many of the apps have a site and if you #tag them sometimes you get lucky and may be featured on their Instagram site.

And you know how I love me some red barns...

Next up....DistressedFX  this app adds some interesting textures to your images.  And a bonus is a feature with "birds" to give your oftentimes boring skies some action.  The above image was edited in Waterlogue and then I added some DistressedFX to add texture to the sky and the bonus feature, a group of birds.  Ta Da

Next up....My Sketch...My good friend, Marti gave me this idea.  She has a 3 year old granddaughter that loves to color.  She takes pictures using this app and then prints them out for her to have fun coloring.  But I use the "colored pencil" design within this app to create these little gems.

A wilted tulip...

For Downton Abbey fans....

OK I know not everyone likes HDR and I admit it can get a bit over dramatic, but sometimes I like that drama in selected images.  I have 2 apps for this process, Pro HDR and Simply HDR.  If you like the look I would encourage you to give it a whirl.  And yes, both have a charge.

Chicago from a flight returning home....

And a couple of "font programs" with added flourishes are Word Swag and Rhonna that are fun to play with.  And finally, I will have to say that Instagram did a bang-up job when they upgraded, great new filters and editing options.

So there....a few of the many, many apps that are available to phone photographers of which I can now say I am one of the bunch, I have found an added "tribe".