Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

PhotoForge

PhotoForge by GhostBird Software is on sale right now and for a limited time, the price has been reduced to just $0.99 USD — the lowest price I’ve seen it in a while.

Several apps have tried to wear the namesake of “Photoshop for the iPhone” including Photogene and PerfectPhoto. PhotoForge truly is the image editing powerhouse for iPhone. I use both this and Photogene regularly to process my images. If you’re only using Photogene, you are missing out on so much that your iPhone is capable of.

Click here to read our recent review of PhotoForge. Recently, PhotoForge was selling for $2.99 USD. It’s a great app at three bucks and one that I use often. For $0.99, PhotoForge is an essential purchase if you don’t have it already. I’m not sure how long this sale will last, so grab it now before the price goes back up.

App Store link: PhotoForge

=M=

~~~~

HipstaMatic

I have much love for Hipstamatic. No other app (or Photoshop plug-in) creates such organic and analog-looking images so easily. The new Hipstamatic 150 update is available now in the App Store. From the list of features, it’s a terrific update to an already amazing app. The update adds a ton of new features and improvements, in-app file sharing to Flickr, as well as addresses several performance issues. Start-up time has been improved significantly. There’s also a new monthly photography contest accessible in-app. We’ll post more details as they become available.

As is the case with the previous Hipstamatic 110 update, there’s a new optional HipstaPak available as an additional in-app purchase, featuring two new films. I can’t wait to shoot with the new BlacKeys SuperGrain B+W Film!

The free update is live now or you can (and should) purchase the updated version if you don’t already own the app.

Here’s a list of what’s new and fixed in Hipstamatic 150:

Read the rest of this entry →

We recently reviewed the free app Camera Plus by Global Delight and named it as one of the best free iPhone camera replacement apps. Hopefully, you like the free app so much, you buy Camera Plus Pro with several additional features. If you’ve been on the fence about buying the app, consider that one very cool new feature in the next major upgrade is video for all iPhones, including older ones. And from a sample clip released this week, it looks like the quality of that video is pretty decent for a phone cam.

Here’s a clip from Global Delight’s YouTube Channel, taken recently, showing the video capabilities of the beta:

As the clip shows, the video is smooth and the frame rate seems better than most of the 3rd-party video recording apps currently available. It appears to offer those with older iPhones a superior alternative if they want to record video on those devices. Glyn Evans on iPhoneography.com recently wrote an excellent article, “Shooting Video on the iPhone 2G/3G.” In it, he notes that nearly all of the currently available video recorders for older, non-3GS iPhones record at 15 frames-per-second or lower, which means that the picture will look choppy when played back. It looks to me like Camera Plus Pro 2.0 will have video of at least that, possibly higher. To my eye, the playback of the beta clip was smoother than any of the other alternatives currently available.

Read the rest of this entry →

Gorillacam

Check the App Store for the great new update of Gorillacam by Joby Inc. The update adds a few great new features to this camera replacement app that we recently reviewed in our Best Free iPhone Camera Replacements article. Best of all, the app is still free.

The version 1.1 update adds anti-shake image stabilization, tap-to-focus for 3GS iPhones, selectable image sizes and a very nice full resolution 4X digital zoom. It’s a great update to an already excellent camera replacement app.

If you don’t already have a camera replacement app, Gorillacam is worth a serious look — even more so after this update.

Gorillacam is still free in the App Store. [link]

=M=

~~~~

Photoshop.com App

The latest version of Photoshop.com Mobile has just been released. We reviewed the app previously and, for the most part, this update builds on all that was good about the first release.

The new 1.1.0.21 update adds several tools which should have been included in the first release. Straighten, Sharpen and Contrast tools are now included, as well as several new borders. The Sharpen and Contrast tools work like the other adjustment tools in PS Mobile, with a finger swipe across the screen. The Straighten tool uses a two-finger gesture to rotate the image to an onscreen grid. All three tools are pretty straightforward and easy to use.

Read the rest of this entry →

Pixels at an Exhibition
Deadline for submissions: January 15
Voting begins on January 15 through January 20
Reception and show opening January 30, 4-8 PM

Giorgi Gallery
2911 Claremont Blvd.
Berkeley, CA
www.giorgigallery.com

Exhibit: January 30 – February 27, 2010

Details at iphontography.org

200 images will be printed and displayed in the gallery for the month of February 2010, and will be sold as individual works of art. A book will be published that will include all of the images along with names and a short bio of each iPhoneographer.

Deadline for submissions: January 10. Voting begins on January 15 through January 20. Reception and show opening January 30. There is no submission fee, but each iPhoneographer is limited to 5 images.

Register at iphontography.org and read the submission guidelines to start.

Note from =M=: Another deadline for a brick-and-mortar iPhoneography exhibition looms, this one on the west coast at the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley. I’m submitting my 5 images to this exhibit and I’m looking forward to seeing what organizer Knox Bronson has in store for the overall project. I like the idea of a book — the catalog — of the exhibition, and the opportunity it gives for the permanence of print.

Images that have been submitted for this exhibition are currently on display at iphontography.org.

iPhone therefore iArt
Chicago Art Department

Exhibition @CAD East Gallery
1837 South Halsted, Chicago
Friday, January 8, 2010, 6-10pm

Email mike@chicagoartdepartment.org for questions.

iPhone therefore iArt at the CAD (Image created by Mike Nourse, Jon Satrom, Carl Sweets, and Melissa Porter. Apps: Satromizer, Collage, Juxtaposer, and Swissmaker.)

Chicago Art Department is pleased to present 25 artists from around the world, all exploring the iPhone as creative tool.

iPhone Therefore iArt is the culmination of a class led by Chicago artist Mike Nourse, offered by the Chicago Art Department which features ten local artists who met weekly, working towards a completed project in areas such as photo, digital sketching (finger painting), animation, sound, and video. In addition to local artists, CAD program coordinator Mike Nourse brought in national and international iPhone artists from as far away as Russia, Norway,  Spain, France, and Germany. The end-result is a comprehensive look at this digital tool and some of its artistic possibilities.

Read the rest of this entry →

CameraKit

CameraKit by Tetsuya Chiba is on sale for $0.99 USD for a limited time — that’s 50% off. Even at its regular price, this is a worthwhile purchase.

CameraKit is a camera and post-processing app that acts almost as a digital darkroom on your iPhone. You can load images from your iPhone’s entire photo library, which is how I use it. None of its features are unique, but here they are nicely packaged, well implemented, simple to use, and make it easy to experiment.

Read the rest of this entry →

AutoStitch

AutoStitch Panorama by Cloudburst Research has been updated to version 2.0. I really thought the last version, 1.1.2 was great and the new version brings speed improvements, high-resolution stitching and high resolution preview/cropping.

AutoStitch combines from 2 to 20 or more images and can create seamless (or nearly seamless) panoramas on your iPhone. This is cool in itself, especially for getting the really big shots.

Read the rest of this entry →

For those of you who follow both Glyn Evans’ iPhoneography blog and Life in LoFi, you may have noticed we have begun to cross post some of our articles. Glyn contacted me a few weeks ago asking if he could post some of my reviews, and I gladly agreed.

It was suggested that we share information and reviews and I gladly accepted. Glyn and I found that many times we were reviewing the same apps and usually arriving at the same conclusions. Since we’re both one-man operations, the sharing of resources benefits both blogs, also allowing us both to more easily share our thoughts about any given app. The end result is that both websites will benefit from a greater number of full app reviews.

In addition to daily notifications on new iPhone apps, iPhoneography.com regularly showcases a lot of great iPhoneographers — something we don’t do here. In addition to reviews, Life In LoFi features articles on technique and my random musings, as well as cool links that I run across when avoiding work at the day job….

We’re both serving a great community of serious and casual iPhoneographers. From time to time, you’ll be seeing posts from both Glyn and myself. We feel — and hopefully you will, too — that this will benefit the readers of both sites, allowing Glyn and I the ability to free up time and resources to pursue additional stories, as well as the ability to offer more insightful commentary.

As always, thank you for stopping by!

=M=