Life in LoFi: iPhoneography | iPhone Photo News, Showcases, App Reviews

Yesterday, we (and just about every other news source) reported that Facebook is buying the popular social photo network Instagram. Many Instagram users are concerned with the changes Facebook’s ownership will make and with the privacy concerns of sharing their photos using Facebook’s terms of service and with the possibility of Facebook using Instagram’s data for marketing purposes.

Personally, I’m not one of them. I’m not going to ditch Instagram over the Facebook buyout. I already make it easy enough for Big Brother to track me anywhere, so I feel like I might as well enjoy the tidbits I get in return. If you don’t share my view, iPhoneographer Dixon Hamby has shared with us some of his suggestions for extricating yourself from Instagram and also serves up his recommendation for an alternate social photo network.

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Breaking News: Mega-social network Facebook has purchased mega-social photo network Instagram for $1 billion dollars in cash and stock.

It reads like an April Fool’s Day story that I might have posted a few days ago, but Mark Zuckerberg just posted the announcement on his timeline about an hour ago as of this writing.

“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook….

“We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.”

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iPhone photo app PhotoToaster is a great, easy to use image editing app that makes fast and easy color and luminance tweaks as well as quickly applying effects from a selection of presets. The new PhotoToaster 3.0 update was just released and adds new tools and features that improve this already very good photo app.

To celebrate the update, PhotoToaster is on sale now for a limited time for only $0.99 — that’s half off.

The full list of new features and my thoughts on some of them after the jump. >>>

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Old Photoshoppers may remember Kai Krause’s Power Tools, a set of Photoshop plugins that let you quickly and easily create slick (at the time) effects. One of those filters was the Kai’s Goo effect, which allowed you to push pixels around as if your photo were made of a heavy liquid. When used to excess, the results could be pretty twisted. When used sparingly, you could achieve some pretty creative and unnerving looks.

PhotoGoo is an iPhone photo app that let’s you create goo effects similar to the Kai plugin. It’s free right now in the App Store — down from $2.99. I reviewed an early version a while back. It’s still not perfect, but several updates since have greatly improved the app.

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I’m very happy to announce that iPhoneographer Dimitris Karathanos will be working with Life In LoFi and contributing several posts, providing insights from other iPhoneographers. Dimitris and I first crossed paths when a couple of his iPhone photographs were selected as part of Faved On Flickr showcases last September and more recently this February. I like his eye and style for digital lo-fi iPhoneography.

From his bio:

A professional journalist, Dimitris Karathanos currently occupies the senior editor position at SOUL magazine, Greece. His main pastimes are running and reading. Never much of a visual person, he always preferred printed words instead, but ever since he was introduced to iPhoneography those two things have combined and now he’s got a mind like a comic book. His favorite photographers are Joel Meyerowitz, Robert Frank, Cartier-Bresson, Michael Ackerman, William Eggleston, Irma Haselberger, as well as the hugely influential artists he is coming across every day through various iPhoneography networks. He loves textured, distorted, gritty photography as much as he appreciates point-and-shoot simplicity. His own photos are not that complicated, they always remain within the realm of realistic, but he does hope that at best, they convey emotion and meaning.

You can see more of his photography on Flickr. Follow Dimitris on Twitter/@dkarathanos.

Dimitris’ first post will go live soon. It’s a great interview and I’m excited to have him sharing his talents with us for a while.

Welcome, Dimitris.

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It’s been rumored for a while now, but the best evidence so far of an Android version of the popular iPhone photo app Instagram showed up over the weekend at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

The Washington Post has a good post on the story. At a conference on Sunday, Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom flashed a beta version of Instagram for Android running on a Galaxy Nexus.

“…it’s one of the most amazing Android apps you’ll ever see,” Systrom said “in some ways, it’s better than our iPhone app.”

What???!!! Although he wasn’t specific, I would hope that any applicable improvements to Instagram, such as improved speed or stability, would also be ported over to the iOS version for parity.

Systrom says that the Android version of the app is coming soon.

He also added that Instagram now has over 27 million users — almost double the 15 million users announced in December 2011.

The original story has more. Click to read the entire post, “SXSW 2012: Instagram’s Android app prototype makes appearance” on The Washington Post website.

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The second episode of the web-only talk show iPhoneographers Talk is online now. Hosted by Guy Yang from The Beginners Lens and Commercial Photographer/iPhoneographer Jack Hollingsworth, the show covers a wide range of iPhone Photography topics, including apps, workflow, interviews, portfolio reviews, tips, resources, etc.

In this episode, Guy and Jack discuss the state of iPhoneography and other topics. This one clocks in at about 16 minutes. It’s worth a watch.

If the video embed above doesn’t work, click here to watch the episode on YouTube.

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Life In LoFi is a media partner of iPhoneographers Talk.

I’ve been using a Youbiq Gymbl with Case and Tripod for some time. The case feels solid and has protected my iPhone 4 (and later my 4S) from many bumps and drops. It’s got an ergonomically designed curve on the outside of the case that I really like which makes a noticeable difference in feel when you’re holding your iPhone.

Youbiq is creating a new accessory to go with the device, the Gymbl Latch & Lanyard. They have created a Kickstarter project to help fund the device. From the Kickstarter video, it’s a simple, handy, and versatile clip that helps extend the usability of the Gymbl case. Click past the jump to read more. >>>

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I love iPhoneography. I love coffee. This week, Starbucks combines my love of both for a really great freebie. Powerful image editor Snapseed is the FREE Starbucks Pick of the Week — a savings of almost five bucks!

Snap it. Tweak it. Love it. Share it. Snapseed is one of the most powerful photo editors available for iOS. It’s got a full set of editing tools as well as the very cool “selective adjustments: where you can drop a pin on the image and only the area around the pin adjusts — great for selectively tweaking dark areas of an image, for example. As a universal app, it’s designed to work great on iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It supports up to 6.25 MP on an iPhone 3GS and up to 16 MP images for iPad 2 and iPhone 4 and 4S.

To get Snapseed for free this week, you’ll need to get to a Starbucks store, pick up one of the Snapseed Pick of the Week cards, and redeem the code on the back to get the app for free. The cards are in Starbucks stores in the U.S. only this week while they last. No purchase necessary. Don’t forget to tip your baristas.

Snapseed is $4.99 in the App Store. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later.

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Big thanks to Stacy Anderson for the heads up on this one and for the coffee, Grande Latte with an extra shot.

Decim8 is a bit destroyer. Basically, it makes your images look like a damaged JPG, adding data streaks, color anomalies and other digital damage that photographers and designers really hate to see in a working file. Here in Decim8, the damage is intentional. The results are unpredictable and sometimes stunning. The app is always interesting.

Long a favorite of mine, the App Store’s best “glitch app” Decim8 has just released a major update. Version 3.0 is out and has several new filters, a new interface, a new icon (which is actually the app’s original HAL 9000-looking icon) and a few caveats to go with this update.

Read all about them after the jump. >>>

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