Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

Black & White 101, by Sid Peña

Sid Peña — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:07:10 +0000

Out of The Shadows II by Sid Peña

Black & white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

– Robert Frank

There is something magical about a great black & white photograph. The pure emotion of a Dorothea Lange portrait, the awe inspiring grandiosity of an Ansel Adams landscape or the stoic profile of Willie Nelson as shot by Annie Leibovitz. I’ve been enthralled by black and white images since I was a child looking through boxes of old Eastman Brownie prints of my predecessors. Even at that young age, I could see that the color Polaroid photos that were all the rage at that time were inferior to these black and white gems and I wondered why, as a society, we had moved away from such a splendid technology. Now, the iPhone has brought about a renaissance of classical photography, including a resurgence of my beloved Brownie-style black and white snapshots. And unlike the film cameras of the past, we can choose to go from color to black and white by simply tapping on a screen.

The tools have simplified the process but knowing when to process for color or for black and white isn’t always apparent. Which elements are accentuated by black and white photography? Which apps are my go-to black and white apps? How do I decide when to stay in color? We will address all of these questions and more in this article.

Tools and Apps

In this article I will cite some specific applications I use in my process and to achieve the exact same results you will need those apps. Similar results can be achieved with many other apps and I encourage you to use what works for you.

I will be using one or more of the following apps in this article:

Infinicam |

Hipstamatic |

Lo-Mob |

SnapSeed |

Process |

The Photographer’s Ephemeris |

The Four Elements

When shooting for black and white output, look for one or more of the following characteristics in your subjects:

1 – Lighting

Be it natural or artificial, great lighting can make a mediocre photo into a moody, noir gem. The angle of your light is critical in this regard. If you’re outdoors it pays to know in advance where the sun will be in the sky at any given time of day. I will cover The Photographer’s Ephemeris in the Pick Your Poison section later. Early morning and late evening are generally considered prime lighting, often referred to as “The Magic Hour” because of the warmth of the light’s tone. For black and white shoots it’s more the angle than the warmth of the light that we’re seeking.

An example of lighting, contrast and texture.

2 – Contrast

By its very nature, black and white photography is medium rooted in contrast. And by extension, subjects that are comprised of strong visual contrasts are conveyed well in black and white. Solid colors on objects with basic shapes (squares, rectangles, circle etc.) play well in monochrome so keep this in mind when picking your subjects.

3 – Textures

This element is dependent on how your subject is illuminated. Beard stubble is called a 5 o’clock shadow for this very reason. A great texture will add an organic feel to your image. Brick walls, sand, fur, whiskers or wood grain all convey a tactile sensation that draws the viewer into a photograph. When you look at an Adams landscape, you can almost smell the pine sap when you look at the texture created by hundreds trees.

The Creator by Sid Peña, an example of lighting and texture.

4 – People

Humans are well suited to black and white because our facial expressions and body language are accentuated by light and shadow. The trick is to capture your subjects before they realize what you’re doing. The moment people realize they are being photographed, they become self-conscious, stiffen up and stop looking natural. For this reason, I suggest silencing your iPhone to avoid drawing attention. Of course it is quite possible to take great photos of people when they know you’re there but this usually only works well with persons who are used to being in the public eye like street performers, musicians etc.

The Witch and The Dragon, by Sid Peña

Sax Man, by Sid Peña

Pick Your Poison

If you read my last article, “Creating High Resolution Images on iPhone 5″, you know I’m a big fan of ClearCam and KitCam. That being said, I’m well aware that the sun doesn’t necessarily rise and sit on ClearCam and KitCam for everyone else. Two of my main criteria for a good app (besides great processing ability) are output resolution and EXIF preservation. This is why many of the apps that are popular with most people don’t make the grade in my toolkit. I encourage you use whatever app suits your tastes or produces the results you desire.

Some of the apps I use for black and white output are:

Infinicam This is the app I used to process Tuning Up (Tuning Up was the photo that sold me on the iPhone as a camera). It quite literally was the perfect app for that image and I can’t imagine anything else coming close to it’s results. The reason I put Infinicam on the back burner was the lack of control. It comes with some presets and you can save and name combinations that you discover but I needed something with more variables.

Tuning Up, by Sid Peña

Hipstamatic If you haven’t heard of this app, then you should really get out more. Hipstamatic has some really nice black and white films and lenses which are well-suited for moody compositions. The biggest drawback to the app for me is that you’re limited to 1:1 aspect ratio. If you want to get close to the Eastman Brownie experience, you could do worse than the John S lens and Claunch 72 Monochrome film.

Snapshot of Angie taken with Hipstamatic using John S lens, Claunch 72 Monochrome film.

Lo-Mob This app does one thing better than almost any other app. If you want a high contrast, isolated subject with a subdued background in black and white, then this is your app. Import your photo, choose Vintage Instant – Black 023A under Instant Matic Photography section, move and zoom as needed and save to the camera roll. It’s just that simple. It’s my goto app for black and white floral photos.

Wild Sunflower by Sid Peña processed with Lo-Mob

SnapSeed You probably are familiar with this app because of it’s robust features. I can get some pretty good HDR black and white results especially if I need to filter the image by color to bring out or subdue specific elements. I usually have to import the finished photo into KitCam to step down the exposure after processing for HDR in SnapSeed. You should also be wary of increased noise in the darker areas of your image.

Process If you want to recreate accurate retro film and process combinations on your iPhone, you can’t beat Process. I love what this app does for my black and white photography (it’s great for color too). After you get used to the unorthodox interface, you’ll catch yourself spending hours experimenting with this application. You can save your presets and there is a huge library of user created presets, all of which can be modified and saved as your own. My biggest complaints with the app is that it strips EXIF data and only saves up to 4096 x 3072.

Look Again II (detail) by Sid Peña edited with Process.

Screenshot of The Photographer’s Ephemeris

The Photographer’s Ephemeris When you need to know where the Sun or Moon will be in the sky for the location of your photo shoot, this is the app for that. Plus, it will show you the length and direction of shadows according the height of the object casting the shadow. A great tool for getting the right light and shadows in your photos. What more could you ask for?

To Be or Not To Be

I’m finished processing a photo when it pops. I like the term ‘pop’ because it aptly describes that moment when the image in front of you grabs your brain through your eyes and promptly slaps you out of the coma-like stupor you’ve fallen into from hours of photo editing. This occurs with about two percent of my photos. Then there’s another five percent that are really nice and worth keeping but need some help to make them pop. Have you ever processed an image in color and in black and white and you just couldn’t decide which way to take it? It happens to me all the time for impromptu snapshots. When the choice isn’t obvious, I have some criteria to help me determine if an image will be processed as black and white or color:

Is it too busy? If there are too many things going on in an image it can be overwhelming and becomes the mental equivalent of television snow. Color gives more definition to a cluttered image. This allows the mind to put all of the components in their proper places so we can register the picture as a whole.

This image is too busy. I would not process to black and white in this scenario.

Is it news? I think that most news photography should be black and white because nothing conveys the power and emotion of an event better than black and white. Can you imagine the Bobby Kennedy assassination photo in color? Not to mention, video pretty much has cornered the market for spectral saturation. Some exceptions would be anything where colors are central to the story like fireworks, fashion, parades etc.

Color encompasses the whole scene.

Black and white shifts focus to facial expressions.

Is there flat lighting? The term ‘flat lighting’ refers to the short shadows that are cast when the sun is directly overhead. This type of lighting really becomes pronounced in landscape and architecture photography. I find that color processing is better suited to flat lighting. For me, flat lighting happens with impromptu snapshots. I would never plan an outdoor photo shoot during midday.

Does color stifle the flow? Does the contrast, texture and lighting work without color or does the lack of color make the image feel dull? If you switch to the color view and it’s like someone turned on the lights, that probably indicates a color process is in order. If you switch to the black and white view and suddenly an iconic image rife with feeling and flow emerges.

Color = a backdrop with people.

Black and white = people in front of the backdrop.

Proof Is in The Pudding

Now that we’ve established what makes a good black and white photograph, it’s just a matter of practice. Always remember, light, focus, subject and composition define your photographs, not what camera you’re holding when you shoot them. Anyone that tells you different is trying to sell you something. Until next time, good hunting!

Power Lines by Sid Peña

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We’re Giving Away Copies of PhotoStation Today!

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:10:51 +0000

PhotoStation is one of the only iOS photo apps that allows you to clip and mask your images using vector-style bezier curves. Version 2.0 was recently released and it’s an amazing update to this powerful image editor. You can read more about this app in our just-published look at the update.

Right now, we’ve a few copies of PhotoStation to give away. Find out how you can win one after the jump.

Creating masks with vector-style bezier curves can let you make some pretty precise clipping paths, especially if your image has a lot of curves. If you’ve created masks in Photoshop for desktop, you will find yourself with a pretty familiar tool here.

The new update not only supports multiple layers, letting you create some killer composites in-app, but also supports images up to 18 megapixels.

To be eligible to win a PhotoStation promo code, simply enter the giveaway below. If you follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you can get additional chances for a promo code.

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Wednesday, June 19, 2013. Winners will be determined by Random.org. One code per reader, please.

Winners will be notified by email, Facebook message or Twitter direct message — be sure to check your spam filter. If you enter, be sure your email info is correct or your code will go to someone else. Your email address is used for contest entry and for contacting the winning entrants only. We will not use or sell your email address for any other purpose.

If you’d rather get the app now, it’s on sale for only $0.99 for a limited time. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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PhotoStation Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Big thanks to developer Sam Azzam for the promo codes for this giveaway!

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PhotoStation 2 Update Adds Great Layer Support

Marty Yawnick — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:33:41 +0000

PhotoStation has always been a unique image editing app. It’s one of the only iOS photo apps that allows you to clip and mask your images using vector-style bezier curves. It’s certainly the least difficult to use.

PhotoStation 2.0 was recently released and it’s an amazing update to this powerful image editor that includes layers and large image support. Read more and watch a cool demo video after the jump. >>>

PhotoStation iOS App Video Demo from Samer Azzam on Vimeo.

Those of you who’ve worked with Photoshop’s Clipping Paths will appreciate the ease and precision of PhotoStation’s bezier-curve workflow. It’s actually a little easier to use. Simply place your anchor points and pull out your curves. PhotoStation automatically handles the “handles.”

Since it’s release, PhotoStation has gotten a number of great upgrades and improvements and it’s now a full-fledged, powerful image editor with color, luminance and tonal tools, as well as a set of filter presets.

The new update adds well-implemented Layers to the app, which makes it really easy to clip objects and composite them all within PhotoStation. Multiple layers can be easily added, layered and moved. Once you get the hang of the app’s workflow, it’s a fairly straightforward operation.

Similar to Photoshop desktop, layers can be blended with any one of the standard 17 modes.

Until the image is composited and saved, all edits are non-destructive, which is great in case you want to go back to any point in the workflow and make a change.

The app now also supports image sizes up to 18 megapixels.

It’s a great, huge update with a lot of other new features. I’ve listed them below, but the new Layers feature is powerful and well done and is the crown-jewel of this update.

PhotoStation 2 is a free update to previous owners of the app. It’s on sale now for a limited time for only $0.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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What’s New in Version 2.0

The moment you’ve all been waiting for is finally here! Introducing the most advanced Layers tool in the completely reinvented PhotoStation v2.0!

LAYERS MAIN HIGHLIGHTS:

• Desktop-grade Layers framework with high resolution support of up to 18MP. Superimpose multiple images on a background of your choice and create print quality works of art.

• 17 blend modes + opacity control

• Independent, layer-specific edits and masks

• Fully adjustable canvas. Change canvas aspect ratio and resolution at any time by choosing from the provided standard presets or by simply swapping the bottom layer. Change canvas color, perfect for creating beautiful photo montages.

• Live thumbnail preview and image border highlight for greater visibility and control

• Real-time layer hierarchical changes

• Multilevel composition. Your final composition could be a single edited image, an individual layer with its transform properties and background color or the whole canvas.

• Nondestructive transform. Images remain intact even if they extend beyond the boundaries of the canvas.

• Landscape and portrait orientation support

• Fullscreen gesture detection

• Optimized processing times and memory utilization (less than a third in head-to-head comparisons with direct competitors)

OTHER:

• Added Original Dimensions/Smallest Bounding Box crop options

• Added JPEG/PNG export format options

• Minor UI changes and performance enhancements

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KitCam and PhotoForge2 Gone as Developer is Acquired by Yahoo!

Marty Yawnick — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:02:13 +0000

What Happened to KitCam and PhotoForge2?

Yahoo! announced Thursday that it has acquired iPhone app deveoper Ghostbird software. Without much notice this week, their two excellent iPhoneography apps, KitCam and PhotoForge2, disappeared from the App Store.

More information and my speculation after the jump. >>>

Yahoo! made the announcement in a tweet on Thursday. The Ghostbird Software website now simply displays a message and a thank you. See below for the entire message. With the purchase, Ghostbird has shutdown development of their own iOS apps to focus on improving the mobile Flickr experience.

PhotoForge (and later PhotoForge2) were among the best image editors for iPhone and iPad, period. For years, PhotoForge really wore the mantle “Photoshop for iPhone” and there are still tasks it performs better than any other image editor for iOS.

KitCam was an excellent, powerful, and popular camera replacement app with an excellent set of tools, filters and a powerful built-in image editing module. It was a great app that combined the best features of ProCamera, Camera+, Hipstamatic, Instagram, PhotoForge and a number of others.

While the latest versions of the iOS Flickr app are a huge improvement over previous versions, it uses the ubiquitous Aviary photo editing module, which is good but is also in a ton of other photo apps. If even some of KitCam’s and PhotoForge2′s features make it into future versions of the Flickr app, this is good for Yahoo!. The end-of-life of these two excellent apps, though, is still a net big loss for mobile photographers.

Currently, Ghostbird’s software team is working on improving the Flickr iPad app.

Reinstall KitCam and PhotoForge using the Purchased tab in App Store

KitCam, PhotoForge, and PhotoForge2 are no longer available for purchase in the App Store. If you accidentally delete them from your device, you’ll be able to reinstall them from iCloud. In the App Store app, you can find it in your “Purchased” tab, although it’s much easier to reinstall from your iTunes backup. For now, it looks like any in-app purchases you may have made can easily be restored in both apps.

Although the apps will no longer be supported and updated, but you’ll still be able to use both apps until future iOS updates break them.

In a similar acquisition, after Nik Software was purchased by Google, I really feel that the development of the powerful Snapseed slowed almost to a halt. It seems now all we get are the welcome maintenance updates. At least least Yahoo! and Ghostbird were quick in pulling the plug on these apps, leaving no doubt as to their fate.

Both PhotoForge2 and KitCam are complex photo apps. It would be a pleasant surprise to see a new Flickr app with all of those app’s capabilities. Unfortunately, as Yahoo! is looking to widen its base with casual users, we’re likely to see some of the cool stuff from KitCam and PhotoForge, but not all of it in future iterations of Flickr.

This will eventually be very good for Flickr, but bad for the thousands of iPhoneographers who depend on KitCam and PhotoForge2 as a key part of their workflow.

As iPhoneography and mobile photography become more mainstream, expect more of these high profile app acquisitions.

=M=

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GhostBird Software is joining Yahoo!

Today we are thrilled to announce that Yahoo! has acquired GhostBird Software!

Over the last few years, mobile photography has really taken off, and we feel privileged to have been part of its growth. We are especially humbled to have introduced some of the most-loved photography apps to the App Store. We have been dedicated to bringing incredible photo-editing experiences to iOS since 2009; and the best part is that the journey has just begun.

As photography enthusiasts, we are long-time admirers of Flickr, and we’re thrilled to be able to bring our technology and passion for beautiful photos to the Flickr team. There has been so much exciting progress at Yahoo! as they re-imagine their most-loved products for mobile, including the awesome new Flickr apps for iOS and Android.

If you already have the KitCam or PhotoForge2 apps on your devices, you will be able to continue to use them in their current versions. However, we will not continue to update the apps as future versions of iOS are released. Anyone who previously purchased GhostBird Software’s apps, including KitCam and PhotoForge2, will be able to re-download those apps through iCloud. As of today, KitCam and PhotoForge2 are no longer available for download from the App Store.

Thank you for all of your support and feedback. We can’t wait to work with the Flickr team and help you capture even more beautiful moments for years to come.

Sincerely,
The GhostBird Software Team

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Cape Cod iPhone Photography Weekend Workshop with Jack Hollingsworth

Marty Yawnick — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:38:47 +0000

Life In LoFi’s Marty Yawnick, iPhone)Genic’s Edi Caves and Jack Hollingsworth in Austin, Texas.

Hey, east coast? What are your plans this summer? Photographer and iPhonegraphy Evangelist Jack Hollingsworth is hosting an exclusive weekend workshop in photogenic Cape Cod this summer, July 25 -28.

The price range is reasonable and in the ballpark of other photography workshops, but this one offers the chance to shoot in a small group setting with one of iPhoneography’s movers and shakers.

More after the jump. >>>

“I was born and raised on Cape Cod and know it intimately-every crack and corner,” Says Mr. Hollingsworth. “I can’t tell you how many of thousands of photographic hours I have invested in capturing the faces, places and spaces of this picturesque destination.”

This shooting experience is designed more for intermediate and advanced mobile photographers. It will be three full days of shooting-from sunrise to sunset each day. While there is no set schedule, the plan is to cover 3-5 key locations per days with a solid 60-90 minutes per location to explore.

The workshop cost, for the three days is $395.00 (not including your travel, hotel and food costs which would be on your own).

“If possible, I would prefer to limit the size of the workshop to only 10 persons (first come, first serve),” says Mr. Hollingsworth.

At the very least, attendees should walk away with is a killer portfolio of mobile photography-including sunsets, sunrises, beach and landscapes, still life set-ups, street photography (Provincetown), landmarks, monuments, parks, portraits, resort and architecture. Jack will be taking attendees to the best places to shoot and at optimum times, so you’re you’ll have the opportunity to get some incredible content!

I’ve shot with Jack before down in Austin, Texas. It’s a treat every time we shoot together. He’s very gracious in sharing as much of his over thirty years of professional photography experience as one can absorb and his excitement and passion for iPhoneography is not only apparent, but very infectious.

If you have the means and can be in Cape Cod next month, this is going to be a great yet intimate workshop.

Email Jack Hollingsworth at jack@jackhollingsworth.com for more information.

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ProCamera: Five tips for sharper iPhone photos

ProCamera — Wed, 29 May 2013 14:02:38 +0000

Written by Misho Baranovic. Originally published on the ProCamera blog

Over the past few years shooting with the iPhone and ProCamera one of the most common questions I get asked is how can I make my photos sharper?

There are a few things that you can do to improve the clarity and sharpness of your iPhone photos. Here are five tips that I use on a daily basis when shooting.

1. Get a good grip on your iPhone

A firm grip is less likely you are to introduce camera shake when shooting. I’m currently using the latest Quad-Lock case which has a nice hard rubber surface (oh and the tripod mount comes in handy too).

2. Get your focus right

In ProCamera you can manually set your exposure point. This means you can make sure that your subject is in focus. Touching the screen with two fingers brings up the focus and exposure controls. Drag the blue square onto your subject to set focus.


In this example I’ve placed the focus square on the background, throwing the subject out of focus.	In the second example I’ve placed the square on the subject’s eye bringing it into focus.

3. Use Anti-Shake in low-light

ProCamera’s Anti-Shake can be found in the Control Panel (see right). Upon selection it turns the button directly right of the main shutter into an anti-shake shutter. This means that you can choose if you want to take either a normal or anti-shake enabled shot.

With Anti-Shake activated, ProCamera waits until the phone is very still before it takes a photos. This helps limit camera shake when shooting in low-light.

In the Control Panel you can also toggle the secondary shutter between Anti-Shake and Self Timer.

Here are a few recent low-light photos taken with the Anti-Shake shutter function:

Opening night of FORMAT Festival

Sunrise in San Francisco

4. Use the ProCamera Lightbox to check sharpness

In the ProCamera Lightbox/Camera Roll single photo view, you can double click to get a 100% preview image or pinch the image to load the full resolution file. ProCamera is one of the few dedicated shooting apps that offers this feature. In the photo below you can see the difference between the standard and full resolution zoom view.


Standard view	Full resolution zoom

5. Use a good sharpening app

ProCamera doesn’t yet have a sharpen tool so I bring my photos into a secondary app for basic sharpening and clarity.

My go to app is Snapseed because I can apply small amounts of sharpening while using the magnifying glass to check how the individual pixels are holding up. This is critical for making sure that you don’t over-sharpen the photograph, especially when printing.

Do you have any shooting or app tips on how to get sharper photos from your phone? Let me know in the comments below.

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ProCamera 4.1 is currently available from the App Store for $4.99.

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Analog Camera coming soon to iPhone

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:53:20 +0000

UPDATED

Realmac Software have announced the upcoming release of a new photo app, Analog Camera. It’s the iOS companion to their Mac-only photo app Analog (already available in the Mac App Store here ).

We’ve got a preview video and a little more information right after the jump. >>>

“We’ve built Analog Camera with the principles of Clear in mind, with a beautifully simple and uncluttered UI that we think is a delight to use,” says Realmac Software Marketing Manager Rob Jarman. “With essential features to compose the perfect shot, and a stunning set of filters for post-processing built into the ‘snappiest’ UI on iOS, Analog Camera will revolutionise taking photos just as Clear revolutionized to-do lists!”

While I’m not sure how Analog will revolutionize lo-fi iPhoneography, from the preview, the app looks super-easy to use, with several filters and all of the major sharing options. According to the developer, the Facebook and Twitter share buttons — two of the most used — are front and center. A nice touch.

Looking for Instagram share? “The top right Share button is ‘Open With’ where you can open your images in Instagram, Evernote, Path, etc.,” says Rob Jarman. “The other buttons are save to ‘Camera Roll’, ‘Mail To’ and the social options below depend upon what you have activated in your iPhone settings, the most common two of course will be Facebook and Twitter.”

The Mac version of the app has 27 filters — all richly saturated lomo-style filters, along with a selection of borders as well. No word on the exact number of filters the iOS version will have or the app’s resolution.

Analog Camera for iOS will be available for $0.99 when it’s released.

More details are available at the Realmac Software website.

=M=

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UPDATE 05.15.13: Updated sharing options

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LensLight and LensFlare Updated. Now More Megapixels

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:06:33 +0000

UPDATED

The BrainFeverMedia photo apps — LensLight, LensFlare and Alien Sky — have just completed a round of updates. Resolution has been bumped up to 9 megapixels on all three apps. More is good, right? At least as far as RAM, storage space and megapixels are concerned….

Read on for more info. >>>

All three apps now support image sizes of up to 3072 px on the long or square sides of an image — up to 3072×3072 px resolution. That’s up from 2048×2048 in previous versions. Standard 4:3 iPhone photos will now save up to a very nice 7.1 megapixels.

UPDATE: These updates are for iPhone 5 and iPad 2 and higher only. I just received an email from the apps’ developer and high resolution support for iPhone 4S is coming soon. iPhone 5 ~~and 4S~~ square format images will now see no pixel loss, while 4:3 images will save at 3072×2304 pixels.

No other new features, effects or fixes were introduced in these recent updates.

All three are great apps. Alien Sky not only lets you add celestial bodies to your photos, letting you create some surreal alien landscapes, you can also use it to add a large moon to simulate more earthly, extreme telephoto shots.

I especially like LensFlare and LensLight for adding the aberrations that can occur in cameras with better (worse?) lenses than an iPhone. Both apps are excellent for adding lens flares, bokeh, chroma rings and other wonderful lens anomalies that can occur when pointing multi-element optics into a light source.

Rather than simple overlays, LensFlare and LensLight use much more complex rendering techniques that interact with the placement of the effect. The result is a unique and realistic lens effect… now with more megapixels.

All three apps are now $1.99 each in the App Store. Definitely worth a couple of bucks. These apps are designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. These apps are optimized for iPhone 5.

LensFlare

LensLight

Alien Sky

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Cool Tip: Using LensFlare Studio With Photoshop

Marty Yawnick — Sat, 11 May 2013 10:46:34 +0000

Here’s a cool tip recently posted to the LensFlare Studio Facebook page. It’s a quick and slick tip for using LensFlare Studio to add great-looking lens aberrations with Photoshop.

This is a Mac OS-only tip, not an iPhoneography tip per se. But LensFlare Studio was created by BrainFeverMedia, the same developer who gave us the excellent LensFlare, LensLight, and Alien Sky apps for iOS. >>>

LensFlare Studio is easy to use with Photoshop. Here’s how to add flares to your Photoshop projects:

1 – Select and copy a layer or photo in Photoshop – Cmd-C

2 – Paste into LensFlare Studio – Cmd-V. LensFlare Studio will auto-size to the pasted layer. Add flares!

3 – After adding flares, turn off Image Layer so you only see the flares.

4 – Do copy in LensFlare Studio – Cmd-C.

5 – Paste in Photoshop Cmd-V, which adds the flares layer to your Photoshop project. Set flare layer blend to Linear Dodge (Add).

That’s it!

LensFlare Studio is a Mac OS-only app. It brings the same great light effects from the iOS version to your Mac. You can choose from anamorphic lens flares, lighting effects, sci-fi flares, sunlight glare, and more. With over 100 effects, you can choose from lens flares, lighting effects, glares, bokeh, and more.

LensFlare Studio is $19.99 in the Mac App Store. Requirements: OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit processor

There is also LensFlares, a “Lite” version for Mac OS with 15 lens filters. It runs $4.99 in the Mac App Store. |

Photoshop is, well… Photoshop.

=M=

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Hueless and Huemore Updated. Now With Uncompressed TIFF

Marty Yawnick — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:00:26 +0000

Both Hueless and Huemore from curious satellite just got updates. There are only a few new features, but they should really please photographers who output high quality prints.

More info and some promo codes to give away after the jump. >>>

Both Hueless and Huemore are powerful, simple, fast, and elegant cameras.

Hueless, in my opinion, is the best black-and-white camera app available for iPhone. It’s a fast and easy way to take beautiful looking black-and-white photographs. It has a great user interface and a powerful set of tools that doesn’t get in the way of the shot.

Huemore is a color camera app that features the same great interface as Hueless. The app has excellent exposure, contrast and saturation control and lets you see the results of your changes instantly in the viewfinder. Although you can use the app’s tool for much more, having the ability to tweak color temperature in the viewfinder lets you make corrections on the fly. Using the presets is also like shooting with a warm or a cool film, depending on your preference.

Best of all, despite both apps’ powerful toolsets, when it comes time to shoot, the interface stays out of the way. Both apps are very nice to shoot with.

Hueless and Huemore Updates

Both Hueless and Huemore now feature toggles which let you save your files as a lossless TIFF or a maximum quality JPEG (100). Although the image compression on both apps defaults to JPEG Quality 90 (which is still very good), the new settings give photographers the choice of saving files with virtually no added JPG artifacts. The new settings can be turned on in the apps’ preferences in the iOS Settings app. You can also touch-and-hold the “H” button to switch between JPEG and TIFF formats on the fly.

The updates also feature an improved shutter response as well as various EXIF updates and mitigated ICC profile warnings.

The addition of high-quality image saves is a great, pro feature for photographers who prefer the highest quality, least compressed images in their workflow.

Both apps are $1.99 each.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation), iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, iPad (4th generation), iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular (4th generation), iPad mini and iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Here’s the App Store link for Hueless

Here’s the App Store link for Huemore

Hueless and Huemore Giveaway

I’ve got a few promo codes for both Hueless and Huemore to give away today. To be eligible to win a copy, simply enter using the giveaway widgets below. If you follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll have additional chances for a free copy.

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Monday, May 13, 2013. Winners will be determined by Random.org. One code per reader, please.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(If you’re having trouble viewing the above widget on a mobile device, try viewing this page in landscape mode on your iPhone.)

=M=

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Big thanks to Christopher Radliff from curious satellite for supplying us with these giveaways.

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Perfectly Clear On Sale Now!

Marty Yawnick — Fri, 10 May 2013 05:34:01 +0000

“Purple Haze” reduction in Perfectly Clear

One of my go-to utilities since my original iPhone 2G days is Perfectly Clear by Athentech. It’s a Dynamic Range Correction (DRC) app that automatically performs lab-quality corrections that help improve the contrast, exposure and vibrance of an image. It’s also the best software fix currently available for the iPhone 5 “purple haze” problem.

Perfectly Clear is on sale now for only $0.99 – that’s a big savings of $2 off. This discount is for a limited time only, so grab it now. App Store link is after the jump. >>>

Why I Recommend Perfectly Clear

Perfectly Clear has been in My Camera Bag post since I bought it years ago and will still be there when the post gets updated soon. Even with the great camera in the iPhone 5, I still use Perfectly Clear often to clean up photos and get them ready for any other processing I may do.

Not to cannibalize Athentech’s sales, but this is the same image processing engine behind their Photoshop plugin, which costs a heluva lot more than a buck or three.

Even an iPhone 5 or 4S will occasionally take pictures that need help. With one click, it corrects color balance, punches up the vibrance, sharpens images, and helps enhance and balance shadow areas. The built-in Noise Reduction is among the best I’ve found on the iOS platform. Perfectly Clear also reduces — often dramatically — or fixes “Purple Haze,” the purple tint effect found sometimes with the iPhone 5 camera.

With newer iPhones, you may not always see noticeable results, but many times the results are better overall balance and more visually pleasing color. Perfectly Clear is a quick and easy fix to add punch to flat images and get photos looking like you expect them to.

It’s now got a maximum image size for iPhone5 and iPad3 of 24.5 MP — that’s about a 4948×4948 px image.

I still recommend Perfectly Clear to owners of new iPhones. For older iPhones, it’s a highly recommended, even essential, purchase.

Perfectly Clear is normally $2.99 in the App Store. It’s a Universal app that’s designed to run great on both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

=M=

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Hipstamatic Announces Oggl

Guest Contributor — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:56:27 +0000

Hipstamatic Announces Oggl,
a Community For Creative People to Capture and Curate Their Lives Through Photography

Oggl Connects the Hipstamatic Community Like Never Before; Is a Brand New
Place to Showcase Your Best Photos

Hipstamatic announces Oggl, a community for creative people to capture and curate their lives through photography. Oggl offers a brand new way to experience Hipstamatic’s beautifully crafted filters, and for the first time ever, directly connects the Hipstamatic community and like-minded creatives from around the world.

“From the editorial spreads of Harper’s Bazaar to the cover of TIME magazine to the pages of pages of The New York Times, Hipstamatic photographers have had their work showcased on a global stage, and are ushering in a new era in photography,” said
Lucas Buick, CEO and co-founder, Hipstamatic. “It’s time we created a place designed just for them—to connect, to be inspired, to create—and to continue to define what it means to be a photographer for this generation. This is our vision for Oggl, and we’re just getting started.”

Key Features

Oggl, which will first be available for iPhone owners, is designed around two key features: Capturing and curating photos.

Capture: Oggl is a “capture-first” shooting experience using Hipstamatic’s beautiful lenses and films, and comes with 5 “Favorites” pre-loaded for situational shooting: Landscape, Food, Portrait, Nightlife and Sunset. For the first time ever, edit a photo after it’s taken to experiment with different looks, and “tap to preview” effects before shooting.

Curate: Share your best photos to your Oggl profile to curate your personal story, and the browse the Curated Editorial Feeds, curated by the Hipstamatic team and talented photographers from around the world. With “My Collection,” see your photos showcased next to photos you’ve curated from around the community.

Additional features on Oggl include: Share to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr and Flickr, set additional “Favorites” for situational shooting, tag location, and tag other Oggl community members in photos.

Support the Community & Get More Gear

Oggl is an experience designed for capturing and curating beautiful photos, not for showcasing advertising. To support this vision for the community, Oggl is available via two subscription options: Monthly for $0.99 and yearly for $9.99. Each subscription comes with access to Hipstamatic’s entire catalog of current lens and film gear, and guarantees new gear each month.

Availability
In order to make sure Oggl is the most awesome place for our community, invitations will be issued as we build the experience. To request an invitation, visit the Oggl website.

Requirements: Oggl is currently for iPhone owners running iOS 6 and above.

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What’s your take on Hipstamatic’s latest offering? Is the price of the service worth the access to Hipstamatic’s past and future filters? Sound off in the comments below.

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Adobe Ideas is FREE Right Now!

Marty Yawnick — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:37:30 +0000

Adobe® Ideas lets you create freeform vector illustrations wherever you are with your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. With a Creative Cloud membership, easily sync Adobe Ideas projects to Creative Cloud and open them for refinement in Illustrator CS6 for Desktop.

The app is FREE right now for a very limited time. That’s a HUGE savings of $9.99. Grab this one quickly before this discount goes away. App Store link after the jump. >>>

The app brings another component of sorts from Creative Suite to iOS. Adobe Ideas is like a “Lite” version of Adobe Illustrator. With more users opting for iPads instead of laptops to untether themselves, these ports make sense.

Ideas has many of the tools you are likely to use in a vector-based app. The standard drawing tools — pens, brushes, etc. — are included. There’s an eyedropper tool for easy color picking. There are more advanced features, such as Kuler color palette integration and layers. The app has an in-app purchase which lets you save, work, and transfer over Adobe’s Cloud-based services.

Now all we need is an InDesign-lite app for iOS and I can leave my MacBook home….

Adobe Ideas is normally $9.99 in the App Store. This app is designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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Want a Free Copy of Percolator?

Marty Yawnick — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:30:26 +0000

While LoFi was on hiatus, One of our favorite apps Percolator got another really cool update with a lot of great new features.

More on this recent update and I’ve got a few promo codes to give away. More after the jump. >>>

The update hit the streets on April 11. Here’s what’s new in the most recent update.

PERCOLATING:

- A new Brew: Percolator boldly enters the 1960s with “Tripstamatic!”
- A new Brew: Percolator gets wobbly with “Charmed” circles!
- A new Serve Tone: “Flash Burn”—A high contrast vignette
- Even smaller circles with the new Tiny Circles Grind Effect
- A new Grind Effect: “Woodblock”—Converts your photo to 4 colors before Percolating for a very bold look!

EXPORT & IMPORT:

- Example images make great starting points for your own percs!
- Maximum ‘Save To Photos’ size is now 3584 pixels! (Maximum export size for iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 4G, and iPad 1 is 2048 pixels)
- Customizable image export settings
- Send to Instagram with the option to Crop
- Send a Postcard with Sincerely!
- Send your Percs to other photo apps or Copy to the Clipboard
- Import via Paste and from other photo app’s sharing features

The new effects can be found by tapping on the Brew and Grind selections. Percolator has been a favorite photo app of mine since its release. The new features add to the cool effects this unique photo app can create. It’s a great app to experiment with.

Percolator is $1.99 in the App Store. This app is designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Percolator Giveaway

I have five promo codes for Percolator to give away. These are available on a first-grabbed basis and once these are gone, that’s it.

http://tokn.co/dkcttqus

http://tokn.co/sv557kwb

http://tokn.co/7rrufg4z

http://tokn.co/d3qyn863

http://tokn.co/skmh8mjn

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Big thanks to Tinrocket’s John Balestrieri for providing us with the promo codes!

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Process App Updated and On Sale!

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:30:18 +0000

The past few months have seen some incremental feature-added updates for image processing app Process. There’s a lot that I like about the app, including its modular workflow and precision toolset.

Process 4.0 has just been released. The app is on sale now for only $2.99 for a limited time. That’s a HUGE savings of $12.

Keep reading for what’s in the updates. Plus, I’ve got some promo codes to give away. >>>

Among the features that make Process a unique image processing app is its modular approach to image editing. It’s similar to Photoshop’s History panel, except that it’s a lot easier to remove or change one single edit from the entire editing process.

Also, the app features dial-based controls for most of its tools, allowing you to perform edits with much greater precision than other photo apps.

The new 4.0 update features new incredibly sharp and accurate effect previews, blend modes, and performance and stability improvements. Previous recent updates also added new Zoom and Motion Blur adjustments, Posterize, and the ability to create your own custom sets.

Its normal price of $14.99 is steep, but not unprecedented for a high-end iPad image editor with these features — think Adobe Photoshop Touch. The app is a Universal build, so Process also works on iPhone as well. At $2.99, this update is a steal. Grab it now before the price goes up.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 6.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Process Giveaway

I have a few promo codes for Process to give away. They are below and are available on a first-grabbed basis. When these are gone, they’re gone.

http://tokn.co/eh4pzs5b

http://tokn.co/zy8zetau

http://tokn.co/tusnhzpz

http://tokn.co/vvbqkwf3

http://tokn.co/geudxann

http://tokn.co/0c7wgsva

http://tokn.co/kqy8vtdh

http://tokn.co/qngbdz36

http://tokn.co/4jr73e9t

http://tokn.co/3sqa4amc

http://tokn.co/spjm4v3r

http://tokn.co/a47fqt9q

http://tokn.co/5xn2ujmm

http://tokn.co/umaswwzd

http://tokn.co/6ahuaa2f

http://tokn.co/976ypv65

http://tokn.co/ybtrctje

http://tokn.co/f9ctyze4

http://tokn.co/bw558wh8

http://tokn.co/rde4maks

=M=

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Big thanks to Process developer Alaric Cole for the promo codes.

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Hey, Life In LoFi… Where Have You Guys Been?

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:22:58 +0000

We get questions and one of them recently has been “Where have you guys been? Is everything okay?”

We’re not going away. We’re still here. Due to an extremely demanding production schedule in my graphic design studio, I’ve been unable to devote any time to the blog for the past few weeks. In addition to the monthly and quarterly publications Type A Design usually works on, we’ve also been building out several large websites — two of them are taking print magazines online. These are some pretty high-profile projects that I’m pretty excited about!

We’ve got another couple of weeks before I’ll really have a lot of time to give to this blog, but time is opening back up. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing here.

As always, thank you for making Life In LoFi a part of your day.

=M=
Marty Yawnick
Publisher

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ProCamera 4.1 Update With new Exposure Boost and full-screen editing control

ProCamera — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 06:47:57 +0000

The ProCamera 4.1 update has just been released with two new features to give photographers even more creative possibilities when shooting with the iPhone.

New Exposure Boost!

The first feature is a two-step Exposure Boost that allows you to take high-quality shots at night. To turn on the Exposure Boost first go into the Control Panel (bottom-right button) and press on the Histogram button (top row, second from the left). This activates the Histogram, Shutter Speed and ISO displays.

There are two ways to use the Exposure Boost:

Tapping on the Shutter Speed display activates Hand-Held Mode which gives you exposure times of up to 1/7^th of a second. This is perfect for boosting exposure while still being able to get sharp photos when holding the iPhone. It’s recommended that the anti-shake function is activated when using this mode to add further stability when shooting.
A long press on the Shutter Speed display activates the Tripod Mode which gives you exposure times up to 1 second. Perfect for night-time cityscapes and light trails. Using this mode can also help reduce ISO levels and associated noise in night photographs. As the name suggests, this mode works best with a tripod if you want to capture clear photos. Otherwise, you can use the mode for interesting slow-shutter and blur effects.

Here is a table that shows how the two modes appear on the iPhone 4 and 5.

Mode	iPhone 4/4S	iPhone 5
Hand-held
Tripod

Note: The Shutter Speed button is located on the bottom-left on iPhone 4/4S and bottom-right on iPhone 5.

Full-screen editing control with new ProLab sliders

With the new ProLab sliders you can swipe anywhere on screen to fine-tune your image adjustments. When selected, a left/right swipe controls the intensity of the sliders. When de-selected a left/right swipe toggles between the adjusted and original photograph.

Here is an example of the new Contrast slider.

ProCamera is available from the AppStore for $3.99.

Requirements:Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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Photo App Focus: Effexy

Marty Yawnick — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:34:27 +0000

Effexy, Motion Lite

It’s been a great couple of weeks for new photo apps. One of the more interesting ones is a new photo effects app appropriately titled Effexy. It has a number of cool and interesting effects and a unique way of applying them. It’ll be interesting to watch this app develop.

I’ve got more after the jump. >>>

Effexy is not another faux-retro app. In addition to a basic image editing toolset — color, brightness, sharpen and crop — the app lets you create some great looking effects not found in many other photo apps.

The interface is lean and easy to figure out. Effects and tools are neatly organized into well-labeled folders. Each effect is clearly named. There are no obscure “Aubrey”, “Windsong,” or “the cookies rise in the oven” effects names. The app has a link to a demo video that’s worth watching to give you a head start on the features of the app.

The real meat & potatoes of Effexy are the effects. In the apps Effex category is where the the fun is. Most of the effects here are applied by painting or pinching. Here are a few of the outstanding ones.

The selection of zoom and blur effects is very cool. By pinching out from your focal point, these tools let you add a variety of blur effects to an image. Effects can be dragged around until you find the look you like. This often yields striking results — it’s a pretty aggressive zoom blur. Unfortunately, when it doesn’t work with an image, there’s no way to alter the intensity of these effects.

There are also several “Lite” blurs that I like a lot. Rather than smooth transitions, these blur in steps and can be used to create a more modern-looking effect.

The Liquify and Melt “Effex” are of the Kai’s Goo variety. Both were fast and responsive and may replace one or two other apps on your device.

Two of the Texture effects are worth noting as well. Thee effects are adjustable in size or intensity. I love the Dots effect. It’s essentially breaking down your image into a regular pattern of basic dots. It’s similar to the effects created by Part, but more uniform. The Kuwahara filter effect is difficult to see on the small screen of an iPhone, but it adds a very nice painterly abstract effect to an image. It should look great on an iPad.

All effects can easily be stacked on top of each other, which gives you more creative freedom while reducing camera roll clutter.

Not all of the effects are hits. There are much better Halftone effects available in the App Store. The Handshake effect is pretty hideous.

The complement of effects lacks a cohesive theme and the groups of effects seem all over the place. While the Effex tab is really nicely fleshed out, other effects feel like they were just tacked on for quantity.

Effexy supports full 8 MP native resolution of the iPhone 5 and 4S. Larger files take noticeably longer to process. The app strips out most EXIF data including Geotags.

Still, Effexy is a compelling grab bag of effects and image editing tools. Several of the effects are simply outstanding. Others are more subtle while a couple of them are of the WTH? variety. Overall, there’s more than enough here to make it worth a look at a buck or two.

Effexy is $1.99 in the App Store. This is a Universal app designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

=M=

Have you had a chance to try Effexy yet? Let us know what you think in the comments below….

Effexy, Dots

Effexy, Kuwahara effect

Effexy, Zoom Blur

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Deco Sketch is FREE This Weekend! Very Cool!

Marty Yawnick — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:53:57 +0000

Deco Sketch is a great app for painting geometric elements onto your images. It’s FREE for the next couple of days — a savings of $2.99. This is for the full version of the app and not a feature-limited Lite version. This is a great app and an awesome freebie. Grab it now!

More about the app and an App Store link after the jump. >>>

You can read my original review for Deco Sketch Pro here. It’s a great, modern-style app that creates effects that no other photo app does. Choose from a selection of eight overall styles, including lines, circles, hexagons and other patterns. It adds everything from a delicate web of geometric shapes to bold, colorful, modern patterns to an image. The results are amazing works of iPhone art that you can get using no other photo app.

There’s a steeper learning curve than many other effects app, but the results are often worth the effort.

Deco Sketch is normally $2.99 in the App Store. It’s a Universal app that’s designed for both iPhone and iPad. It should really be nice on the larger screen of an iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

=M=

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Creating High Resolution Images on iPhone 5, by Sid Peña

Sid Peña — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:00:32 +0000

Cherry Blossoms by Sid Peña

Most of the time, Life In LoFi focuses on getting the highest quality image in camera so you can app it into digital lo-fi afterwards. In his first post for us, Photographer/iPhoneographer Sid Peña explains how he gets impressive results getting high quality images for oversize prints using his iPhone. =M=

>>>>

My Workflow Secrets:
Creating High Resolution Images on iPhone 5

by Sid Peña

Most iPhoneographers would love to create high resolution, detailed, print-ready images. High quality output greatly increases the desire for your work across many venues of the graphics industry. Larger prints mean more potential buyers, higher DPI means more detail in those reproductions which could lead to more industry recognition and possibly more green in your pocket.

Cherry Blossoms by Sid Peña

I’m going to show you the basic workflow I use on 90% of my photos. This tutorial will take you from snapping the photo to a finished image with a resolution of 4896 x 3672, DPI of 300 x 300 and a way to create a master RAW image in TIFF format for archiving.

To follow this tutorial you will need:

an iPhone 5 (an iPhone 4S should also work nearly as well. =M=)
ClearCam ( )
SnapSeed ( )
Photogene2 ( )
KitCam ( )
Filterstorm 4 ( )

The Base Image

When I worked as a roadie, a sound engineer once explained why the band onstage sounded so bad. He said, “Crap in, loud crap out.” In other words, if you want a high quality result you need to start with the highest quality ingredients. The first ingredient is a crisp, clear photo which incorporates a great subject, composition and tone. I can’t help you with subject, composition and tone but for a crisp clear photo; “There’s an app for that!”

ClearCam is my goto Camera Replacement app for 95% of my shots, and for good reason. It does what it does amazingly well, which is produce sharp, high resolution images. With a tripod you can get images so tack sharp that only a pro could discern them from DSLR images. The way it works is it shoots 6 frames in fast succession and then you apply an align and enhance process from the app’s photo queue.

There are two shooting modes in ClearCam, Quick and Enhanced. I use the Enhanced mode because the Quick mode only produces native resolution images. ClearCam also has some quirky characteristics you should take into consideration when framing your images or preparing for the next shot. The ClearCam screen only displays 16:9 aspect ratio but the resulting photo will be in full 4:3. This means that in portrait mode you can’t see what is just to the left or right of the screen or in landscape mode what is just above or below the upper and lower limits of the viewable screen. When you process the image that area will be visible. After I got used to this issue it was easy to frame my shot properly. Also, I found that if you close the app with the home button or turn off the screen by pressing the power button before ClearCam has finished processing your last shot, that image will not be there when you go back to the app. If you need to shoot a burst or rapid succession, this is not the app you’re looking for.

Original image as captured by ClearCam

The size of the processed RAW images in ClearCam is formidable (about 70MB to 90MB). On my first day of SXSW 2013, I had about 4GB of available space on my 16GB iPhone 5 and hit capacity after about 40 photos. Since I didn’t bring my MacBook Pro with me I was forced to align, enhance, export and delete lots of the ClearCam files to free up the needed space (the next day I had my MacBook with me).

One quirky characteristic of ClearCam that I love is the effect the align and enhance process has on moving subjects. In my photo, The IT Crowd, the motion blurs and double and triple exposure effects really provide a dynamic feel to the image. I suggest playing around with this to see what kind of results you get, your mileage may vary.

The IT Crowd by Sid Peña

The Sharper Image

Once you have a good base image from ClearCam, it’s time to take it into SnapSeed for a little Detailing. This is a quick and simple way to really make the final image pop. I always dial Sharpening to 20 and Structure to 5, then save and export to Camera Roll. Anything higher and you start flirting with Edge Glow and what I call Retina Burn (a common result of over zealous HDR).

Enhance Yourself

Now that we have a sharp base image to work with, it’s time to edit the image into the final vision of what was in your mind’s eye when you snapped the photo. I prefer staying within the realm of organic photography but if you want to go into full blown digitally altered version of a Stephen King nightmare, knock yourself out.

My current goto app for editing most of my photos is KitCam. It handles large resolution images without breaking a sweat. KitCam also has amazing white balance and exposure compensation. There are a ton of film types/lens/frames combinations. Since I shoot mostly for black and white output, I use the Newsprint and Rorschach films almost exclusively, (although I have been known to use a color film for its tonality and then drop the saturation to zero). I also love that KitCam preserves EXIF/IPTC data.

Once I’ve imported the image into KitCam, I check if Clarify will take the image closer to my vision without blowing out the highlights. If it does, then I set it to that with the knowledge I can always turn it off again should later adjustments take it closer to Retina Burnout.

The image with Clarify turned on.

Next, I set the Aspect Ratio and set the flow and composition of the image by zooming and/or moving and cropping. KitCam maintains the size of the image regardless of the amount of zoom and crop you apply. This is a great feature that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.

Aspect ratio set to 16:9.

Zoomed image will maintain 4896×3672 size.

Now that we have Aspect set, we can add Vignette (if needed), set color and tone via the film type and add a frame (again, if desired).

Vignette Lens applied.

Newsprint Film applied.

The Newsprint Film in KitCam usually blows out the highlights of a picture by just a tad. Luckily, KitCam has one of the best Exposure features of any app I’ve ever used. Usually, one half step to one full step down will suffice to reduce solarization and highlight blowout.

Exposure set to about -.5.

My goto setup is 16:9 aspect, Vignette Lens (wide open), Newsprint Film, Exposure set to -.5 to -1 and rarely a slight adjustment to Contrast and/or Brightness. Save to camera roll.

The Devil is in The Details

Ok, we are almost finished. We just need to set additional IPTC information (copyright notice, artist credit etc.) and to set the image DPI. I use Photogene2 for these tasks. Open your masterpiece in Photogene2 and select the image info button. I have a preset with my information that I insert. Once you’ve entered your info close that window and open the Export menu. Click on the Resolution/Resize line. Scroll to the bottom and set the JPEG Quality to 1.00. You only need to do that once unless you change it again. The DPI section is just above JPEG Quality. Set that to 300×300 (this only needs to be set once). Scroll up to the Resolution section and select the 4896 line (3672 if you chose 1:1 in the Aspect step of processing). The resolution selection has to be made each time you go through this process. Save to camera roll.

The EXIF data in Photogene2

JPEG quality, DPI setting and Resolution.

Wake the Kids, Call the Neighbors

Now your masterpiece is finished and ready to display in your online gallery or print and hang in your humble abode. What else should you do? If longevity is a concern, creating multiple backup copies is a good idea. I keep a copy in the cloud on Dropbox and a copy on an external hard drive. Steer clear of cloud services that reduce image quality when you upload or download.

One More Thing

I’ve recently started creating “Master” versions of my work in Filterstorm. Filterstorm will create a RAW TIFF copy of your image that will be about 35MB to 40MB. The downside is that Filterstorm only preserves the EXIF data and strips the IPTC data.

Export settings for Filterstorm

EXIF data for finished RAW image.

The finished image in TIFF format

Detail of TIFF at 100%

Happy Hunting

Well, that just about does it. This is my current work flow for processing most of my photos. Of course, this is meant to be just a basic guide. I encourage you to experiment, take chances and develop a flow that suits your style.

The take away here is your photograph is like a lasagna, it requires a recipe (plan), good ingredients (apps), careful layering (processing), attention to detail (composition, tone) and some elbow grease (get off your butt and go shoot something)!

SXSW Tuesday Morning by Sid Pena

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Sid Peña began his photographic journey in 1985 when he bought a Nikon FG in Kitzingen, Bavaria, West Germany. He has worked as a photojournalist and graphic designer, among many other interesting jobs. He is currently working for a very well known computer firm in Austin, Texas. When he’s not at work he can be seen lurking around downtown with his iPhone 5, on the hiking trails of Walnut Creek with his dog, Angie or hosting a MST3K marathon at his house for fellow MSTies.

Flickr Photostream: www.flickr.com/photos/sidpena
Twitter: @sidpena

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Hueless 2.1 Released and We’ve Got Free Copies!

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 06:48:23 +0000

I love black & white iPhone photography and my favorite camera app shoot it with is Hueless from curious satellite. It’s got a slick interface and a great toolset to help you shoot awesome looking black & white photos. The app just got an update, albeit a minor one, but it’s a great reason to give away some Hueless promo codes.

Wanna win one? Keep reading. >>>

Hueless is an excellent black & white camera app from a great developer who regularly adds great functionality to the app without losing site of its core focus — quickly and easily taking great black & white photos. You can check out my most recent review of the app here.

The new update is mainly a maintenance release. Here’s what’s new in Hueless 2.1:

What’s New in Hueless 2.1

- Option to additionally organize your photos in a “Hueless” Album in the Photos app. On/Off Switch is located in the iOS Settings app
- Added “Open in…” export option

Fixes in Version 2.1

- Fixed southern hemisphere geotagging accuracy (Sorry about that, Charles!)
- Optimized interface rotation for isolated instances
- Improved tap-anywhere shutter release response
- Simplified Exposure/Contrast slider rotation
- Enhanced filter preview speed

Hueless is $1.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation) and iPad Wi-Fi + 4G. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Please note that Hueless does not post-process images from your camera roll. Hueless is a camera.

If you like Hueless, be sure to check out Huemore from the same developer. Same great tools and interface as Hueless in a color camera app. Check out my preview here.

Hueless Giveaway

Today, we’ve got a few Hueless promo codes to give away. To be eligible to win one, simply enter the giveaway below. If you follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you can get additional chances for a promo code.

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Thursday, March 28, 2013. Winners will be determined by Random.org. One code per reader, please.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(If you’re having trouble viewing the above widget on a mobile device, try viewing this page in landscape mode on your iPhone.)

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Big thanks to Christopher Radliff from curious satellite for supplying us with these giveaways.

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Hey, Denver! The international iPhoneography Group Announces Its Inaugural Exhibit

Marty Yawnick — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 06:21:12 +0000

The international iPhoneography Group (TiiG) will hold their inaugural iPhoneography exhibition at the prestigious Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC) in Denver, Colorado. The Show’s opening reception will be Friday, May 3rd and a closing reception will be held on June 14th, 2013. The CPAC is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013. It is an honor to have this important organization embrace and host an iPhoneography exhibition.

Opening Reception: Friday, May 3rd, 6-9 pm (co-opening with the annual CPAC Member’s Show)
Closing Reception: June 14th, 6-9pm.

Show Dates: May 3rd – June 14th.
Workshops, Panel Discussion and Presentations by TiiG members (to be announced) will be held on Saturday, May 4th. Subjects tentatively to include: Past, Present, and Future of iPhoneography; Hipstamatic tips & tricks; What apps are best & how to get started.

Participating Artists: James Clarke – Boulder, CO; Clint Cline – Plant City, FL; Shirley Drevich – Miami, FL;
Roger Guetta – Montreal, Quebec; Cindy Patrick – Moorestown, NJ; Rudy Vogel – Springfield, MA.

This will be the inaugural Exhibition for The international iPhoneography Group. Established in 2012, The International iPhoneography Group, or TiiG, is a collective of digital artists dedicated to the creation, education and promotion of Fine Art using iOS technologies as their “palette” of choice.

TiiG was founded to demonstrate the vast possibilities of utilizing application-based technologies to enhance and transform photographic works. The imagery created by the members of this collective is photographic at its core, but pushes the boundaries of creativity and moves beyond the camera. Photography may play a part in what iPhoneography is, but by no means is it the defining point of what it has become.

The goal of TiiG is to move iPhoneography into the realm of Fine Art, free of the prejudices that surround the utilization of these advanced technologies.

The 6 Artists who make up the founding members of TiiG were chosen for their dedication to the advancement, education, and promotion of Mobile Phone technologies that take photography beyond capturing images with a camera. The images presented also differ from current digital Art in that no computers, or standard computer based software such as Photoshop, was used in their creation. The images exhibited are all created on iOS devices (iPhone, or iPad) with applications currently available.

James Clarke:

“Taking pictures with a mobile device is more about collecting raw material. I’m not interested in taking amazing pictures just to replicate what we already see. You could say that my goal is to create imagery that has an emotional response. My interest is more in the area of creating digital Art. I enjoy the set of tools I’ve been handed by a guy who had the vision to make technology simple and fun to use. It gives you a sense of freedom that you don’t get somehow sitting at your computer.”

Clint Cline:

“Digital photography has spawned a tremendous democratization of visual expression and – despite the claptrap that inevitably arises – we are all better for it. In the Proverbs it says ‘as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another’ …. likewise the explosive evolution in digital photography – and now iPhoneography – is challenging and pushing and elevating a larger discussion on the power, use, and expression of visual communication. I am sharpened every day to see the abundance of talent, some directed, some still making its way, that finds expression through the iPhone and mobile digital photography.”

Cindy Patrick:

“Discovering Chase Jarvis’ book “The Best Camera is the One That’s With You” was a major turning point for me. I suddenly began to look at the world around me differently and began snapping pictures like crazy with my iPhone just to see what things would look like. Now 100% of my personal work is created using my iPhone.”

Roger Guetta:

“I’ve never really been a traditional photographer. I come from a fine arts background but sometimes dabbled with my Polaroid SX70. I loved pushing the SX70?s emulsion to transform the image. When I did experiment with darkroom techniques, I found myself painting over my black and whites with food coloring. When I bought my DSLR, I immersed myself into Photoshop techniques. Always a manipulator, never a purist. Then, ( insert celestial music here ) I fell in love with the iPhone and the array of apps which make the transformative experience an absolute joy.”

Shirley Drevich:

“Perception is the underlying element in my photography and it is heightened by the iPhone’s technology. It does not depend on weather or lighting conditions – The designated “photo shoot” day with heavy equipment is a thing of the past. It enables me to observe, record, and most importantly transform images, using apps to transform color, light, texture, and ambiance. I call this work my “app dance.” It is an intuitive process married with technology. The iPhone helps make the real super-real and transforms the super-real into art.”

Rudy Vogel:

“I have been shutter-snapping consistently since I was a youth, but have only begun “snapping, apping & zapping” since Christmas of 2010. The images I shoot may sometimes be definitive or, what I call that “iconic” image. But, for the type of art I create I view an image as my palette from which I mix & transfer colors, textures, components, and so forth. These variables then become the ingredients I utilize within a work product I create, often times, piece by piece.”

More information can be found on founding member James Clarke’s blog, Clarkeography.com.

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Faved: iPhone Photography Showcase, 03.24.13

Marty Yawnick — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 05:14:58 +0000

Pier 17 by Janine Graf

Here is this week’s Faved On Flickr, featuring some of the excellent iPhoneography and iPhone Art shared to Life In LoFi’s Flickr group. Keep reading for this week’s showcase, chosen from the thousands shared in our Flickr Group this past week..

There are a lot of striking portraits in the showcase this week, ranging from dreamscapes to noir style to very stylized. It’s a great range of captures. Not only are they great portraits, but how the artist chose to app these really enhances the images and adds to the feel of the image. This, I think, is one of the great aspects of iPhone photography.

The lede this week is one of the dreamscapes featuring the rhino from Janine Graf. I love these series of images. On one level, they’re just playful. On a deeper level, one could say that a rhino floating by balloons is (no pun intended) uplifting.

Also in this week’s showcase are outstanding iPhone photography, dreamscapes, portraits and iPhone Art from Ali Jardine, Sarah Jarrett, Benamon Tame, Andy Royston, Lola Mitchell, Dirk Dallas, Ginger Lucero, Lubaluft, Mansi Bhatia, Urban Muser, liz grilli, Mark T Simmons, Yannick Brice, BlemishedEye and many others.

Each link goes to the iPhoneographer’s Flickr photostream. Many iPhoneographers share the apps they used to create the images, so I encourage you to click the links and explore their photostreams further.

Want To Submit Your Images? Here’s How…

We welcome submissions from anyone with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. To have your works considered, just post or share your images to Life In LoFi’s Flickr group. Images must be shot and processed using only an iDevice. Sundays, we feature a brand new showcase of more great iPhoneography.

There are many other stunning works posted in our Flickr group. Be sure to stop by there and have a look at the many other images that I couldn’t fit into this piece.

Please enjoy the set this week. As always, it’s the iPhoneographers who deserve the credit. My sincere thanks to all of the iPhoneographers in this week’s post and in the Flickr group. Thank you for sharing.

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Where the Wind Goes by Ali Jardine

Noir by Sarah Jarrett

Press here for fun by Maansee

The Imprecision of Time by Trilikemike

Straight from inside by Lubaluft_

Magic in the words by Lola Mitchell

Stillness by Lola Mitchell

Untitled by BlemishedEye

Untitled by PatStH

It’s out there. by Urban Muser

Floating smile by inneremotion

color blocking by III.VI.V

Black and Milk #1 by inneremotion

No tricks by Andy^C

me by zachary.j,

strega by liz grilli

Thaumatrope 1 by Benamon Tame Photography

Sagra delle sagre – Di corsa per mangiare by Lorenzo Carnevali

Gran vía by Pablo Viñas

Life in fragments by eloise.capet

Destined for Greatness by Sxethang / Ginger Lucero

Let’s Get Lost by Mark T Simmons

Sparkle by Viveca Koh ARPS

Bokehlicious by Dirk Dallas

Now, voyager… by Andy Royston / Ft Lauderdale Sun

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New Digital Negative App Brings Uncompressed Raw Photos to iPhone — Poorly.

Marty Yawnick — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:27:18 +0000

Digital Negative
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Bottom Line: Digital Negative has too many problems, bugs and lack of pro features to be considered for any serious use right now.

Having RAW format has been the Holy Grail of iPhoneographers for years. New photo app Digital Negative promises us with a flavor of digital RAW, but stumbles very badly in its initial release, to the point where it’s unusable as a camera for shooting high-quality photos in the iPhone.

I spent some hands-on time with this app over the past couple of days. Keep reading my review of this promising, but very disappointing camera app. >>>

This new photo app is getting a lot of attention because of the potential advanced capabilities it brings to the iPhone camera.

Digital Negative is the first iPhone camera app that captures uncompressed images that retain all of the information recorded by the camera sensor. That’s really cool! These Digital Negative (DNG) pictures are much like the negatives from a film camera, and the serious photographer can use standard RAW editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop for Desktop, or Digital Negative’s built-in raw editing tools to develop the photograph and display all of the features in the image.

Digital Negative saves to its own lightbox as DNG files. These files are similar to RAW files, but differ in a few key ways. According to the app’s manual, Linear DNG, unlike most raw image formats, contains data arranged in a rectilinear R-G-B format. This data has already been demosaiced, but can be edited by all popular raw image editing software such as Adobe Lightroom. You can read more about DNG and RAW files here.

Both formats preserve the settings of the image as shot, including Exposure, Gamma, Contrast, Vibrance, Saturation, etc. You can edit and reedit these settings in the app’s lightbox or tweak the settings when you import images on the desktop in Photoshop. It’s control over an image that serious iPhoneographers have been wanting for years.

It’s a great, high-end workflow that in theory should give you visibly better raw images to work with outside of the iPhone — images with greater color, better exposure and less noise and compression artifacts.

Problem is, there’s way too much wrong with the app, and many of its mission critical tools are flat-out broken in this release.

Digital negative functions as a very basic camera. It’s got some of the features of an advanced camera, but is missing some of the most basic ones like separate Focus and Exposure targets. That’s an essential feature in any high-end camera replacement.

The app has a live, onscreen Histogram to help composing better lit shots. There’s a Rule-of-Thirds composition grid. Both features can be toggled in the app’s settings.

The viewfinder crops the preview in not just a little, but quite a bit. it’s impossible for precision composition in viewfinder. Accuracy is paramount in a high-end camera app. This is another dealbreaking issue. See below. The actual crop of the image had the wider field of view as seen in the Apple Camera — itself an inaccurate viewfinder.

Digital Negative viewfinder

Apple Camera viewfinder

The app’s Darkroom functions as a built-in image editor where you can adjust many of the parameters of the raw image. Original exposure settings are preserved in the DNG file. In theory, you can also go back later and make different moves to the image as you “redevelop” it. It’s professional a workflow I use all the time in production when color correcting, retouching, and color matching images in the studio here.

When the Darkroom module works, it works well. The app is able to make some impressive color and luminance fixes to an image that are visibly better than performing the same moves in other apps. Colors look more natural. Shadows are open with good detail. There is less visible noise, especially in the darker areas of the image. That may have more to do with the processing algorithms, though, than the developers use of a limited DNG format. See my sample images below processed with Digital Negative, PhotoForge2 and the excellent but often overlooked Process app ( ). These were all corrected using these settings: Gamma +25%, Vibrance +25%, Saturation +10%. Nothing major, but enough to make the image pop a little bit.

Original exposure

Processed with Digital Negative

Processed with Process app

Processed with PhotoForge2

Here are detail area images:

Original image detail

Detail area, Digital Negative

Detail area, Process app

Detail area, PhotoForge2

Unfortunately, several of Digital Negative’s tools are broken. The Exposure tool, The Denoise Tool, and the White Balance Tool all break the image with incorrect hue and saturation aberrations. Adjustments look more like the pixel destroyer Decim8 than from a high-end camera app.

Bugs in Exposure and White Balance tools in Digital negative

After editing, saving over an image saves back as a JPG, not as a DNG which destroys the ability to go back to your raw data. At least a warning would be nice.

DNG files are large. Raw 8 MP files were 30 MB each on my iPhone 5, compared to 1-3 MB of a high-quality JPG. You’ll need the largest capacity device to work with more than a few of these files.

The app has the ability to upload to Dropbox, but the feature is almost useless for what it really needs to be. The large DNG files take up a lot of room on my iPhone and I’d like to move the raw files off to my desktop as soon as possible. The Save to Dropbox feature only saves smaller JPG files that lack the raw data. When it works. The feature crashed often for me.

In fact, Digital Negative has stability issues overall. It crashed unexpectedly for me about 10% of the time during my tests. This was after quitting all apps and rebooting my device.

Opening up the DNG files in the RAW Camera plug-in in Photoshop for Mac was a disaster. The imported raw image (using the default import settings) should have been pretty close to what I shot, needing only minor tweaks to my preference. Instead, colors, saturation and luminance were all unusably way off and the imported image was way too noisy to use, negating any advantages and features of the raw DNG format. My reference raw image imported fine using the same plug-in and settings. Maybe I’m overlooking a setting here?

Digital Negative Photshop raw file import

And here’s what my reference image looked like, same settings:

Reference image, Photshop raw file import

The in-app help is thorough, but not completely helpful. It’s also unreadable on an iPhone. Here’s a link to the Digital Negative manual on the web. You’ll need an iPad or a desktop to read it. Bad oversight making the help manual unreadable on most of the devices that will be using the app.

I really hated to come down hard on this app, but the expectations are high for a camera app that touts these professional-level features. I was very excited to read what it can do and was looking forward to getting some true high-quality files on my iPhone. However, I feel that the bugs and the lack of some key features make this first try very disappointing.

Many serious iPhoneographers will really tear up and do amazing things with raw format images, especially as the iPhone’s cameras improve. Right now, Digital Negative is not that answer. It could be a game changer when everything is fixed, but right now the app feels more like a late alpha than a real release. The app currently has too many problems, bugs and lack of features to be considered for any serious use.

Digital Negative is $2.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 from DiffCase Shipping Now! Want One For Free?

Marty Yawnick — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:14:20 +0000

Life In LoFi has three PhoGo Cases to give away

The excellent DiffCase Lens Mount was my goto case on my iPhone 4-series phones until I got my iPhone 5. I’ve been using a temporary case waiting until the DiffCase for iPhone 5 was released.

The new PhoGo Case is the completely redesigned case for iPhone 5 from DiffCase. It’s shipping now for $39.95. Keep reading to find out more and how you can win a new PhoGo Case for iPhone 5, the sun shade, and a set of lenses. >>>

PhoGo Case For iPhone 5 Features from Jim Armstrong on Vimeo.

I love my DiffCase Lens Mount for iPhone 4. I still use one on my spare iPhone 4. Not only does it protect my iPhone very well from bumps, scratches and minor drops, but it also has a C-Mount which is designed for both the Gizmon-style macro/wide angle and fisheye lens sets, as well as the iPro lenses from Schneider Optics.

The new PhoGo has been completely redesigned for the iPhone 5. I’ll have a full review in a few days, but here are a few of the features of this new case system:

The iPhone snaps in snug to the strong sidewalls of case and there’s no shake at all.
When installed in the case, there’s actually a slight air gap between inside of case and back of the iPhone. This air gap helps absorb shock if dropped.
Mounts your iPhone to any tripod using standard 1/4-20 fitting
This case works great with existing DiffCase lenses, the iPro lenses as well as some others including the Photojojo lenses. The case comes with adapters.
With the addition of an optional spacer pad, this new case works perfectly in every way with the newest iPod Touch 5th Gen.
This everyday use case is made in USA and has optional leather backs that come from Boston (originating from Italy).

Gone are the tiny pins from previous versions of the DiffCase. The new sun shade simply presses on the case and can shift a bit left-to-right along top of case to help adjust where shadow is being cast on screen as sun moves across the sky. It also doubles as a stand for various iOS devices.

The case itself is a simple-to-use, compact, lightweight one piece snap-case design which replaces the two-piece design of previous DiffCase models.

The PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 retails for $39.95 but is introductory priced at $32 on the DiffCase website. Check it out. It comes in a number of colors and styles and is shipping now.

You can order a PhoGo Case or any other DiffCase product here.

PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 Giveaway

Over the next week, we are giving away 3 PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 rigs including Sun Shade and the 3-in-1 Lens set. Sweet! To be eligible to win, simply enter the giveaway below. By following us on Facebook and Twitter, you can get additional chances to win.

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Sunday March 31, 2013. Winners will be determined by Random.org. One PhoGo Case rig per reader, please.

Winners will be notified by email, Facebook message or Twitter direct message — be sure to check your spam filter. If you enter, be sure your email info is correct or your code will go to someone else. Please read the giveaway rules before entering.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(If you’re having trouble viewing the above widget on a mobile device, try viewing this page in landscape mode on your iPhone.)

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Many thanks to Jim Armstrong of DiffCase for providing the prizes and sale for this promotion.

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Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

Black & White 101, by Sid Peña

Black & white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

Tools and Apps

The Four Elements

1 – Lighting

2 – Contrast

3 – Textures

4 – People

Pick Your Poison

To Be or Not To Be

Proof Is in The Pudding

We’re Giving Away Copies of PhotoStation Today!

PhotoStation Giveaway

PhotoStation 2 Update Adds Great Layer Support

What’s New in Version 2.0

LAYERS MAIN HIGHLIGHTS:

OTHER:

KitCam and PhotoForge2 Gone as Developer is Acquired by Yahoo!

What Happened to KitCam and PhotoForge2?

GhostBird Software is joining Yahoo!

Cape Cod iPhone Photography Weekend Workshop with Jack Hollingsworth

ProCamera: Five tips for sharper iPhone photos

1. Get a good grip on your iPhone

2. Get your focus right

3. Use Anti-Shake in low-light

4. Use the ProCamera Lightbox to check sharpness

5. Use a good sharpening app

Analog Camera coming soon to iPhone

LensLight and LensFlare Updated. Now More Megapixels

Cool Tip: Using LensFlare Studio With Photoshop

Hueless and Huemore Updated. Now With Uncompressed TIFF

Hueless and Huemore Updates

Hueless and Huemore Giveaway

Perfectly Clear On Sale Now!

Why I Recommend Perfectly Clear

Hipstamatic Announces Oggl

Hipstamatic Announces Oggl, a Community For Creative People to Capture and Curate Their Lives Through Photography

Oggl Connects the Hipstamatic Community Like Never Before; Is a Brand New Place to Showcase Your Best Photos

Key Features

Support the Community & Get More Gear

Adobe Ideas is FREE Right Now!

Want a Free Copy of Percolator?

Percolator Giveaway

Process App Updated and On Sale!

Process Giveaway

Hey, Life In LoFi… Where Have You Guys Been?

ProCamera 4.1 Update With new Exposure Boost and full-screen editing control

New Exposure Boost!

Photo App Focus: Effexy

Deco Sketch is FREE This Weekend! Very Cool!

Creating High Resolution Images on iPhone 5, by Sid Peña

My Workflow Secrets: Creating High Resolution Images on iPhone 5

The Base Image

The Sharper Image

Enhance Yourself

The Devil is in The Details

Wake the Kids, Call the Neighbors

One More Thing

Happy Hunting

Hueless 2.1 Released and We’ve Got Free Copies!

What’s New in Hueless 2.1

Fixes in Version 2.1

Hueless Giveaway

Hey, Denver! The international iPhoneography Group Announces Its Inaugural Exhibit

James Clarke:

Clint Cline:

Cindy Patrick:

Roger Guetta:

Shirley Drevich:

Rudy Vogel:

Faved: iPhone Photography Showcase, 03.24.13

Want To Submit Your Images? Here’s How…

New Digital Negative App Brings Uncompressed Raw Photos to iPhone — Poorly.

PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 from DiffCase Shipping Now! Want One For Free?

Life In LoFi has three PhoGo Cases to give away

PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 Giveaway

Hipstamatic Announces Oggl,
a Community For Creative People to Capture and Curate Their Lives Through Photography

Oggl Connects the Hipstamatic Community Like Never Before; Is a Brand New
Place to Showcase Your Best Photos

My Workflow Secrets:
Creating High Resolution Images on iPhone 5