Many readers search the web for a Photoshop plug-in that does what the Hipstamatic app does so effortlessly on an iPhone.
In case you missed it back in September, Moritz Furst posted a tutorial in the Hipstamatic Flickr Group on how to apply some of Hipstamatic’s effects using Photoshop. It’s pretty easy if you know your way around your computer, but it does involve opening up and peeking around the app’s package files. It’s a technique that’s not for the faint of heart.
This technique doesn’t do everything Hipstamatic does. There’s more to Hipstamatic than just applying frames. It does give you access to textures and frames that the app uses, letting you apply some of the effects to your images in Photoshop (or other desktop photo editing software). You can delete the low-res files — they’re clearly marked. You can use the remaining JPG files for layer effects in Photoshop.
It won’t be as quick and easy as Hipstamatic, and you probably won’t get identical results as the app. Expect to spend a lot more time applying these filters than just taking the image with Hipstamatic in the first place. It’s a lot faster and easier just to shoot your images with Hipstamatic and let it do the work.
A few warnings:
This technique probably violates your Hipstamatic software license. Keep that in mind as you decide whether or not to try this.
If you are going to try this, always work from a copy of the app! This technique will render the copy of the app unusable. Never work off your original copy. Don’t do this if you’re uncomfortable with any of the instructions.
Here is the link to the original post, “Hipsta Effects with Photoshop: A little how-to” in the Hipstamatic Flickr group.
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UPDATE 11.30.10: It looks like the link above has been removed from the Hipstamatic Flickr Group. Nothing ever really disappears from the internet and I think a user may have reposted the same instructions in the discussions area of Life In LoFi’s Flickr Group — try looking there. The same warnings and caveats apply…. =M=
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