It's all about photo apps.

Photo Recipe: #SpicySunset

If you want to try this recipe, please hashtag it #SpicySunset. If you have your own photo recipe, you can let us know using the contact form.        

This recipe enhances your sunset photos and entices you to look at the photo for longer. 

Ingredients

If you don’t have a+signature you can use an alternative ‘signature’ app

Cooking Instructions

Photo 1:  With HDR On on your iPhone                         

Photo 2: Using Fx Photo Studio, I adjusted the gamma (reduced to about 35%) the saturation and contrast to make the sky look darker. I chose the Warm Yellow Effect, adjusting the contrast strength to make clouds match the tone of the sky.                                            

Photo 3: I  added Solvictus from Lensflare for the added drama of the sunset and reduced the noise using photoshopexpress for iphone.    

Photo 4: Labelled My Photo With My Signature Using a+signature .

Enjoy!


Phone Toss & Condoms - Improve your Mobile Photography (Part 2)

Often we feel stuck in photography, lack of inspirations and passion. Try out the following tricks to re-ignite your photographic love.

Weekly/Monthly photography assignments

Okay, say you can’t afford to take a photo everyday. I bet you can always spare a minute or two in a week(or even, a month) for photography, right? Try to set yourself a new topic every week, hunt for the moment and publish your work (eg. to Steply). Posting your photos is important as the social pressure would push you to keep going on.   

Start the trend! Shall we make this week’s topic “Clouds”? Post your photo on Steply and hashtag your best clouds photo with #Weeklychallenge . Let the community drive you forward.

Download Steply here.

Take photos in showers/swimming pools/beach

Okay I get what you’re thinking. Waterproof gear is expensive, right? Here is a cheap option: use condoms. 

Sam Noyoun has come up with the idea of “Dual Waterproof Consumer Electronics - the condom housing”, which is inspired by Navy SEALS’s approach to seal firing assemblies for their underwater explosives using condoms. The original author of this tutorial also created this to demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique with a cellphone.

* Steplyapp blog does not bear responsibility for any damages or loss caused by condom waterproofing! 

iPhone toss?

What is your most wanted super power? For me it’s flying as it’d make taking birds eye view photos easy. But with this trick, I guess I don’t need to have super powers anymore.

Mike Larson, the photographer, tossed his fish-eye lens equipped dslr into the air and took a paranoma photo for his crowd. To mimic the effect you can have a iPhone SLR mount or one of those mini phone lenses from Photojojo. 


iPhone toss how-to:

1. Set a slow shutter speed setting using these apps
2. Use a self timer of 1 or 2 seconds
For Steps 1+2 you can use the following apps: Gorillacam

3. Now toss your camera by running the timer. Careful! Don’t take it higher than 20 to 40 cm in air.

4. Don’t forget catch your camera back after your amazing toss.


For amazing effects, have a light source you have set for yourself and toss. This creates an amazing light-painting like effect!

For more techniques you can read Rishabh’s article here. 

*Again, Steplyapp blog does not bear responsibility for any damages or loss caused by iPhone tossing!

Do you have your secret trick to keep yourself shooting? Share it! and let everyone enjoy the photo fun!

How to Improve your Mobile Photography - 365, everyday, journaling (Part 1)

Often we feel stuck in photography, lack of inspiration and passion. If you are in an uninspred mood, try out the following tricks to re-ignite your photographic love.

Project 365

Claim yourself as a photography enthusiast but you’re only taking photos one at a time? If you want to be a better photographer, one way that is always recommended is to take a photo a day for 365 days. Having the aim of a photo a day also helps refocuses your life and see what means a lot to you. Doing Project 365 on your phone has one more advantage: you bring your gadget everywhere so you can capture the purple flowers on your way home, or the waterdrops on the window of your bus.

 

The following apps will allow you to easily create, organise and update your own project 365 photo album. 

Project 365

  

Photo 365 - Remember Your Year One Photo at a Time


 

Taking a photo for yourself, everyday

Loves being both the model and the photographer? Try the Everyday app. Photographic artist Noah Kalina has taken a self-portrait every day since 2000. He helped make the “Everyday” app, inspired by his everyday project. This app reminds you to take a photo of yourself every day. You won’t see the effects of the app in a short time, and two months effort will only make a 8 second long footage of your changing face. After months and years of effort you get to see how you’re slowly growing old…. or maturing to put it more kindly. 

     

Another app that you might be interested: Photo Journal App: Once Daily 365. This app helps making face videos of people around you: from your wife to your new born son. Best for new parents to record their new babies’ early days.

Photo Journal App: Once Daily 365

50% OFF at the moment to celebrate major new update for iPad release! Grab it now!

     

Do you have your secret trick to keep yourself shooting? Share it! Post a comment below and let everyone enjoy the photo fun!

Review: PhotoEffectPro: Is it REALLY for Pros?

What does it do?

PhotoEffectPro is a simple app which isn’t focused on filters, but more on simple effects and basic editing functionality, including vignetting, brightness and contrast and rotation.

Pros

  • Sharing options to your camera roll, via email, Twitter and Tumblr and although it would have been good to have a Facebook feature too, this is a pretty good mix.
  • 16 effects including oil paint, illusion and vignetting that can be layered on top of one another.
  • Some of the effects have their own options and intensity sliders built-in, which gives you more freedom over your images.

  • An undo feature, which is really handy considering you can make so many different edits. 
  • A few different intensity sliders that let you control brightness, contrast and colour correction.
  • A border tool, which allows you to specify the size as well as pick a custom colour.
  • A handy help feature which explains all of the different buttons and tools in more depth, which is ideal for first time users. 

Cons

  • Some of the effects seem a little basic and although it’s not meant to be an app with lots of filters, it would have been more comprehensive to have included one or two. 
  • There are some great options for certain effects, but others can’t be tweaked which is a shame. 
  • Some of the effects take a LONG time to render, the oil paint effect is a good minute which is a bit irritating.

Do you need it?

There are some nice little features which I wish would be integrated into some other apps. However, it’s a very simple photo app for someone who wants a very basic editing and effects tool which lets them save their images to their social networks, but if you’re used to filters and plenty of freedom I’d recommend you get something more comprehensive as I imagine you’ll bore of Photo Effect very quickly. 

Sample photos



6 fun photo apps which stays on your iPhone! Part 2

Photography apps are ridiculously easy to find in the app store. There are hundreds of options to choose from, ranging from highly practical ones and those which create laughters amongst friends. You might say, hey my iPhone doesn’t need these apps which make my face looks fat. But wait — they can be a life safer during dead-air times in friends and family gatherings!

Miss the times when you used to play around with soap bubbles in the sunshine? . Start Pashan and bubbles will be floating around in your camera preview screen. The size or number of soap bubbles varies depending on how you breathe on the microphone. Pick the perfect moment and hit the shutter. As it says on the iTunes page, “Soap bubbles give us a little change to our ordinary scenery.

ヒゲ専科 ,developed by a Japanese company AIM.Co.,Ltd., is a neat app which helps to apply a cartoon-like beard/mustache on your friends’ face. You can also write a message on your photo. Unfortunately this app has only got a Japanese version so if you don’t know the language you’d need some time to figure out what the buttons do.

Top Buttons from left to right: camera roll/camera, writing option, clear all, save. To apply beards tap on the buttons at the bottom and move to the desired location.

Motionize is best at creating breathtaking videos but it can also do awesome shoots. Adding cool edges to moving objects in your photo with five different effects, this free app is a bargain. Looking at the pictures below doesn’t justify what the app can do. Check out their Youtube video.

Motionize works best with a mini-tripod/ flat surface.

Do you have any fun photo apps on your iPhone? Share your creative use in the comments below!

6 fun photo apps which stay on your iPhone! Part 1

Photography apps are ridiculously easy to find in the app store. There are literately hundreds of options to choose from, ranging from highly practical to those which create laughters among friends. You might say, “hey my iPhone don’t need those apps which make my face looks fat”. But wait — they can be a life safer during dead-air times in friends and family gatherings!

Slit-Scan photography is originally used in static photography to achieve blurriness or deformity, which then was perfected for the creation of spectacular animations. This very time-consuming effect is now available on your iPhone, free to download. The Slit-scan app has simplified the mechanical technique for you, yet creating nice effects using the Slit-Scan app still takes a lot of practice and effort. No pain no gain mate! The funny images take time creating but are highly addictive.

I wasn’t cool enough to create images they posted on iTunes store!

iSwap Face — Don’t just swap faces, swap everything! Don’t let the name restrict you, with this app you can go crazy with swapping whatever you see in your photo. Here is some of my work and I bet you can do better than me!

Swap the icons!

Guess what was the original image?

  

3D Faces 2 turns your face into a 3D model. Again, you don’t have to restrict yourself using faces only for this app. However it’s a bit hard to make your little toy 3D as this app supports front camera only. You can also export your scan in three different file formats and use it in other 3D softwares.

Do you have any fun photo apps on your iPhone? Share your creative use in the comments below!

Review: Iris Photo Suite

What does it do?

Iris Photo Suite is a really comprehensive photo editing app which lets you do everything from basic cropping to selective colour application. It also has a big bank of filters and effects. However, Iris Photo Suite really stands out because it gives user so much control over their images.

Pros

  • Iris Photo Suite has intensity sliders for each filter, so you can make effects as subtle or as extreme as you please. This is something I look out for every time I review an app now, as I think it’s really important! 
  • There’s so much choice. You don’t have to worry about flicking through different applications, everything is all within one.

  • The effects and filters are of a good quality and there aren’t any that look too similar either. I’ve found in the past that photo apps which try to tick all of the boxes often fall short when it comes to filters.
  • Many elements of Iris Photo Suite beat even specialist apps, for instance, the selective colour tool is just as good as other apps which focus on playing around with colour. 

    Cons

    • There aren’t any photo service sharing options, which for such a comprehensive app is a big shame, a share to Flickr option would have worked really well.
    • The user interface can be a little confusing, but this could well be because there’s so much crammed into one app! 

    Do you need it?

    Yes!

    I’m getting to the point now where I have so many apps which I love that I’m really spoilt for choice and I end up flicking between four or five. Iris Photo Suite combats that problem, it keeps me within just one, good quality app and produces results to a really high standard. 

    Sample photos



    Review: Watermyphoto

    Watermyphoto, developed by Miinu, is an innovative app that adds realistic water reflections to your photos. Can you waterize every photo? Let’s check it out.

     

    Pros

    • Watermyphoto is the first which “waterize’s” photos in a realistic way and provides you with an animated moving reflection before saving. I love the animated view! It’d be great if I could save the animated version alongside the .jpg version.
    • It works perfectly when the skyline fits with the bottom edge of your desired object. If you’re out in the country side and you’re dissatisfied with the photo you take next to a lake, try waterizing it! Watermyphoto might produce a realistic water surface that outshines the real lake!

    Cons

    • There were quite a few crashes when I was trying to generate the sample pictures. I hope the developers will fix this in the next update. 
    • The tabs at the top don’t work too well, sometimes require multiple taps.
    • Watermyphotos is only applicable for some photos as not every photo looks alright after you waterize it, for example portraiture shots.
    • You can only waterize landscape images, which limits your photo choices.

     

    Conclusion

    It’s worth downloading this free app for experiments. It’d be great if there’s more photo sharing options to fit the needs of users from different platforms.

    Tips for your experiments: If your image has a water surface at the bottom, sometimes the ripples generated by this app do not match with the ones on your original photo. To Fix this, crop away the original water surface and enjoy the effect that Watermyphoto generates.

    Sample Photos

    Review: Photo Mojo

    What does it do?

    Photo Mojo is a very simple photo editing application made by Jovico LLC, which allows users to touch up images and make basic changes instantly.

    Pros

    • There are only a few selective changes that you can make to your images with Photo Mojo, including rotation, brightness, contrast, hue and saturation.

    • My favourite thing about Photo Mojo is that there’s an intensity slider next to each option, which allows you to watch the changes instantly as you make them.
    • There’s a handy undo and redo feature built into the application.
    • The user interface is Intuitive and easy to use, with options along the bottom, sliders on either side of the image and then other important features along the top. 

    Cons

    • Some avid photo app fans may find Photo Mojo a little basic.
    • There’s only an option to save your final images to the camera roll, as apposed to being able to email them on or share to social networks.

    Do you need it?

    Photo Mojo is a very basic little app, ideal for users who want some editing tools but don’t want anything too complicated, like Photoshop. 

    I can also imagine the app being particularly useful for those who want to make a few quick touch ups to an image before editing it in another app with more detailed filters and effects.

    Sample photos

    Original photo:


    Edited photos:

      


    Review: TouchRetouch

    What does it do?

    TouchRetouch for iPhone removes unwanted elements of your photos (including shadows, errant light, dust on the lens, even people) with one click.  Most serious photographers are aware that Adobe’s Photoshop CS5 desktop software gives you this same functionality with its magical “Content-Aware Fill™” feature. This video from Gizmodo introduced the feature to us in spring 2010 and took our breath away.

    Some might argue that this feature alone was worth the upgrade price of the Adobe suite when it was released. The iPhone application TouchRetouch gives us the ability to have a strikingly similar one-click feature in our pocket. 

    Pros

    • Imperfections can be removed later, so you can focus on being the photographic artist now
    • The application is about performing only one feature, therefore the interface is simple and uncluttered

    • The interface includes only a lasso, a brush and an eraser to select the area for removal, a move tool to navigate around the photo, a clone stamp for cleanup and a Go! button
    • There is virtually no learning curve.  The application is as simple as
    1. Paint over the area that you want to remove 
    2. (Optional) Further refine your selection with the eraser tool and zooming for finer control
    3. Press the Go! (movie slate) icon to watch the magic happen
    4. (Optional) Use the clone tool to touch up any areas where the automatic retouch magic delivered undesirable results.

    Cons

    • The application performs complex calculations so it may run slower on older devices.
    • The company created an application that is virtually the same for iPhone and iPad, but it is not a universal binary.  Although I did not mind spending $.99 on this application each for both my iPad and iPhone, I do miss the portability and manageability of having one application that works on either device.

    Do you need it? 

    This application is a must-have in any mobile photographer’s tool kit.  At $.99 US, I would buy it over and over again.  This price tag certainly beats the hundreds of dollars US I might have spent to upgrade Photoshop CS5 for the same feature.

    Sample photos