Mobile Tutorial - Kat Eye Studio

February 5, 2015 by Kat

Impressions of Artista Impresso (A Mobile Tutorial)

I’ve been playing with a new app this week, and thought I would share! JixiPix Software has released a new app for both iOS and Android, Artista Impresso, which creates an impressionistic painting style out of your photos. I love the JixiPix apps for their adjustability, and this is another great one for the app arsenal. Let’s take a look at how it works.

But first, a quick Mother-in-Law update: They found no sign of cancer in her nodes, so we are all incredibly grateful for that. She should be going home today. She has come through surgery fine although pain has been an issue. My husband said she described the pain as “wearing a barbed wire bra.” Ow!! Yeah, I think men and women alike can sympathize with that. Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers for my family around this. I definitely feel the love of my blog community!!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

It all starts, of course, with a photograph captured with ProCamera. We’ve had a lot of foggy mornings this winter, and the greyish cast to the trees comes from the fog in this one.

The first step is to add some color, which is done with a series of layers in Mextures and Snapseed. This is the image that I pulled into Artista Impresso:

Most of the JixiPix apps perform similarly. You load a photo, select a preset, and then fine tune the options. If you don’t want to click through the presets, you can use the Randomize feature to randomly try on presets. You can also Undo your changes, which is much appreciated when you are playing around with options.

For Artista Impresso, once I’ve loaded my photo, I can select between the two preset menus: Alla Prima and En Plein Air. Within each menu are TONS of preset options. You can see I’ve selected “Sorbet” from the En Plein Air Presets for a purpley-pink color tone. (Note: All screenshots are from an iPad. The layout is the similar on an iPhone, but the icons take up more of the screen space.)

Now we customize! Let’s walk through the menu options. We can change the brush size, color enhancement and painted edge. This is where I go in and get rid of the annoying edge that all of the presets add. I think the edge is supposed to make it look more like a “real” painting, but since I’m always blending the output with something else, I want it gone. Thankfully, in this app, I can eliminate it.

Next we can change the substrate texture and strength, choosing between canvas and linen.

For En Plein Air Presets, you can now adjust your color palette. You’ll notice the En Plein Air Presets have a stronger color shift than the Alla Prima presets. The “Limited” style keeps more of your original color than “Full.” You can also shift the Palette, creating more varation in your output. I didn’t make adjustments here for my example.

For Alla Prima Presets, there is a different option in this location, called Artistic Finish. This allows you to modify the colors by choosing an alternate color and texture overlay.

Finally, both presets allow you to create a “Detail” area of the image. In the selected Detail area, you can select a more finely detailed brush stroke than the rest of the image. Move the center dot to center on your desired detail area, and then change the size of the detail area by dragging the individual points of the ellipse. Don’t use two fingers to change the size of the ellipse. That just pans and zooms the image (a nice feature in itself).

When you like what you’ve got, you go back home and save. The output is saved at the same resolution as the starting image.

Here’s the final output from Artista Impresso:

For me, this output becomes a layer in an overall edit. A “painted” image like this will provide color and texture variation, as well as softness to the lines in the photograph, as I blend it with other images. Here is the final image, which was the result of using Snapseed, Mextures, Autopainter, Autopainter II, XnView Photo FX, Image Blender and Artista Impresso:

I want to point out how much variation there is in the detail. Since I post low resolution images online, you can’t always see this, so I zoomed in here:

While you don’t necessarily notice this detail as you look at a whole image, this subtle variation in texture and color is what gives an image depth and interest, especially when printed. That’s one of the reasons I use so many apps blended together. As I’m working on an image, I look at the overall results but I’m also zooming in to see what is going on at a detail level.

The image I shared earlier this week, Holding my Breath, also used Artista Impresso as one of the layers. JixiPix Software has a full range of mobile apps as well as Photoshop and Lightroom plugins. Definitely worth checking out!

Enjoy your impressionistic photo editing!

December 16, 2014 by Kat

Winterrupted (A Mobile Tutorial)

I invented a new word with the title of this piece: Winterrupted. I bet I don’t even need to define it, and you could use it in a sentence like this…

We are traveling for the holidays and I hope our trip isn’t winterrupted.

See? I’m liking this word.

I’m liking this piece too! I spent waaaay too long on it Tuesday morning, with a lot of false starts. I thought I would share the sequence of the final edit, and also give you an idea of how unrealistic it is to expect to just move through an edit directly, in so few steps.

First, it started with this image, captured in ProCamera. Hello bare trees! It’s so good to have you back. Now we can have some fun with editing.

I cropped it in Snapseed, and also increased resolution in Big Photo.

Next, into Mextures for a color filter.

And then into Autopainter for an artistic effect. Remember, in Autopainter you can stop the process before it finishes, which is what I did here.

I’m loving the colors at this point! I want to get the detail of the branches back in, so it’s into Image Blender to blend back with the cropped version above.

I’m enjoying Decim8 again lately, I think it’s the combination of the geometric effects on the organic lines of the trees. I played around with a few effects, finding two I liked:

These two were blended in Image Blender, to get to the final image: Winterrupted.

Looks like a straightforward sequence, right? Of course, when I’m at the end and can trace the steps backward, it is clear. But look at how many steps were really in this process. Each image is something I tried, something a little bit different:

The same image, the same apps, but lots of variations in sequence. There were problems with the image in the original sequence I tried. As I got further along in the edit, the upper branches became too dark and muddy and there were some blobby spots appearing in other locations, both of which required me to go back and try again. And again. I loved the colors and how they varied with the effects, so I knew I was onto something good. I kept working it until it came together. Good thing I was able to work without winterruption. 😉

Don’t ever get to thinking that mobile photography and editing with apps is a slam dunk. I’m not just tapping a button and getting a finished result with this kind of process. It’s messy and experimental and can be frustrating at times. But the mess is part of the fun, and getting a finished piece you are happy with in the end, like this one, makes it all worthwhile.

November 25, 2014 by Kat

Forest Explosion (A Mobile Tutorial)

Yesterday I was inspired to experiment. I had seen some Christmas themed graphics made up of triangles, and I thought, Hey, why not try layering triangles cut from my tree images?

Well, the resulting image “Forest Explosion” was far from the starting idea, but it was fun to create. I thought it would be a good tutorial on how to “cut out” shapes from images through blending.

First, you have to get a black and white image of a shape. I use the shape frames in the Afterlight app for this. Load in a solid black photograph and then select your frame shape. (To create a solid black image file, take a photo with the lens covered.) You can change the size of the shape with the slider bar along the bottom. You can also change the color of the frame, but for this exercise I wanted to keep it white.

Now I have my shape for “cutting out” part of an image. I could have just loaded the image file directly into Afterlight and used the shape frame on it, but in Afterlight you can only change the size of the image you are framing, you can’t tilt or rotate. With blending, the next step, I have more control of how the image overlays the shape.

In Image Blender, load the black and white shape image on bottom and the image you want to cut out on top. Use the “Arrange” function to place the top image where you want it relative to the shape. In this way, you control the part of the image that shows within the shape. In the case of this image, I wanted the trees to repeat the shape of the triangle.

Then you blend. In this case, I used Screen mode at 100%. I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with blend modes lately, and will be covering them in more detail in my book. Blending is such a powerful creative tool for editing photographs, it’s something I think everyone should understand.

I didn’t end up using that tree image, but here’s the final shape cut out I did use, from an image I created earlier this year.

From here, I played with layering the different triangles I had cut out from previous edits. That didn’t go anywhere interesting, so I decided to play with some other shape apps. I pulled the triangle into Fragment, and started experimenting. The white space created interesting results in the fragments, and I loved the way the partial circles seems to explode out of the triangle in this pattern. I edited the fragment to match the original image tones.

I tried layering some other textures to soften the white background, but didn’t like the effect as much. It needed to stay a bit more stark and graphic with the white, so I left it as is.

There you have it. A way to cut parts of a photograph out, using a shape or any black and white image, and a fun combination of shape apps for an “explosive” result. It’s not necessarily something I will use every day, but it was great fun to experiment. Give it a try!

October 21, 2014 by Kat

The Kitchen Fix (A Mobile Tutorial)

Here they are! Photos of our new kitchen. We love, love, love it. I never dreamed of designing a kitchen from scratch, so this is the dream kitchen I never knew I wanted.

I’ve been meaning to get good pics to share on the blog since the remodel finished. I was disappointed this weekend when, after cleaning and polishing the kitchen, I pulled out my dSLR and discovered I don’t have a lens with wide enough angle to get the whole kitchen in. With my small house, I couldn’t move far enough back to get the views I wanted. So I tried the iPhone, which had a wider angle to fit more in the frame, and I went with it.

Now, let’s get one thing straight right out of the gate: An iPhone isn’t the right camera for serious architectural photography. A full frame dSLR with a wide angle lens, some additional lighting and a tripod would do the job nicely. If you would like to see photos of our kitchen like that, you can visit Kirk Design and Construction’s website, here.

I needed to pull out some tricks to eke out the best from the iPhone instead. I thought I’d share a couple of the apps I used along with the pics today. All of these pics are in full resolution, so you can click on them to see a larger image. I wanted you to be able to see the detail I’m talking about.

ProCamera HDR

With the arrival of iOS 8, ProCamera rolled out a new version with an HDR upgrade option. For $1.99, you can add this new camera option to the already-great app.

Use of the HDR camera is simple. Frame your photo, setting your focus and exposure as always you always do in ProCamera, and take your photo. (Instructions for using ProCamera are here, if you need them.) ProCamera quickly takes two photos, a light and dark exposure, and combines them. You are shown the preview, and you can toggle back and forth between the original and HDR versions. If you like the HDR version, you save, otherwise you can cancel.

You have the option to select the HDR processing effect in the menu, choosing between Natural, Vivid, Dramatic, Black n White, and Faded. I like Natural the best.

Having a quick HDR option within my favorite camera app is nice for those times when lighting conditions are especially challenging, like in the kitchen.

The main challenge with any HDR app is stability between the two exposures. Slight shifts of the camera will cause blur when the two images are combined. If you click on the image above to look at it larger, you can see the focus is soft, most obviously on the right side of the stove, the clock and decorations above the cabinets. For perfect HDR, a tripod is really needed, whether you are using an iPhone or a dSLR.

Perfectly Clear

Since I didn’t want to pull out my tripod for a perfect HDR photo, I decide to go with my usual solution for high contrast, expose for the highlights and then edit.

I started with an image captured in the standard ProCamera, exposing for the highlights in the window which leaves the kitchen underexposed.

I started with a basic edit in Snapseed, adjusting brightness, ambiance and contrast and cropping to remove the distracting lights.

The image was still a bit flat, so I pulled it into the app Perfectly Clear. This app makes automatic adjustments to improve exposure, tint, noise and sharpness. You can then fine tune individual adjustments, using the Tweak menu on the right. Perfectly Clear allows you to see the before and after at the same time, a nice feature.

The final image is definitely clearer. Perfectly Clear has a tendency to over sharpen, which adds noise, so keep an eye on that. Starting with an underexposed image, which has more noise, doesn’t help. This version ends up with more noise than I would like, but the overall exposure works. (Click on the image to see it larger.)

This is a nice app to bring some clarity and finely tuned adjustments to iPhone photographs. I don’t see using it much for my artistic work, because I’m more often going for a soft, ethereal effect rather than the “perfectly clear” look, but it’s a useful app to have in the processing arsenal for those times when I want my image crisp and clean.

So there’s my new kitchen, along with a couple of apps to help you get better photographs with your iPhone. I hope you enjoy the apps as much as I’m enjoying this new kitchen! If you’re in the neighborhood, you can see the kitchen in person during the Philomath Open Studios tour the next two weekends, when my studio will be open for visitors.

September 18, 2014 by Kat

Singing the Praises of Stackables (A Mobile Tutorial)

I have a new love! I’ve recently discovered Stackables, a fantastic editing app, and I thought I would share what I’m enjoying about the app and what I’ve been creating with it.

Ocean Oregon Coast Kat Sloma Mobile iPhone Photography

Merging

Stackables is a layering app which allows you to add multiple textures, filters, gradients, patterns and adjustment layers to an image. You can also access and save Formulas, which are basically presets that have already been created using multiple layers. The layering is fantastic: You can add new layers, remove layers, turn layers on and off, and shuffle the order of the layers around as you work through an edit. The adjustability of individual layers is powerful too. Opacity, blending mode and rotation can be changed individually for each layer. It’s like having a “lite” version of Photoshop at my fingertips. The only thing I can’t do is import my own layers, beyond the starting image. Luckily, Stackables has a broad range of all types of layers so I’m not limited.

Let’s take a quick look at operation. There are two versions of Stackables, one for iPhone and one for iPad. Both start at $0.99 with in-app purchases available (I highly recommend getting the Master Pack for $1.99). The screen shots below are from the iPad version, since that’s what I primarily use for editing.

As you load an image, you have the choice of what file type you want to save. This is great, because you can save the images you create as a high resolution, lossless file type like PNG or TIFF. You can also crop as you load the image, a nice feature.

Next, you can start adding layers. You have a choice of the layer types you want to add along the top. As you switch layer types or move through options, the current active layer will switch too. So once you have a layer edited, be sure to add a new layer before you start moving around to look at new layer types. You can go back to any layer in your stack at any time and adjust it, change it, or delete it.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, you can start with Formulas. This is a great way to get an idea of what you can do with the app and all of the layers. You will be amazed at the variety of looks you can create. Once you select a Formula you like, tap the check mark at the bottom and then you can continue your edit, adding to or changing any of the layers within the Formula. If you create an edit you like, you can also save your own Formulas, email them and submit them to be added to the app. Pretty cool.

Here are a few images I’ve edited in it so far, to give you an idea of the range. You can do highly textured looks:

Or more subtle edits:

I also used it for adding color, contrast and texture to this background:

The background was then layered with a photograph of an oak in Image Blender to get the final Harvest Moon image I shared in my last blog post:

Harvest Full Moon Summer Oak Corvallis Oregon Kat Sloma Mobile iPhone Photography

Harvest Moon

Stackables is a very versatile app! Don’t be surprised if you see it start popping up more in my mobile tutorials. I’m a little addicted to it at the moment. 🙂

August 26, 2014 by Kat

Morning’s Gift: A Mobile Tutorial

In the past, summer has not been my favorite tree season. It seemed all the good stuff, those amazing lines, were covered by leaves. So I ignored the trees for the summer and played with other subjects.

This year, I challenged myself to create some summer Treescapes. Could I get to a similar style and feel with blue skies and trees with leaves? After playing around with them for several weeks, I’m figuring it out.

I’ve discovered that in the summer, the Treescapes are more about the light and the leaves than the lines. Maybe that was the key.

This image, Morning’s Gift, is a good example of what I mean. There is that gorgeous morning light, coming through and illuminating the leaves. There is the feeling that the sky is just lightening, the day is just beginning, and it’s going to be a good one. That’s what I wanted to highlight. Let’s go through how I achieved this result.

Starting with this image, from an early morning walk:

I wanted to shift the color a bit, so I pulled it into Mextures, an app I’ve had for a while that I recently rediscovered. They have added lots of new effects! Not only does it have good effects, it’s highly customizable. You can control the amount of the effect, rotate it, change the blending mode and then add more layers. Fun! Leaving the app the image had two Radiance filters and a Grunge texture applied:

Now that I had some nice color shifts going, I wanted to mess it up a bit with an artistic filter. I used the “Benson” effect in Autopainter, one of my go-to effects:

As I started to blend this version back with the original, I found it was getting too dark. I was losing the light. So I pulled the original into Snapseed and lightened it a bit:

And then blended with the Autopainter output, in Image Blender:

It’s getting there! But I wanted mor depth, and depth often comes with more layers. I started playing with it in Distressed FX, and found I liked how this filter warmed it up:

This version and the previous version were blended again in Image Blender:

I’m liking the color, the depth and the way the light comes through at this point. There’s just one tiny problem, some distracting leaves along the top edge. So, back into Snapseed for a little crop:

And it’s done!

You see what I mean about Summer Treescapes? They are all about the light and the leaves. That was the key.

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