mobile recipe

March 25, 2014 by Kat

Spring Abundance (A Mobile Tutorial)

I can’t believe the trees this spring. They are covered in blossoms. Just covered. Maybe last year they were too, and I was so busy mourning the loss of my bare tree branches I didn’t notice. But this year, I’m not missing them! Most days you’ll find me out snapping a photograph or two of these amazing blossoms.

On a neighborhood walk on Saturday, I photographed this amazing tree. The branches looked like garland, they were so covered by flowers. It was perfect for a little new app play!

Here is the original photograph, captured in ProCamera 7.

I liked this original photograph, showing the abundance of the flowers, but it wasn’t something I was inspired to do a fancy edit on. Enter a couple of new apps, Vintango and Classic Vintage. As I played with these apps, I realized that my great exposure in the camera was leading to overexposure in the processing, so I took the original and decreased the contrast and brightness in Snapseed. It may seem odd that I needed to do this, but if things are coming out too bright in processing you always have this option to adjust the starting photo.

Next, I pulled the Snapseed-adjusted image into Vintago. This is a color filter app, just applying film effects. It is very simple and does not offer any filter adjustment, but I’ve found so far that is fine, because the film effects don’t seem to overwhelm the photograph.

I used the “Basic 09” Effect. There are 25 effects in the basic pack that comes with the Free app, and then you can purchase additional packs in-app. I like to switch to the “Live Preview,” a selectable button at the top of the screen, to see my image with the effects. Also, I went into the “Options” menu and choose my output file size as “original” so it wouldn’t decrease my image resolution when I save.

From there, I edited the photograph in another new app, Classic Vintage. This app allows you to apply paper textures, crackle effects, borders and sepia tone. This app provides a lot of variety and customization. The free app comes with a great beginner pack and I very quickly assessed its possibilities and purchased the additional packs. For this edit, I applied one of the Free papers at 25%:

And one of the Montana pack borders at 100%:

I found this app has the possibility to completely overwhelm the photograph with its effects, so playing with those percentages is important. I set Crackle and Sepia to 0%, because I just wanted some texture and the border. Here’s the final image again:

I like the color shifts provided by the Vintango filter and how they are pulled through the frame border applied in Classic Vintage. I don’t know that I love the final image, but the starting image was not one of my favorites from the day either. That makes it a perfect image to play with. Since I didn’t have a strong feeling on it, wanting it to come out “good,” I could let myself explore and play more freely.

That’s a little creativity tip for today as well: If you find yourself stuck in a processing rut, pick something you don’t care much about, get a new app or two, and play. You never know what might happen! If nothing else, I explored the possibilities of two new apps.

This month’s mobile recipe is a simple exercise in app stacking, and here is the graphic sequence for you to download and save for future inspiration:

Happy App-ing!

February 20, 2014 by Kat

Quiet, Revised (A Mobile Tutorial)

Hello, hello! My data is back, my computer is all up and running on my new hard drive, and I’m excited to be sharing a mobile tutorial with you today. Turns out, these Mobile Tutorial posts are easier to prepare on the computer than on the iPad, which I didn’t even realize until I was in the throes of my hard drive crash last week. Now that everything is back and running well, I can share a new tutorial with you.

I posted another version of this photograph last week, called Quiet. Later I started playing with a new-to-me app, Fragment, and discovered that there was more to do with this image! Here is the new version, called Quiet, Revised.

I’ll step you through the process of creating it. Here’s the original image, captured using ProCamera 7, on a walk during our big snowstorm two weeks ago. I saw this bird perched atop the tree and got as close as I could without scaring it away. Of course, without a zoom he’s pretty small in the original image:

So the first step is a crop, using Snapseed:

I like the placement of the tree and bird in this much better now! The next step is still in Snapseed, using a Vintage filter to start to shift the color, add a bit of texture, and create the vignette that works so well in this image, highlighting the bird atop the tree:

I was liking the vignette and texture, so I pulled it into XnView FX for some more texture work. I liked the addition of one texture:

But I wanted more. I liked where this was going, but wanted more dramatic texture and color. I played around with it in XnView FX for a while, looking at more color processing and textures. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly what I did within the app in sequence to share with you. The details aren’t so important, because if you follow this recipe you will have a different image and need to do different things. The important thing to take away is the incredible functionality that exists within a single app to transform your photographs. I know people who use only Snapseed to create amazing photographic work. XnView FX is another app with an amazing range of options for processing. Here’s the final image out of XnView FX:

This is Quiet. Originally, this is where I thought I was done. I loved the way the tree seemed to pop off the background. I loved the hushed feel, as if I was holding my breath, trying not to scare the bird away. Since I had cropped pretty substantially, from the 2448x2448px original to ~1700x1700px, I ran it through the Big Photo app to increase the resolution to ~3000x3000px. Having a high resolution file gives me flexibility in my printing options later.

Turns out I wasn’t done with this image, though. I purchased a new app, Fragment, which looked interesting for it’s ability to add geometric shapes to an image. Since I love to play with the combination of geometric and organic shapes, it seemed a good fit. I pulled “Quiet” into the app, just to play with its capabilities. In this app, the shapes you add are filled in with the original image you are working with. You can change the sizing and rotation of this “ghost” image within the added shape, which allows you control over the graphic impact of the shape relative to the original image.

As I played, suddenly a new version of Quiet emerged:

I loved the way the square shape framed the bird yet also creates some different dimensionality within the image. While the tree was popping off of the background before, now it is placed behind the frame. The rotation of the image within the square frame provides some great light/dark contrast against the background and some interest against the tree. You can’t quite tell what’s going on at first glance, and have to look closer. I like that. All in all, I think it added a nice dynamic element to an otherwise quiet scene. For me, this elevated the image from “nice” to “interesting,” but still with a peaceful, harmonious feel.

Here’s the mobile recipe for this edit, to remind you of the steps. You can download and save this recipe for later inspiration:

I am constantly amazed at how I can continue to create a wide variety of effects with just a few different apps. Find those apps you love, and really get to know them. It will pay off in the quality and consistency of your work.

I want to leave you with one final edit I did to this photograph, but discarded in the end. I took the original “Quiet” into Image Blender, and blended the new “Quiet, Revised” on top of it with blending mode Normal at 100%. Then I masked the frame over the tree:

I thought it would make the tree pop off of the background better, which it did. But it also lost it’s “interestingness” to me. In “Quiet, Revised,” the visual impact of the lines moving into and through the tree, and the bit of visual confusion it creates, make the image work for me. This last version doesn’t quite have the same energy, and goes back to “nice.”

Which version do you like best? Would you choose “Quiet,” “Quiet, Revised” or “Quiet, Discarded” as your favorite? Why? You know my choice, but take a moment to make your own, and sort through the reasons. Comparing similar images like this is a great way to discover your own personal aesthetic.

January 16, 2014 by Kat

Adding Color (A Mobile Tutorial)

One wonderful thing about being an artist: Adding color to a black and white world. Isn’t that awesome? By the way, that statement is true in more than one sense. In the literal sense, as in my photograph today, as an artist I get to choose to add color to my work or not. I can leave my photograph as a direct interpretation of what I saw or I can change it, just with color.

And in the figurative sense, artists often add color and move outside of the lines of conventional rules of life. Who challenges the cultural norms of how we are supposed to act? To live? Historically, it’s the artists. And that adds color, lots of color, to a world that can otherwise seem black and white. You may or may not like the color, but that color enables our culture to continue to evolve and grow.

But enough of these deep thoughts… how about a mobile tutorial today, hmmm? It’s been a while! I created this piece a couple of days ago and thought it would be a perfect one to share with you, both for the relative simplicity of the steps compared to many of my edits, as well as I can share a new app I’ve been enjoying.

We start with the photograph, captured using ProCamera 7. As I mentioned in my blog post on Tuesday, I was feeling the urge to get out and photograph, and Tuesday morning was wonderfully foggy. I left for work early and spent some time photographing the trees in the fog on campus. There was this little tree with interesting lines I had never noticed before:

The photo looks a bit underexposed, which often happens in fog, even with the exposure control I have in ProCamera 7. The first step of the edit was pulling it into Snapseed, where I increased brightness and used the grunge filter to add color and texture. The nice thing about the way the grunge filter works, the bits of trees along the bottom, which are a bit of a distraction I thought I might have to clone out, end up blurred so there is no cloning work required. Bonus! And this is the first step to adding color, with the purple tint.

Next, the image went into Distressed FX. There are some great filters in this app for adding color! I use it all the time, playing with the different options and seeing which looks best. I love the range of color blends after using Distressed FX:

The next step is running the image from Distressed FX through a couple of other apps. First, the Autopainter app (I use the HD version, on my iPad) using the Benson filter. The great thing about this app is that you can stop it mid-processing to get different effects. I stopped the app at the end of Step 2, before Step 3 where all the detail strokes get added. It gives the image a rougher, more painterly, feel.

I also took the image out of Distressed FX, and ran it through a new app I’ve been playing with called Waterlogue. This simple app gives fantastic watercolor effects! I used the Soaked filter, set to Dark, and turned off the border. Love it!

The final step is blending the two images in Image Blender, to get more softness in the branches and a greater depth of color. I believe I used the “Darken” blending mode.

And that’s it! A very simple edit, but a wonderful result, adding a great depth of color to the black and white world I experienced that morning.

I’m going to be adding something a little extra to these mobile tutorials in the future! A map of the process I used, which I’m calling a “mobile recipe,” so that you can more easily follow the steps and try them out on your images. You can save these recipes and refer to them in the future when you’re looking for a little editing inspiration.

I know I’ve said there will be a Smartphone Art eCourse this year, but writing an eCourse takes a lot of time and energy, and as I move into 2014 I’m just not seeing when I will have that much available time and energy. So instead of a full-on eCourse, online I’ll be continuing these mobile tutorials, and will help you use the resources I already have available to learn more about mobile photography. Stay tuned.

And in person, I’d love to bring the Smartphone Art workshop to your area! This is such a fun class, and absolutely the best way to learn this material is in person. I’ll be adding a second day with more great content and we can make it a weekend thing. Contact me and let’s chat!

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