mobile tutorial

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.

July 11, 2014 by Kat

Smartphone Art 3: Creative Editing beyond Photography

[This week I am reposting a series of articles originally written for another site, because they are no longer available there. Note that some of the app icons have changed since these original screenshots were created, but functions are located in the same place in the app. Enjoy! –Kat]

It’s time to take your Smartphone Art in a new direction! In Smartphone Art 1, you learned how to get a good photograph with your smartphone camera, and in Smartphone Art 2, you discovered how to make that photograph even better with basic photo editing. In this installment, we’ll look at some creative editing apps that take your images beyond photography, and how you can combine and blend the output of different apps to create unique works of art.

One of the best things about mobile photography is the proliferation of apps that can quickly and easily take your photograph and transform it into something different.

It can be a painting…

App: Glaze

a drawing…

App: Portray

or something wholly new…

App: decim8

The apps range from simple one-click transformations, such as the Glaze app shared in the painting example above, to effects with multiple setting adjustments to customize the look, such as the Aquarella example below.

App: Aquarella

The outputs of these apps are fun, but I often find that the look of an image after processing with a single creative app is predictable, especially if it doesn’t allow customization. It doesn’t look like a unique piece of art to me; it looks like a photograph processed with an app. To go beyond the predictable, you can blend app outputs to create something new and interesting.

Blending Apps

A blending app allows you to combine two different starting images in a variety of ways to get an alternate effect. You can blend two different images, adding textures or creating collage effects, or you can blend two of the same image, each image processed by different apps to develop unique looks. This second way, blending the same image processed in many different apps, is typically how I use a blending app to create a finished piece.

The best blending apps will offer multiple blending modes (like multiply, darken, soft light, etc.), as well as masking and arranging/resizing of one image relative to the other. Image Blender, Juxtaposer, and Superimpose are all examples of iOS apps which have these features. (Note: I have not been able to identify a similar app for Android yet! Please leave a note in the comments if you know of one.)

My favorite app for blending images is Image Blender, so I’ll share a few instructions on this app. When you open the app, you first have to load your images. At the bottom of the screen, tap the empty frame on the left to load your bottom image, and tap the empty frame on the right to load the top image.

For this example, I’m loading these two images:

Bottom Image. App: Distressed FX

Top Image. App: Autopainter II

First, I select a blending mode. When you tap the blending mode icon, the menu shows up. Tap each blending mode to see a preview of the blend. When you find a blending mode you want to play with, tap the blending mode icon again to commit the mode.

Now, you shift the slider back and forth to change the relative blend of the two images. Some blending modes, like Normal, work the same regardless of which image is on the bottom or top. Other blending modes, such as Lighten, change depending on which image is on top.

If you have an area where you don’t want to blend the top image with the bottom image, you can mask the top image. Tap the Masking icon, and now you can erase parts of the top image from the blend. If you accidentally take away too much, you can tap the pencil to switch modes and add the pixels back in.

If you want to change the size of the top image relative to the bottom image, you can do that via the Arrange function. Pinch in or out to change the relative size of the top image, shift left or right, or twist to change the angle.

You can always reset your mask and arrange settings by tapping on the top image to get to the reset menu.

When you like the blend, you can save by tapping the Export icon and selecting the “Save to Camera Roll” option. From here, you can either play with more blending modes with the same two images, or you can combine the newly blended image with more processed images. To do this, you need to flatten the two images you’ve blended, which is done by going to the Export menu and selecting the “Flatten” option. After the image is flattened, you can import a new image to the top.

You repeat the same process of importing, blending, saving and flattening with a variety of processed images until you get a finished product you like. Don’t forget, your newly blended image can be processed through other apps and create even more unusual effects.

Variable & Unique

When you use this method of creating altered photographs, you come out with a distinctive image which varies greatly with the starting photograph and the apps used to process, along with the sequence and method of blending.

This is what makes each final image an inimitable work of art. Even for myself, I couldn’t exactly recreate the output for many of the images I create, because the sequence, blending mode and percentage of blend are not recorded.

To me, part of the fun is in the serendipity of the process and knowing that each piece I create is truly unique.

Now it’s your turn! Try editing your images with apps that take them beyond a photograph, and then blending them together to see what you can create. You may be surprised at how addicting this process can be!

If you’d like to learn more about blending apps to create interesting images, you can review the mobile tutorials on my site or take a Smartphone Art workshop with me in the future. I’d love to share more with you!

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