Best Camera App

Chase Jarvis is a quite accomplished photographer and also the developer of a new App...Best Camera.  This App enters an area that seems to be bursting with Apps, photography.  At $2.99 it's on the expensive side but it promises to do the work of several other Apps and if that's true it's a great thing to have.  (The trouble doesn't seem to be buying the Apps so much as finding the time to properly learn and use them).  Because of this promise and also because Chase's name is associated with it I bought a copy.  So far the jury is still out.  The App comes with 14 "Filters" which perform actions on the image.  The first 4 on the list are called Signature Filters.

On the positive side it can help create some lovely images and it is easy to send the results to wherever I like.  In the image of the red tug I used the App to apply a (double) vignette, warm the image, crop it square and apply a white border.  Very easy to do and I like the results.  Also, it saves the results at full resolution which to me is a big deal.  My favorite App of all "Camera Bag" doesn't seem to be able to figure this out and so I don't use it as often as I might.

On the "Still needs work" side I am finding that the signature filters seem to apply very high contrast and in fact blow out the highlights.  I have checked several images and find the histograms to be within limits.  They may be toward the right but not to the point that information is lost.  The image of the trees with spider webs is an example of this.  Although a high contrast style is quite often very eye catching it's certainly not the only "look" for a photographer.

To be fair this App has only just been released...version 1.0 so to speak.  Here's hoping for further refinements.

Photo Apps Photo Sketch

Apps are what make the iPhone so great, and I seem to have a lot of them.  I have 16 Apps dealing with Photography on the phone, and another 8 or so I've tried and removed.  Fortunately Apps are free or inexpensive.  I picked up a new one today even though I'm trying hard to cut back.

Photo Sketch is a program that makes a sketch (pencil or chalk) from a photo...duh.  It's reviews are highly positive.  Waiting for my wife to conclude some business at the bank I was bored and so I downloaded the App.  There are a TON of options, paper type-color, pencil or chalk, size, how many shades and how much detail.  It also has an image size control on pixels.  The largest size is 2048 x 2048 pixels which interestingly is 4 megapixels which is more than the original photo.

The results are good I think.  I can see that subject matter will make a large difference in the finished sketch.

Initial Post

I am finding myself using my iPhone's camera every day and have started this blog to post incidental images and observations about Apps.

Walking through the mist in the park the other morning with my Grand daughters I was struck by the dew on the plants. There's nothing particularly unusual about the clover image but I like it.

I made 2 B&W interpretations using 2 different Apps. PhotoGene (Photo Genie) does a good job with levels, contrast and exposure. I Auto adjusted the levels, de saturated the image and pumped up the contrast a bit. The image is the grayer of the two.

Tiffen (the filter people) have 2 Apps, Photo fx which I used on this image and Cool fx. I selected a B&W filter and then Dramatic. The Tiffen Apps sem to have layers, which I haven't explored yet.

Both PhotoGene and the Tiffen Apps save the image in full size which many, but not all Apps do.