Photography

Photoshop Touch Comparison

So how good is Photoshop Touch? I put it through its paces doing the hard yards of converting an image to black and white against Nik SilverEffex Pro 2. In Photoshop Touch I converted the image to B&W, duplicated the layer, blended the layers using Overlay mode @ 62%, flattened the layers and finalized the image with a shadow / highlights adjustment. Some ‘add structure’ capability as opposed to ‘sharpening’ would certainly lift the game for Photoshop Touch. But, keep in mind that PS Touch is designed to be a pre-processing app that allows you to make some early editing decisions on the go, and then finalize them later;  as Adobe says “Work with images on your tablet, and then take them further on your PC or Mac in Photoshop” @http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-touch.html.

I have to admit that in hindsight I probably could have done a levels / curves adjustment in PS Touch to pull up the mid tone contrast, (would love to see Adobe include an eyedropper/info tool with these) but there you go, can’t catch all the fish at once.

Well, pretty good results for a tablet app.

Check it out.

Here’s a slide-show with the original unprocessed image directly off the phone (using 6×7 app) followed by the B&W conversions.

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Photoshop Touch for IOS

image courtesy of Petapixel

It was a long wait but worth it. Whilst Android users have had access to this for some time, Photoshop Touch has remained painfully out of reach for IOS users, the logic of which defied me completely, given the sheer volume  of the market share for iPads as opposed to Android tablets. However it’s here and comes with an impressive arsenal. The only weak area for me is the 1600px output, but who am I to complain. The rest is more than you could want from a first release. I’ve spent some time this morning putting it through it’s paces and it was certainly better than I had expected, no glitches and some very pleasant surprises.  Good job Adobe.

You can get the blurb material here, here and here

And my run through here

Nightscapes

This is a guest article for Planet 5D, written by Phil Arntz ( talented young filmmaker from England) on how to make a time-lapse on a minimal budget.

The full story is very extensive and gives a rounded insight into the making of the time-lapse, plus you get the added bonus of some very detailed process information.

Read here

Dustin Farrell | Timelapse

I simply had to re post this after viewing it on Planet 5D.

Some stunning time lapse photography here and best of all a very concise overview of the process by the man himself. Read it here

 

Red Giant strikes back

Red Giant have come out with all guns blazing with the release of Plastic Bullet Version 2, a new update for V 1.0 / 1.2 for iPhone. Version 2 also introduces support for iPad. So far the results on both platforms are pretty spectacular. There’s an extensive list of feature updates at the site but what impressed me most of all on both iPhone and iPad was the ability to maintain aspect ratios. Previously if you used an image with a square aspect, panoramic, 16:9 horizontal or vertical, Plastic Bullet defaulted to a standard aspect (4:3) rectangular crop. Now if you import a square format shot, e.g., Hipstamatic, Lomora, Retro Camera or a panoramic image, Plastic Bullet maintains the original image aspect.

As previously mentioned, Version 2 is also available for iPad. The added screen real estate of the iPad makes editing on the go a pleasure. Options for 4 or 9 render previews follows the same layout as the OSX version.

The real surprise came when I downloaded the Mac version from the App Store. Within a few minutes I had discovered that I could drag images directly from iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom. Plastic Bullet also supports RAW format files. I was able to open and process NEF and CRW files without any problems. I have not found the maximum resolution for exporting yet, but file sizes of 5000 x 5000 (working from Hipstamatic) seem to be achieved easily

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Maximum import size supported is 36megapixels.

Read the full promo for OSX here

The best week on EyeEm

‘Down to Zero’ and ‘The Ferryman | No56″ selected in EyeEm’s “The Best Week on EyeEm”.

Really nice for the work to be acknowledged and to be included amongst so many talented photographers.

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see the selection here

Photography Apps for iPhone

Here is a list (with links) of some of the most widely used photographic apps for iPhone. I have used these extensively and found them to work really well, either as standalone apps, or in combination with others. These are not in any particular order of importance or significance.

  1. Hipstamatic
  2. Plastic Bullet
  3. Camera +
  4. Swanko Lab
  5. Cross Process
  6. DXP
  7. Diptic
  8. Retro Camera
  9. Lo-Mob
  10. Cool FX
  11. Photo FX
  12. Dynamic Light
  13. Blur FX
  14. Slow Shutter
  15. Noir
  16. PhotoForge2
  17. Instagram

International | iPhone Photography Awards

Nice to wake up this morning to an email from the people at the iPhone Photography Awards to let me know that two of my submissions had been included amongst this years winners. And the irony of it is, I had forgotten that I’d entered.


A big congratulations to Lea Birch who picked up the ‘Photographer of the Year’ award. Overall 96 images made the final cut in a variety of categories.

My selected works were some of my earliest experiments with Hipstamatic and Plastic Bullet.

See link to the winners gallery on the sidebar.