App Review: Perfect B&W

With a name like Perfect B&W my hopes were high for this app. I was also excited to check this app out because it is OnOne Software‘s first app for the iPhone and iPad. They’re known for making some great Photoshop plugins.

The app itself has a simple user interface. There’s an option to adjust the flash setting, a button to switch to the front facing camera, access to the camera roll, the shutter release, and an S for single photo. If you tap the S, it will switch to C for continuous. This just means you won’t be prompted to make edits to a photo immediately after pressing the shutter. Just above the shutter button, there is a bump/tab. Tapping it will reveal filters/presets that you can apply to the live view. Tap the tab again to hide them.

There is also a button for more options (pictured below.) I like the ability to save a color copy. It’s nice to be able to have that as a backup in case you decide you don’t like the black and white version.

After taking your photo, you can apply a filter, or tap on the settings button for adjustment options. There are a lot of sliders you can use to adjust your image. Brightness is deeper than you’d expect. If you touch the icon to the left of the slider, you have 5 options for adjusting shadows, highlights, blues, greens, and a color I’m guessing is orange. Along with brightness, you can adjust contrast, detail (be very careful with this one!) filter, grain, soft focus (there are 3 types to choose from) toner, vignette, and border. After making your adjustments, you can save your settings as a preset by tapping the button in the top right. If you’re finished, tap the check in the top left.

Let me explain and show you why I say you need to be very careful with the detail slider. In Perfect B&W, you are making adjustments to a smaller resolution preview of your final image. Other apps employ this technique as well to provide the user with faster processing speed. This app makes fast adjustments, but they’re not accurate, in my opinion. If you slide the detail slider to the right, it looks as though it is only slightly increasing detail. Once you go to save your photo, the app makes the adjustments to a higher resolution version, which is already sharper than what you’ve been looking at. Suddenly, you’re applying detail to an image that is sharper than the preview image you were editing, and you get a crunchy mess (see below.)

The image above looks fine to me. No edit was made to it at all. Below is the b&w version that I sharpened with Perfect B&W. Again, it did not look nearly this sharp in the preview when I was working on it. Clicking on the two to see them larger helps to see the difference.

Another Concern

To be fair, this app does say it is optimized for iPhone5, so this issue may only affect older models. The live preview can have a significant lag if you shoot with a filter applied (I’m using an iphone4.) You can work around this by shooting without any filters. After you take the photo you can tap on different filters and see how they all look.

Examples of photos created with Perfect B&W

I made these after I realized I had to be careful making edits. I tried some of the presets to see if they produced better results.

      

Conclusion

I honestly found it hard to like this app after discovering the edits you make aren’t what you’ll get in the final saved copy. The filter presets seem to over process the images for my taste as well. At the time of this review, I can’t recommend this app. There are better black and white camera apps, such as Hueless. I did exchange many emails with the director of product marketing expressing my concerns with the app. She passed them on to the tech team and they’re aware of the things I experienced. I offered some ideas to help work around the preview image dilemma. I hope they continue to develop this app into something that lives up to the name. I was very pleased with their customer service. I’ve been told that full resolution saves are in store for the future. As of now, the maximum is 2048 pixels per side.

Rating: 3/5 There is room for improvement still. I trust they’ll do better with their updates.

Price: $1.99

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 6.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

***Full disclosure, I did not pay for this app, I asked for a promo code so I could review it. I’m not being offered any compensation for this review. ***

http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/perfect-bw-ios/

Settling In

I shot this out in Shell Beach a few days before the move. I was trying to get in as much beach time as possible before I found myself stuck in the city again. I actually got too much sun at the beach on friday and ended up with a nice sunburn on my back. Just what you want when you’re going to be moving the next day.

So far, the hardest part about being in Santa Clara is the painfully slow internet at my grandma’s house. It definitely has to be upgraded if I’m going to keep my sanity. The second hardest part is living with someone who is losing their memory. She keeps telling people I’m only here for a few days (I’m not) and each morning she gets startled when I join her in the kitchen because she forgets I’m here.

Another thing I’m not loving is all of the people and the pace of life. I’m definitely a small town guy that appreciates nature and open spaces after 9 years of living in small towns. I’m having a bit of culture shock again, just like I did when I first left the city. Fun stuff…

Bye Bye Beach

Last night I went for a nice walk on the beach with a new friend. She wanted to hang out because it looks like I’ll be moving next week. I thought a walk on the beach would be nice because I won’t be able to visit as often as I do now.

I was asked to move in with my grandma in the bay area because her health is declining. I never wanted to move back there, but never say never, I guess. She has dementia or possibly Alzheimer’s. Nobody wants to give a diagnosis for some reason. The doctor did say she shouldn’t be living alone, so I’m going to suck it up so she can still live at home.

I don’t know how this will affect my photography. It’s probably going to be harder to find the landscapes I love. In the meantime, I’ll be doing some real estate photography for work, as well as the usual portraiture, weddings, and anything you can think of. If you know anyone around the Santa Clara/San Jose area that needs photos, spread the word that I’m available

Shot with TrueHDR. Edited wtih Snapseed.

Dinosaurs

In the town of Huasna, there are a few dinosaurs out in the hills. There’s not much else out there besides horses and cows. We did find a couple of cool things out on a dirt road. There was a burned down house and a very old car that a field had started to swallow up.

These photos were taken with Perfect B&W. I’m going to write up a review of the app soon. Don’t buy it yet. There are some issues and, at this point, I can’t recommend it. I used the Ansel filter on the first photo. Apparently Ansel turns the sky completely black in all photos. The 2nd and 3rd photos were edited with some of the other b&w filters in the app. They really aren’t my style at all, but thought I would share anyways.

 

Soda Lake

I went out on an adventure to the eastern part of the county a couple of days ago. I’ve never been out that way before, so I didn’t know what to expect. First, we drove to a wildflower hotspot in Santa Margarita where there was no trace of any wildflowers being there this year. I know the peak was a month or two ago, but I thought there might at least be a few flowers and some grass. Not this time. It was all brown. All I found was a couple of tiny flowers in a dry creek bed.

After that disappointing find, we headed to Soda Lake. Before we left, I googled the lake and saw some cool pictures. When we pulled up, we were greeted by a massive salt crust in the shape of a lake. It was cool, but not what I had envisioned. The white lake bed was so bright that the camera’s sensor couldn’t handle the dynamic range of the scene. The sky ended up being very dark.

We walked out on the dried up lake because we drove all that way. Some of it was powdery and some was crunchy. I felt like I was walking on the moon. If you stood still, you sank into the ground another inch or two. It was a funny feeling.

I got some cool shots with my Nikon too. Hopefully, I’ll find some time to share those soon. I was able to capture one of the white dust devils (twisters) out on the lake.

This image was shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. I included the before image below so you can see what I started with. I had to brighten it up and straighten the horizon. I chose to use the tilt shift filter on this one to bring the focus more to the dead bush in the foreground.

Stop?

I went to on of the more hidden beaches around here recently. I’ve been here a few times before, but never remember seeing this stop sign in the surf. There’s a whole section of beach closed for some dang birds, the snowy plover. There were ropes and other trespassing signs, but this stop sign seemed out of place.

Shot with camera+. Edited with XnSketch.

Tangled Sunset

I finally was able to catch a sunset at the beach last night. We’re getting our June gloom foggy weather already, which means sunsets are usually ruined. Lucky for me, last night the fog stayed off the coast just far enough.

This particular sunset wasn’t anything too amazing. I felt like I should use a few apps to make it look more beautiful in my eyes. First, I shot with TrueHDR. If you’re new to my blog, I use TrueHDR a lot because often times it makes for a  more realistic image by combining two exposures. Next, I used Snapseed to brighten a little, add contrast, and bump up the saturation slightly. Then, I used TangledFX for the painterly/fibrous look. Finally, I used Snapseed again because I felt like the image needed more contrast and saturation.

Flowers in Bloom

Yesterday I went out shooting with a new app that I’m going to review soon. The wind didn’t make for good shooting conditions, so I need to take some more time getting better images before I give the app a proper review. I don’t want to name it yet because I don’t want anyone to buy it before I give my opinion. Mainly because I’m not blown away by it and I’m not sure if I’d recommend it yet. I have to use it some more and see if some quirks were related to the shooting conditions.

2 apps that I used to edit were Snapseed and ShockMyPic.

Free Apps

There are some apps that are available for free right now that you might be interested in checking out.

First, if you don’t have a camera app, besides the default one, Zitrr Camera is free right now. I just looked at it for the first time, and it has a lot of features including: different grids, a level, different shooting modes, anti shake, filters you can apply while shooting, and the ability to create mirrored images similar to mirrorgram.

http://zitrr.com/

LensLight is also free right now. If you like lens flares and bokeh, pick this one up. You can check out my review from a while back, here. I believe more lights/flares have been added since my review. Its worth a look for free.

http://www.brainfevermedia.com/lensLight.html

Developer Dropico has a number of their apps available for free right now as well. If you like adding various effects to your images, or are interested in trying that out, you can save a lot of money by downloading these now. The downside to these apps is their size, which ranges from 49mb to 149mb. They do offer some cool effects though.

WowFX

MasterFX

TapFX

ColorMania FX

BrushFX

Magical Pismo

So I downloaded a free app the other day called MasterFX. Its an app that allows you to add a lot of special effects to your image. I don’t think its an app I would use too often, but its very easy to use and does a very clean job of blending in different elements. There are a lot of freebies in the app, but also a lot of paid stuff. The stuff I  used was all free.

I like all of the tools in the app that allow for greater control and creativity. You can resize elements, copy them, mask them, mirror/flip them, distort them, and you can even adjust the opacity.

In this image I added the sunburst and rays on the left, the white bokeh effect around the base of the palms, the hot air balloon, and the stars. It really only took a few minutes to complete the image. I have to admit it was fun to be creative again.

Percolator Promo Codes

If you’ve liked the Percolator facebook page, you’ll notice they’ve posted links to free promo codes of their app. They posted 5 more about an hour ago. If you go quickly, you might be able to get a copy.

 

This is my review of Percolator from a while back. I should probably update it because the app has been updated and got new stuff.

Secret Arch

In a funny coincidence, I have a photo featured on photobotos today. The one featured was actually shot up on top of the rock in this photo here.

This cave/arch thing is just a short drive from where I live. I didn’t even know about it until I saw another photographer post a photo of it recently. All I had to do was walk down a mountain of stairs to get to it. Maybe thats why I didn’t find it sooner.

The great thing about this beach is its at a hotel, so the crowds don’t know about it. I had the beach to myself most of the time until a couple came down to watch the sunset. I’m happy to have found another secret beach that the tourists don’t know about

This time out, I was mostly just scouting the location and observing the light at sunset. I don’t think the sun will ever rise or set through the arch, which is too bad. I’m still trying to figure out what time of day will give me the best lighting. I guess I’ll just have to do sunrise, sunset, and stormy. My guess is storm clouds will make the best scene.

Shot with ProHDR because TrueHDR was making the sky grey. Edited with Snapseed.

Tuscan Springs

After an awful hotel experience the night before in Redlands, complete with screaming children bouncing around the room next door beyond 1am, we splurged on a boutique hotel, called Tuscan Springs, that we randomly drove up to in Desert Hot Springs.

I quickly took this photo while we toured the place. We originally were just looking to pay for day use of the hot mineral water spa’s and pool, but it was so relaxing and inviting that we had to stay. Everything about this place said vacation. Each courtyard had chairs, big comfy couches, and even beds. But, I think, when we were told it was adults only (not clothing optional,) we were already sold.

This particular spa was the size of a small pool.

Shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed

Ducks at the beach

I went for a lovely horseback ride on the beach and through some dunes last weekend. While we were cruising along the beach, having our picture taken by lots of random tourists, we saw about a dozen ducks playing in the waves. I’ve lived near the ocean for almost 8 years now and I’ve never seen ducks at the beach before.

Not only were they at the beach, but they appeared to be on dates. They were all paired up male-female like the two pictured above. It was pretty funny watching one duck follow the other around.

Taking photos from a moving horse is really hard, but I was happy enough with this one.

Shot with the default camera app and edited with Snapseed.

 

More Wildflowers

Today I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to edit this photo of wildflowers. I played with Snapseed to add saturation and contrast. I tried aquarella and autopainter. In the end, I couldn’t decide between the Snapseed edit above or the autopainter styles below.

Which do you prefer?