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.

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

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?

Rise and Shoot

This was shot the same morning of my recent sunrise photo that I posted from my Nikon. I can’t quite figure out what that little cloud is. Maybe a hornet? I though it made the scene a little more interesting, along with the colors.

I hope you’re enjoying this photo from the comfort of your desk as you sip your coffee today. Good morning!

Julia Pfeiffer Burns

Normally, when I go to Julia Pfeiffer Burns in Big Sur, I, like everyone else, hike the short trail to McWay Falls. This time, we had a little time, so we hiked the other direction and found this little waterfall on a hike through the woods.

It was a tricky spot with big, ugly logs just below the frame, and really harsh highlights from sun beams poking through the trees. I think we both made it work though.

I think if I wanted to make the image even better, I would use TouchRetouch to remove the twig from the bottom of the frame, but I don’t have time to go back and do that. I have tons of editing to do already!

Shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. The drama filter did a great job of bringing detail back into this image.

App Review: Aquarella

Aquarella is yet another interesting app by JixiPix. They’ve made other apps that I recommend, such as Dramatic BW, SimplyHDR, and PhotoArtista Oil. There’s a lot to like about Aquarella, and a couple of things that bug me. Let’s take a look at their familiar user interface. (You can click on the images to see them larger.)

   

    

Just like in their other apps, JixiPix provides the user with a lot of presets. The 32 Aquarella Presets will apply a watercolor effect while keeping the colors roughly the same. The 28 TwoTone presets will change the image into a watercolor using two tones instead of all that are present in the original. When working on a two tone image, there is a tone panel where you can choose the two tones you want to use.

   

If you want to make your own adjustments, or fine tune a preset, tap on the adjust button on the bottom to bring up this panel. The color panel is where a lot of the heavy lifting is done. By adjusting the details, you can get a image with a subtle painterly effect to an image that looks like a rough watercolor. The color detail slider affects how much overall detail is in the image by adding or subtracting the range of colors. The enhancing colors slider adjusts the saturation. Wet Edge Strength adjusts the thickness of the line between colors. Wet Edge Detail also affects the amount of detail in the image. To me it acts like the clarity slider in photoshop or lightroom.

Texture is the paper style that image is painted on. It varies from subtle to a very noticeable canvas.

    

The wash and Bloom panels both make the image appear more like a watercolor. Think of the Wash as overlaying color on your image. It will change the color in your image slightly, or quite a bit, depending on what the Color Strength and Color Shift are set to. There are an incredible 63 choices in the wash panel.

The bloom is basically adding a texture to the image that makes it look like a watercolor. Some of the bloom overlays have drips or splatters to make it look like someone actually painted it. You can adjust the opacity of the bloom by adjusting the Bloom Strength. If you switch from normal to reverse, it basically inverts the white to black and black to white, giving you even more variety to the 41 textures to choose from.

The Share panel has a number of features to note. First, in the settings panel, you can choose to save your images as low, medium, or high. I always choose high. You can also save your settings as a preset and name it so you can use the same settings in the future. There are buttons to share directly to facebook, twitter, and tumblr. The app will render the image for those mediums, which takes some time.

Gripes

Not everything was perfect with this app for me. The loading and saving were very slow. They do admit that the app is optimized for the iPhone 5, so thats probably my issue. I’m using an iPhone4, so I’m sure its faster on the newer models. I tested the loading speed multiple times, with the slowest being 37 seconds before it even began to render the image for the first time. The fastest loading time for me was 20 seconds. It seems like 27 seconds is about the average time. In an age of instant gratification, this is a lifetime haha. The save times were much worse. The first few times I saved an image I thought it was taking way too long, so I decided to time it. After a number of tests, 2 minutes seems to be the average time it takes to save a hi-res image.

Examples

These are examples that I created. The last one is an example of a two tone preset.

    

Conclusion

The results are great for an easy to use app. Its fun to play with and theres a lot of room for customization. The wash and bloom overlays are where you’ll be able to really make your photo look like a watercolor. This is an app that can save your photos that might be a little out of focus by turning them into a lovely painting. If you enjoy turning your photos into paintings, Aquarella is an excellent app to pick up.

Rating   5/5 I can forgive the sluggishness because my phone is considered somewhat old now.

Price   2.99 for the iPhone and iPad. Currently 7.99 for the Mac.

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 5.1 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. ***

Ashland Sunset

I meant to go out and scout locations for the storm coming in, but I wasn’t feeling too good yesterday. Luckily, my roommate saw this out the window and we went out on the balcony to enjoy the view for 5-10 minutes. I took multiple pictures with the iphone and Nikon (haven’t even looked at those yet.)

I hardly ever settle for just one shot, especially around sunset when the light conditions are changing rapidly. Take lots of pictures and only show the best of the best. I’m thinkin there may need to be some sort of challenge soon where you take at least 100 shots of the same subject. Shannon! Where are you?

These were simple to edit. I shot with camera+ and added some drama to both in Snapseed. That was it. Drama is great for making the clouds more dramatic.

Porsche

One thing I like about Tadaa is they have challenges to give their users ideas of what to shoot. Recently it was doors, so the app was flooded with door pics. Most were snapshots, but some were quite good. Before doors was animals. Like there weren’t enough people only posting pics of their pets already!

This week’s challenge is vehicles. I’m sure the men are going to be all over this one. I took a few detail pics of my old man’s Carrera 2s to throw into the mix. Yes, its very fun to drive, but cops will hassle you for being in a red Porsche.

I shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed and Tadaa. Using the campfire filter at around 50% in Tadaa really made the first image pop. I may have to actually print that one out for my dad.

Kaleidocam

 

I was fortunate enough to get a couple of apps from developers this weekend. All of the images in this post were made using Kaleidocam. I also used LensLight on the first image to add the glowing sun to the middle.

I told the developer of Kaleidocam I’d wait until the update to give it a proper review. After seeing these images you might be tempted to just buy it before then. Its super easy to use with a live view of the effect. Thats all I’ll say for now.

I also wanted to thank you for voting for me in the recent contest. I took 2nd place and got $20. The winner was another landscape with a road. You can check out all of the winners here.

 

 

A Familiar Path

Name that boardwalk. I think you’ve seen it plenty of times already. This is another photo from Oso Flaco Lake. The original was rather bland, so it sat on my phone for a while until I knew what to do with it. Recently, I’ve been using Tadaa….a lot. Some of the filters are really good, and the clarity slider is awesome, so I knew I was going to use Tadaa for the finishing touches.

First, I used Snapseed to add a little drama and I used the new center focus to direct the viewer’s eye =D. Then I used a filter in Tadaa to add the tone and increase the vignette around the edges. I also used a little clarity to sharpen the image.

If you do join Tadaa, look me up. My username is iphonephotog. Or, you might find my images in half of the feeds right now because they are trending, featured, and in the 24 hour charts. I’ll be happy to share your best images to help you get more followers.

 

**The voting is open again for the contest I entered. Please go vote for my country road image. Its the one in my previous post if you’re not familiar with it.

The Path of Light

This is the walkway out to Oso Flaco Lake. I always liked this location, in fact, I took some engagement pictures here one time. The only problem is all of the trees around the path block a lot of light, making it impossible for the iPhone to capture the whole dynamic range of the scene, even with ProHDR, which I used for this shot. The sky gets blown out everytime.

Have a look at the original to see how much work was done to this image.

Pretty dull right? First I took this into Snapseed to apply a vintage filter (I used one that doesn’t apply color,) then I added some Drama, and converted to black and white. Theres no good reason why I didn’t use Dramatic BW for the bw conversion. Snapseed did a good job this time.

I liked the new lighting of the scene, but I thought I could add a little something extra to make it even more interesting. I used Rays to add those rays of light onto the path. Maybe I was influenced after sharing Lars van de Goor’s work on my other blog. Go check out that post for some inspiration.

Laetitia Vineyards

I went out yesterday thinking I’d do some HDR with my d7000, but so far I’ve only processed the hdr from my iPhone. This is out at Laetitia Winery. Theres no shortage of wineries around here. Thats one of the perks of living between Paso Robles and Santa Barbara.

The image was created with ProHDR. The one above was processed with Snapseed and SimplyHDR. After I processed with Snapseed, there was a lack of focus and the image looked dull. I like how you can change the lighting of an image by applying tints in SimplyHDR. It definitely fixed this one.

This second image is the same one from above. Created with ProHDR and edited with Snapseed before painting it in PhotoViva. I left the original sky alone, but needed to reduce the noise with FilterStorm. I also tone mapped the whole image while in Filterstorm. I tried to take it a step further by using Percolator on the sky and blending it in with ImageBlender. The circle watercolor look didn’t quite mesh with the painted ground. No harm in trying though.

 

An NIR Sunset

I decided to give NIR Color another try after my sunset shoot tonight. I think it makes for a very interesting effect for the right image. Talk about surreal…

I went out to shoot with my DSLR, but I haven’t even transferred the images from my camera to the computer yet. Its so much easier, and fun, to shoot and edit with the iPhone, limitations and all.

Painted Lake

This image was taken with ProHDR, but I didn’t think the app did a great job of blending the exposures. I didn’t want to trash the image, so I used PhotoViva to paint this myself with a few brushes. I have to say that I’m enjoying this app more and more. I find it easy to get immersed in the creative process when you have to make each brushstroke.

While the above image looks nice, I wanted to try something different, so I took the painting into Snapseed to see what would happen by working my magic. I added a little drama (#2), made a selective adjustment, added some warmth and ambience. It certainly adds more life to the image/painting…oh, lets just call it art. I like discovering new workflows and seeing the different outcomes.

Country Road

Today’s image was taken back when I was driving home from Oregon. Its been sitting on my phone because I wasn’t sure how to edit it best. I tried Snapseed, but the drama filter was overprocessing the image. The above image was processed with SimplyHDR and I’m quite pleased with the outcome. I didn’t think I’d be using that app often, but it actually gave me the look I wanted when Snapseed couldn’t. I don’t think that will happen often, but its good to know that SimplyHDR can create some nice pseudo HDR’s.

I also tried PhotoArtista Oil to see how the image would look as a painting. I think it looks pretty sweet.

Originally shot with ProHDR.