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/

White Dust Devil

This one is from my Nikon D7000. There were lots of these dust devils out on Soda Lake when we were there. It was surreal.

I used the new Topaz Clarity plugin on this one. I was really amazed at the clarity in the hills in the background compared to the original. I can see myself using this plugin quite a bit now. Go download the free trial here.

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.

Joshua Tree Sunset

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to take a photo with your iPhone after the sun has gone down, but it’s a challenge to get a shot like this. You absolutely have to use an HDR app that takes multiple exposures and merges them. If you try to use a regular camera app, you’ll end up with either a nicely exposed sky and a very dark foreground, or a white sky and a properly exposed foreground. Sadly, neither one is like what you were seeing in person.

For this shot, I used TrueHDR. Ideally, you’d set your phone up on a tripod for HDR, especially at this time of day. It’s very important to keep the camera as still as possible so the HDR app can merge the images more cleanly. If you click on the image to view it larger, you’ll notice the the trees in the middle of the image are slightly off, as well as the hill on the right. Luckily, its not too noticeable if you’re just sharing a smaller version with your friends. You may not have even noticed it if I hadn’t pointed it out.

I edited this one with Snapseed. The image straight from TrueHDR was very flat, meaning it needed more contrast and some pop.

Pismo Sunrise & Nik Announcement

This is a sunrise I shot last week with my Nikon. It seemed uneventful and I wasn’t too excited about the location. The beach gets old when you live by it! Luckily, the colors turned out really nice and brought the photo to life.

When editing my Nikon shots in Photoshop, I like to use Nik Software’s plugins (along with other plugins.) The reason I bring this up today is it was just announced that the entire collection has dropped in price from $499 to $149. That seems like a steal and probably wouldn’t have happened had Google not bought Nik. There’s a free trial if you don’t already have the collection.

If you’re worried that these plugins might be too complicated, there are lots of training videos on their website to help you out.

Another Article!

I was recently asked to contribute to another article on mobile photography. This time it was for smartertravel.com. The article can be found here. The other contributors were the people of Photojojo, Chuck DeLaney, the director of the New York Institute of Photography, and Kirsten Alana. Some excellent contributors to be sure.

Go check out the article for some tips on improving your travel photography with your mobile phone.

iPhoneography Tips

I was recently asked to write an article for bestbuymobile’s blog providing some tips for taking better photos with your iPhone. Yesterday it hit the front page of their site . Pretty exciting for a guy that started this blog on a whim.

10 tips for better smartphone photos

David Pasillas, a professional photographer, was in between DSLR’s when he decided to get creative with his smartphone. Since then, he has shot gorgeous landscapes, vacation photos and wedding pictures simply using his iPhone. Check out David’s work on his blog and Facebook page. If you too love snapping pictures with your iPhone, try his simple tips and tricks for taking your pictures to the next level.

You can read the tips here

Golden Sunrise

Another shot from the D7000. I’m just throwing this up quickly so I have something to share today. I have “homework” to do. Best Buy wants me to write some tips for their mobile blog for taking better photos with your iPhone and I want to finish this app review for Aquarella today.

Foolproof

Last month, a friend of mine sent me a painterly image and told me to check out this app called Foolproof Art Studio for iPhone. There is a free version that you can play with. I was lucky enough to get the paid version while it was available for free.

Basically, you import your photo and make all of the strokes with your finger, or try the auto mode. Its very simple, you can adjust the brush size and the paint effect, and then go to work. It even saves a video of you creating your painting if you’d like to watch it back or share it.

I have a few apps that turn photos into paintings. Foolproof delivers the ability to create some dreamy paintings. I’ll be keeping this app on my phone for a while

Free App: RainyDaze

RainyDaze is another cool app from JixiPix. Its free right now in the app store and could be fun to play with when you want a gloomy style for your photo. I’m definitely ready for summer to be over, so this app is right up my alley. Give me some cool storm clouds to shoot already.

This shot was taken during the daytime with a clear blue sky. RainyDaze added clouds and rain. I also used the app to remove the saturation because it wouldn’t look natural if the ground still looked like it was sunny out. I also added a slight vignette and a dark, purplish tone. I don’t know if I like the dreamy look to it. That was from the romantic strength slider. I’ll have to be more careful with that next time.

This scene already had the storm clouds in it, but no rain. RainyDaze took care of that.

Go check out RainyDaze while its free.

Hueless Updated & Promo Code Giveaway

Lets get straight to the part you’re probably most interested in. The developer of Hueless was kind enough to give me 5 promo codes to give away. That means if you didn’t buy the app already, you can get it for everyone’s favorite price…FREE!

All you have to do is like David Pasillas Photography on Facebook, if you haven’t already, and leave a comment on the wall there. If you don’t have facebook, you can always just comment below. The winners will be announced by 10am pacific time on Monday.

Now lets talk about the update…

Hopefully you took the time to read my review of Hueless the other day and thought it was a pretty sweet black and white camera. Well, it was just updated with 3 more features that the users requested, including:

• Square shooting: switch back and forth between full-frame and square aspects by pinching in and out on the live viewfinder preview.
• Rest & Release shutter: Some photogs like to rest their finger on the shutter button and lift when they want to capture. Hueless, as you know, will cycle between regular and expanded shutter buttons if you keep your finger on the button. Hueless now has a preference that will disable the button modes and allow photogs to rest their finger on the shutter button and release when they want to shoot. The switch is available in the iOS Settings app Hueless pane.
• Launch Center Pro integration: We have had a lot of requests to add support for this. Not sure if you have tried it out, but it’s a neat utility app. You can get it here.

I shot some more with the square format. I actually really like this format for this camera. Now I can shoot in the more natural landscape orientation without being limited to that layout.

App Review: Hueless

There was a time where I only shot black and white film. If you shoot enough black and white, or constantly convert your images to black and white, you begin to actually see the world in a new way. I remember I use to be able to look at the scene in front of me and immediately see what it was like in black and white. Then I went digital and got into HDR, which is more how I see the world today.

Hueless is a great black and white camera app. Instead of having to imagine what the world looks like in black and white, this camera will give you a live preview. Not only that, but it has a couple of features that practically lets you edit while you shoot. Theres a slider on the left of the screen that acts as exposure compensation, effectively allowing you to brighten or darken your image before you press the shutter. If you ever want it to go back to 0, just double tap the slider.

The other great feature of Hueless are the colored filters, which is the icon in the top left corner. If you’ve ever been in the darkroom, you know what these are good for. Try experimenting with the different colors while shooting and see what a dramatic difference they can make. When you select a colored filter, there will be a slider on the right side that allows you to adjust the opacity of the filters.

If you feel like the screen is too cluttered, you can always just tap on the Hueless film roll in the bottom left corner and your view will be unobstructed.

The sharing features seem a little odd to me. You can email, tweet and post to instagram, but only if you allow location services. If you don’t you won’t have access to the camera roll in Hueless. Thats not really a big deal though because all of the images are also saved to your main camera roll.

Examples

None of these are edited with any other apps. I imagine you could get even more out of your photos if you touched them up just a little more. I know my examples aren’t the best I’ve ever included in an app review. I haven’t had time to shoot with this app as much as I’d like, which is why I included Keisuke’s photos as well.

You can overexpose images on purpose by increasing brightness before you shoot.

Below are examples from Keisuke Takahashi, a fantastic iphoneographer in Japan. I met him on Tadaa, where his username is TokyoGyango. Here is his flickr page.

Conclusion

Hueless is great for black and white photography. Its simple to use and post processing isn’t always necessary if you set things up before you take the shot. As with most cameras and apps, this may take some practice before you really master it. My only gripe with the app is the location of the shutter button when holding it in portrait orientation. It just feels awkward. Overall though, Hueless makes for a great black and white camera.

Rating: 5/5

Price: $1.99

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation) and iPad Wi-Fi + 4G.Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

***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. ***

Textified Flower

A while back I downloaded an app called Textify.it because it was offered for free at the time. It looked similar to another app that looked cool, WordFoto. WordFoto is actually the only app to deny me a promo code. I don’t know if its really their fault though. They claimed to be out of them at the time and I never heard anything back. Their loss is Textify.it’s gain.

The original photo was shot here at the desk I’m currently using. Felicia has a fake flower here that looked interesting enough to be the subject of a snapshot. The real reason I was interested was because of the lines the blinds were creating on the wall.

The edited photo above is ok, but nothing special. It needed something to make it stand out. I browsed my 60 or so photo apps and saw Textify.it. I figured I’d see what I can do with this app I’ve only used a couple of times before.

I adjusted the font size, the character quantity, and even tried using different characters. The first one below was composed of RED. The one below that was a bullet point *+# and an accidental L, but it worked.

If you’re interested in Textify.it, its 0.99 in the app store.

Free App: Dramatic Black and White

If you want a good app for black and white conversion, pick up Dramatic Black & White while its free.

I reviewed this one a while back, here.

Ramblings & Free apps

I’m still here, just not compelled to share iphone photos at the moment. WordPress has been odd lately. Somehow, I’m getting more views when I don’t post anything haha.

I’m experimenting with painting in photoshop right now. I’m watching old Bob Ross videos on youtube because he makes painting look so easy. I tried on the iphone, but it was a little challenging since I didn’t have all the tools I wanted.

I don’t care if you’re drawing with chalk on the sidewalk or sculpting with playdoh (my playdoh skills are awesome btw,) getting immersed in other creative activities is a good way to push your creativity.

Freebies

There are two long exposure apps available for free right now. Figures that would happen after Nick and Shannon’s long exposure collaboration ended! Slow Shutter Cam is one I’ve used a few times that works well. I can recommend that one. The other is Slow Shutter Plus and it looks ok except for the ridiculously low res saves. 640×480 on the iphone4, 852×640 on the 4s.