ShockMyPic is an app I’ve seen a few other people use to make some cool photos, so I had to get my hands on it and see what it was all about. This app is incredibly simple and provides great painterly effects. There is also a very similar Mac version that I’ll be reviewing soon.
Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I looked to see if there were any free apps worth playing with.
Part by MEA Mobile looks pretty interesting. Its simple. You start with large circles, or blocks, and as you touch them, they become smaller, revealing more detail in your photo. I’m thinking this app might make for some interesting photos if you take the images below and blend them with the original in an app like superimpose or imageblender.
The other app I found is PicArts Photo Studio by S Square System Limited. The main thing that interested me with this app was the number of filters for painting and sketch effects. The painting filters were painfully slow (you have to tap the screen or it will go to sleep) and the results were just ok for me. I dont think I’ll keep this one, but you might want to check it out since its free.
This is the watercolor effect. You can see its not a very clean job. There are some spots that are completely missed. And this is after about 3-4 minutes of processing.
I know this runs the risk of not being read since its posted so late, but Snapseed is free right now. If you don’t have it, get it.
LensLight by BrainFeverMedia is very similar to LensFlare, but it has even more to offer.
For me, the strength of this app is creating or enhancing the lighting of your image. In my example picture of the tree below, the morning light was very nice, but not defined or gold enough for me. LensLight fixed that quickly and easily. Continue Reading
Kyoobik Photo is another app by JixiPix. I was first interested in checking this app out after discovering another creative app called Percolator.
Below is the user interface. Its very simple and easy to use just like their other apps. One new thing in this app is the ability to add or erase tiles. In this example, I erased the tiles on around the edge. If you wanted to, you could erase a line right down the middle, or random tiles here and there. Continue Reading
I think I have something like 45-50 photo apps on my phone right now. Thats after deleting a bunch that aren’t up to my standards. For this image, I used more apps than I ever have on a single image.
I’m pretty surprised I remembered all of that. You should click on it to see the large version.
So what do you think of the final outcome? Was it worth the trouble?
I also want to share a few blog posts that I contributed to recently. This one is on iphoneography, instagram, and being part of the in crowd. I’ve enjoyed my recent conversations with Shannon. She knows what shes talking about.
I did two posts for Mariam where I shared what I think helped me become not only a better photographer, but a more creative individual. Here they are: 1 & 2. In the second post, I share a popular training website that offers 24 hour free trials to all of their videos. Go check it out!
LensFlare is an app by BrainFeverMedia that allows you to add a wide variety of lens flares and a handful of textures to your image. The selection is quite impressive for the price. The best thing about LensFlare is its very easy to use. Touch where you want the flare to go, pinch with two fingers to adjust size, and twist with two fingers to rotate.
You can also adjust the brightness and color of the flare. Below that is the opacity slider for the texture if you add any to your image.
If you want to add more than one flare, tap on the 2nd icon from the right to pull up the screen below. Choose Render (add flare)…obviously. While we’re on this screen, I’ll add that you can also just save the flare(s) instead of the flare(s) on top of the image. I’ll show an example I made by mistake at the end.
Thats all there is to the app, its very easy with some cool textures that you’ll see in the examples below. These are sample images that come with the app so you can practice on good photos.
The flare and texture below were suppose to be applied to the boat image, but I must have pressed the wrong save button. This is what you get when you just save the flares.
Here is the promo video for LensFlare.
http://www.brainfevermedia.com/apps/LensFlare.html
Conclusion
If you’re a fan of lens flares or you’re into doing some serious photo manipulation on your phone, then LensFlare is a must have. It’s really excellent at what it does and I think its a steal at this price. Having said that, I don’t think this app is for all photographers. I see it as a great tool for the more creative types.
Rating: 5/5
Price: iPhone 0.99 iPad 2.99 (iPad version includes the LensLight app)
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.2 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. ***
I had suggested to them that the center focus operated more like darken/lighten center from color efex pro and it looks like thats what we’re seeing in the new update. I’m so pleased with the way this tool works now. I rarely used center focus before, but now I think I’ll be using it a lot more often now that there are a number of great presets and you have the ability to set the point of center focus. I think its got to be the best vignette tool on the iphone now because of how natural it looks.
The other thing they updated was the black and white tool. Now you can add color filters to affect the contrast. I don’t know why this wasn’t there to begin with. I can feel comfortable deleting simply b&w now because I only kept that around in case I wanted to use a color filter.
One thing missing that I asked for was the ability to add structure in the selective adjustments. Hopefully we’ll see that in a future update.
NIR Color is another app by JixiPix. The main screen is just like their other apps, dramatic BW, PhotoArtista Oil, etc. There are presets of color combinations that they think make for interesting looks. There are also some easy to use sliders to fine tune your image. I like how jixipix keeps the same user interface for the majority of their apps. It makes it easy to pick up and use if you’ve tried their others.
Slow Shutter Cam is free today. I use it for my long exposures and recommend it if you’re looking for an app that can give you that silky water look. You should definitely use a tripod or set the camera on something for best results. Here are some examples of what I’ve done with this app.
Saturday was national beer day (I didn’t know it was a thing either). After a little celebration, I was feeling silly and creative. This self portrait was created with the front camera on the iPhone, edited with Snapseed, and I used LensFlare to add the crazy look to my eyes.
I plan on reviewing LensFlare this week. I’ve had it for a while, but I don’t see the need to add flares to my images which makes it tough to review haha. Its good at what it does though. I’ll tell you more about it later.
If you liked the tilt shift from yesterday, go check out the one I posted today on my other blog. Theres a tutorial along with a link to more amazing examples.
PhotoArtista oil is another excellent app from Jixipix. It does a great job of turning your photos into oil paintings. There are a number of presets in different categories ranging from realistic to abstract. The lower you scroll down in the presets, the more abstract the presets get. If you prefer more control, you can fine tune your painting with the sliders.
PhotoViva is an app that allows you to turn your images into paintings with total control. Instead of selecting a filter to achieve a certain look, you choose brushes and paint each stroke. This allows for endless creative possibilities. Not only can you use this app to turn your photos into paintings, but you can also use it just for painting in general.
This is one of the old buildings in Guadalupe. They’ve repainted some of them with bright colors. Very fitting for this little Mexican town. I thought percolator made this image much more interesting, because the light was a little harsh for this time of day.
Photo created with ProHDR, Snapseed, and Percolator.
A-HDR is an app used to create pseudo HDR images by applying filters/presets to a single photo. A lot of the filters are, in my opinion, a good way to overprocess your image. Having said that, there are a couple that seem to work well on the right image. The good thing about A-HDR is you have the ability to make your own adjustments before or after applying a filter/preset.
Easy mode is where you can choose a filter/preset to apply to your image.
