Tag: Pro HDR »

Welcome, one and all, to another 148Apps holiday shopping guide! Are you having trouble figuring out what to get for a distant relative, new neighbor, or estranged second cousin? Thankfully there are people like us putting together handy-dandy holiday shopping guides for you! Whether you’re looking for new hardware and accessories, or just something a bit less impersonal than an iTunes gift card, we’ve got you covered.

Other 148Apps Holiday Gift Guides: for [Health Nuts] [Creative Types] [Gamers] [Power Users]

Today’s guide centers around highly social iOS users. I’m talking about the people who practically live on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and all that. It can be tough to come up with something for such diehard (virtual) social butterflies, and even more tricky to surprise them, but we’re certainly going to give it a shot! Check out our list below for some hopefully useful ideas.

Love it or hate it, the iPhone is a big player when it comes to on the go photography. Many people no longer buy point and shoot cameras as they already have their iPhone with them everywhere they go. Apple has dedicated a section of the App Store to Camera and Photography apps. There are even photographers who have dedicated columns to “iPhoneography.” If you happen to fit into the group of users that loves taking photos with your iPhone, but want something to help make those photos more unique, we have four apps perfect for taking your photos further.

Hipstamatic:
Hipstamatic was one of the first apps to take the iPhone camera and give it a retro feel. Now this app has become a must own for many people. Hipstamatic gives you plenty of options when it comes to combining various lenses with film types. The abundance of combinations is staggering, while the end results are fun and enjoyable to those that dig the retro feel. If you love old school photos, this is a must own app.

TiltShift Generator – Fake Miniature:
If you have ever seen a photo in which the real-life subject looked like miniaturized model in a fake world, this is most likely due to the use of a TiltShift lens. While the actual lenses to produce this effect cost thousands of dollars, you can mimic the effect right off your iPhone. By adjusting various parameters, you can take an ordinary iPhone photo and turn it into a miniaturized photo, without all the expensive camera gear. If you just want a simple way of adding a bit of lens blur to a photo, this will handle that as well. This is a powerful, yet easy to understand app for any iPhoneographer.

Pro HDR:
HDR, or high dynamic range, is becoming all the rage these days. HDR photos are actually a combination of two or more photos taken at various exposures. These exposures are then combined in software to reduce over exposed areas, while brightening under exposed areas. Pro HDR makes this complicated process fast and easy. You even have control over the final image before it is saved. This app takes normal iPhone HDR to a new and even better level!

360 Panorama:
Panoramic photos are another style of photograph that often requires complicated software to stitch two or more photos together. 360 Panorama gives you this power right on your iPhone. Just fire up the app and follow the onscreen instructions while you take some photos. The app will seamlessly combine the snapshots into one beautiful panoramic photo. You can even create 360degree photos, thus giving you more power over your creativity.

iOS has brought users a great all-in-one stop shop for taking photos, manipulating them, posting them online, and composing a whole blog post over that spectacular shot. In fact, because the iPad and iPhone have such great apps, there are some pros that don’t even carry a laptop with them onto photo shoots. Everything they need for quickly getting photos to the world can easily be handled right on these magical devices. Let’s look at just a few tools that make this possible.

Shooting The Photo
The first major change is just how the iPhone takes photos. Long gone are boring, under/over exposed, bland photos. Now we have HDR embedded right in the included camera app. If this is not powerful enough for you, apps like TrueHDR and Pro HDR can take your HDR photos to higher levels than what is already available.

Maybe you like adding a bit of flair to your photos -- this is where wonderful apps like Hipstamatic come into play. I use this app all the time when I am shooting fun setups with all my Lego People. The various lenses and films all add up for some fun, and unique shots that I have thought of recreating with my DSLR and Photoshop.

Processing Without Photoshop
The next part of any good shot is the post-processing step, and yes, just about any photo worth its weight in metallic paper is photoshopped in some form or another. This may be as simple as removing dust particles or increasing saturation levels, to full-blown photo manipulations in layers that a slice of Tiramisu would be jealous of.

Apps like Filterstorm, or Photoshop Express, allow for some basic photo-editing while away from your computer. Filterstorm even allows you to make adjustments in that all too familiar layer workflow so many of us are comfortable with. Are these apps going to allow you to completely avoid using Photoshop on a laptop? Of course not. However, what you do have is the ability to post process while sipping on a beer at the local pup without all the worry of dropping a pint on your precious laptop.

Uploading Those Shots
Uploading photos does have a few gotchas, as there is not one single great app to handle the huge number of uploading services. There are apps to handle some of the most popular sharing services like Facebook, Smugmug, Flickr, Twitter, and Picasa, however. Worst-case scenario is you have to email your photo to a client or a photo sharing service. This is undoubtedly one of the bigger downfalls of doing photography with the iOS devices, rather than a laptop.

Composing A Photo Blog Post
Once your photo is captured, processed, and uploaded, you just might want to quickly write up a small blog post about the photo. There are apps to allow you to do just that as well, but again, this will be limited to your choice of blog host. Some services may even support one iOS device over another device, as is the case with SquareSpace only supporting the iPhone at this time. There are applications like BlogPress and WordPress that can be used to update blogs, too. A tip here: if you can’t post from an app, type it up, email it to someone you trust, and have them add the blog posting. We all know that content is the key to keeping your viewers coming back.

iOS is not perfect, but it is getting better with every release. More companies are releasing apps that easily allow photo manipulation, sharing, and blogging for those who are constantly on the go. How has your iDevice changed your workflows while travelling? Are you one of those few who now leave your laptop at home in exchange for the lighter iOS devices?

Apps Discussed In This Post: