ubbyisis
IOTM Winner - Sep 21 & Sep 22
I don't think that's actually true. Can anyone quote a source?
My bad I'm six months behind here
It wasn’t true [emoji1303][emoji6]
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I don't think that's actually true. Can anyone quote a source?
My bad I'm six months behind here
It seems intriguing to me to hear talk of BIG ipad pro's, Affinity editing, which seems to me to be basically a Photoshop clone, are we are getting away from the simple premise of 'mobile' photography?
Devices that are as powerful, if not more so than a desktop computer. Expensive editing suites that are as sophisticated as Photoshop is.
What happened to the simple phone in pocket, take picture, edit in a simple app and upload?
Maybe I'm out of touch but why would you bother coming away from DSLR's in the first place if you hankered over such sophistication?
I even shudder when I hear some folk even carry bags of equipment around with them to use with their mobile phones, what does that remind you of?
Of course each to their own I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just asking are we loosing the way a little?
The difference for me is that you still have to take the photo on the phone. Yes, once you add fancy lenses and what-not then the point is lost. Am I right in thinking that one of your mantras is that if the photo is not up to scratch then no manner of editing is going to make a difference? So I don't think we are there yet but when the iPhone finally catches up with the DSLR and I think it will, there will be no difference. People will look back on the 'proper' mobile era and the images from this time will be iconic. A bit like looking at old BW images.It seems intriguing to me to hear talk of BIG ipad pro's, Affinity editing, which seems to me to be basically a Photoshop clone, are we are getting away from the simple premise of 'mobile' photography?
Devices that are as powerful, if not more so than a desktop computer. Expensive editing suites that are as sophisticated as Photoshop is.
What happened to the simple phone in pocket, take picture, edit in a simple app and upload?
Maybe I'm out of touch but why would you bother coming away from DSLR's in the first place if you hankered over such sophistication?
I even shudder when I hear some folk even carry bags of equipment around with them to use with their mobile phones, what does that remind you of?
Of course each to their own I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just asking are we loosing the way a little?
It seems intriguing to me to hear talk of BIG ipad pro's, Affinity editing, which seems to me to be basically a Photoshop clone, are we are getting away from the simple premise of 'mobile' photography?
Devices that are as powerful, if not more so than a desktop computer. Expensive editing suites that are as sophisticated as Photoshop is.
What happened to the simple phone in pocket, take picture, edit in a simple app and upload?
Maybe I'm out of touch but why would you bother coming away from DSLR's in the first place if you hankered over such sophistication?
I even shudder when I hear some folk even carry bags of equipment around with them to use with their mobile phones, what does that remind you of?
Of course each to their own I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just asking are we loosing the way a little?
Sadly, I am one of those who loves what apps like Diana do to my images, but my favorites in Diana are the ones I don’t know how to reproduce. The same with TaDaa...my favorite presets are exactly the I don’t know how to create for myself. For me, the question is if, at 62, I want to spend time learning how to recreate what apps can do...or...do I want to just let the apps do their thing and use the resulting images in whatever way I choose to? I think laziness will rule and I’ll work on what makes my heart happy and let those who are smarter and more talented create the apps I love to use.
I used to be a purist...but I drifted
Sadly, I am one of those who loves what apps like Diana do to my images, but my favorites in Diana are the ones I don’t know how to reproduce. The same with TaDaa...my favorite presets are exactly the I don’t know how to create for myself. For me, the question is if, at 62, I want to spend time learning how to recreate what apps can do...or...do I want to just let the apps do their thing and use the resulting images in whatever way I choose to? I think laziness will rule and I’ll work on what makes my heart happy and let those who are smarter and more talented create the apps I love to use.
I used to be a purist...but I drifted
Sadly, I am one of those who loves what apps like Diana do to my images, but my favorites in Diana are the ones I don’t know how to reproduce. The same with TaDaa...my favorite presets are exactly the I don’t know how to create for myself. For me, the question is if, at 62, I want to spend time learning how to recreate what apps can do...or...do I want to just let the apps do their thing and use the resulting images in whatever way I choose to? I think laziness will rule and I’ll work on what makes my heart happy and let those who are smarter and more talented create the apps I love to use.
I used to be a purist...but I drifted
Well said, Ryn and Eva. It doesn’t matter what we use - it’s what makes us happy.Choosing what makes our hearts happy is the best thing. I think that makes our hearts a little happier also more medically speaking [emoji173]️[emoji851]
on is if, at 62, I want to spend time learning how to recreate what apps can do...or...do I want to just let the apps do their thing and use the resulting images in whatever way I choose to? I think laziness will rule and I’ll work on what makes my heart happy and let those who are smarter and more talented create the apps I love to use.
I used to be a purist...but I drifted
Choosing what makes our hearts happy is the best thing. I think that makes our hearts a little happier also more medically speaking [emoji173]️[emoji851]
Well said, Ryn and Eva. It doesn’t matter what we use - it’s what makes us happy.
Lol, Brian...it would probably be great if Diana could do that....but I doubt I’m that talented...or that smart...but I’d love to see what you can doI really like Dianna, too, and I’ve spent some time trying to figure out how each favourite style is made. They are more complex than they look. Not just a simple overlay. There’s masking and blending modes and probably some hidden layers. Yes I can recreate some in Photoshop but it sure takes some time. There’s one Photoshop blending mode I like that’s missing from anything else I’ve seen and that’s the conditional blend-if.
There’s a playful explorative aspect in Diana that is lacking in Photoshop. There are many Diana effects I find frustrating because they almost get me where I want to go but not quite and I can’t control the elements enough to make it work. Sometimes it’s great and sometimes it just doesn’t work.
Imagine if you could make your own effects in Diana and have the Diana platform to use them.
Lol, Brian...it would probably be great if Diana could do that....but I doubt I’m that talented...or that smart...but I’d love to see what you can do
I absolutely have to agree with you on thisYou see. That’s exactly my point. In most cases what Diana can do isn’t that complicated. If it explained to you how it was done you could easily do it yourself. Then you would be learning as you go, expanding your skills. As it is we use apps that keep their methods secret, we learn nothing, except dependence, and become convinced we’re not that smart. What users can accomplish becomes a given set of possibilities, that start to become recognizable over time as coming from this or that app. This is why I think more apps should take an interest in helping users learn new skills rather than encouraging dependency. The dumbing-us-down approach does everyone a disservice in the long run.
OK then, all you Affinity folks. What about those exclusive features in Affinity like DNG development, focus stacking, panorama stitching, etc. Are you just using Affinity as a fancier iColorama?
Their tutorials are good for the basics Ryn.LOL! I don’t even use it like a mini iColorama! I can’t figure out how to do anything in it. I open it, pull in an image, look at ALL those buttons and close it back up and move to apps I know.
Ditto.Well, the exclusive features are not “in my wheelhouse”. So yes, I guess you could say that I’m using it as a standard layering app. (I wouldn’t compare it to iColorama since iColorama is not a layering app, and iColorama has many effects that Affinity doesn’t attempt to do.)
Well, the exclusive features are not “in my wheelhouse”. So yes, I guess you could say that I’m using it as a standard layering app. (I wouldn’t compare it to iColorama since iColorama is not a layering app, and iColorama has many effects that Affinity doesn’t attempt to do.)
Aha!!!now that I have a new iPad Pro
At last! Now you will know how much you have been missing out!Focus Stacking in Affinity!
The short version; yes, it works great!
I’ve only had Affinity a couple of days. I watched some of the tutorials and it helped a lot. I think diving into Affinity without the tutorials would lead to a lot of stumbling around but with only 3 or 4 of the first tutorials it all makes logical sense. Mind you, I haven’t tried everything yet. I did make a few image tweaks while I was at it and had no trouble finding the proper tools.
Focus Stacking is the first thing I tried to do with Affinity and it is the one topic I didn’t find in the tutorials. But no matter. You pretty well just select your focus stack images and press OK and it’s done.
If you are not familiar with Focus Stacking here’s an overview. When you want more depth of field in a photo that one shot is capable of recording you need Focus Stacking. You need a secure tripod, frame your shot, make a series of photos, each at a different focus distance, perhaps 5 photos, and that is your focus stack image set.
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This first photo is one of my focus stack set. I think the 2nd focus position from the front. You can easily see how the background goes out of focus before we see all the apples. This series was 5 photos. In each one you can distinctly see an area out of focus in the subject area of the image - the apples.
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This is the Focus Stacked image made by Affinity. You can see there is more focus in front and a lot more farther into the photo. With a DSLR you would simply select a smaller aperture like f11 but the iPhone has a fixed aperture of f1.8 on recent cameras for the wide angle lens and f2.8 for the 2x. There’s a narrow strip right at the bottom that is blurred and I forgot to crop it out. This is a typical artifact of Focus Stacking, in other programs too.
Close up photos typically have an even shallower depth of field than scenic photos and getting even a small range in focus is a challenge.
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This first photo is one of my 5-shot focus stack series. Quite obviously out of focus in the front.
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This is the Focus Stacked image made by Affinity. The branch the fungi are on is about the diameter of a broomstick. In that short distance it took 5 photos to provide enough sharp areas to make one usable photo.
In Affinity here’s what happens. My 5 photos are imported and each put on a separate layer, one directly on top of the other. Affinity analyzes and compares each image to align them and then looks for the areas in best focus. Then it blends those sharp(est) areas together into one image. You can see the 5 layers in the layers "studio", I almost said palette (gasp), and associated masks. Then you flatten the stack into a single image. It is much like stitching a panorama.
There are a few apps dedicated to automate the process of making the focus stack set. StayFocused was the first, FocusCamera - but it is limited to 3 photos in the stack, and more recently, CameraPixels, which looks very promising as it is a higher end camera to start with. With your iPhone on the tripod you first set the nearest and farthest focus positions and decide on how many photo to make for your series and press the shutter. The problem up to now is that there has been no on-device processing of Focus Stack images. But now we have Affinity, although only on iPad, and... now that I have a new iPad Pro to run Affinity I’m very excited!