myphotoyear’s journal

myphotoyear

MobiStarter
Device
iPhone 11
I wanted to start a new series here if that’s cool, I’ll start with some info about me and where I’m coming from artistically, with a Q&A!

What were your first iPhoneography apps?

Camera+ in 2011, then during November 2012 I went on a splurge including IncrediBooth, Camera Awesome, SwankoLab, Simply HDR, TADAA, PhotoToaster, ProCamera, Pixlr, HDR Fusion and Hipstamatic. I haven’t looked back since!

What’s your favourite part of iPhoneography?

The spontaneity, you can capture, edit and share photos, without any barriers, big cameras may have more megapixels and with more sophisticated autofocus to name a few things, but iPhones are a delight to use for photography, the fact I can edit photos while I am still out and about I always love.

It sounds like iPhoneography is important to you?

For sure, it’s a passion, it means a lot to me, I don’t have as many ways of expressing myself as I’d like but with iPhoneography especially I can be creative, daring and experiment.

What’s an app you use that hardly anyone has heard of?

Nception is cracking app, for creating abstract/surreal photos, I have used it since it was out, it mirrors or reflects parts of the image on itself, to create weird and wonderful cityscapes especially, with video or I just import photos to edit them.

What camera app do you use?

The native app the most, it’s reliable and you get all the computational features, Deep Fusion, Smart HDR etc. Halide is my second choice, for RAW photography and good manual focus for those more tricky shots. FiLMiC Firstlight is a good one too!

What’s your preferred app to edit photos?

At the moment it’s Pixelmator Photo, it’s easy to use, has some unique features, with good RAW support, and makes the most of the iPad. Darkroom and RAW Power are ones I use too, Pixlr as well sometimes. Lightroom on occasion, without a subscription, so I just have some of the features.

What overlay apps do you like to add textures or other effects?

Mextures and Distressed FX are great apps, to add a bit of flavour to images, to give them more character. Lens Distortions is one I downloaded the other day and it’s very cool, you can add all sorts of lighting, rain, fog and snow effects.

Best black and white app?

I have used Darkr extensively but not so much recently, I used to love Hipstamatic for black and white especially but while I still love those guys, they kind of lost me with Hipstamatic X, I just didn’t take to it. RNI Films, not only for black and white is a great option for authentic, as much as a digital option can be, film emulation.

What’s your favourite utility?

The TouchRetouch app is an essential one, it can make or break a photo when you need to remove an element that takes away from your photo. Frame Grabber for taking stills from videos, and ViewExif and Metapho are useful for checking details of a photo.

Your best one touch app for editing a photo?

RNI Colibri or Filmroll, are a quick way to get a neat looking photo with no additional editing.

Do you print your photos?

Not as much as I‘d like, I have an Instax and Canon SELPHY photo printers which I use on occasion, I’d really like to get in to prints and maybe even selling them but I have to put some work into that.

What do you want from the iPhone 13?

I’m still on the iPhone 11, upgrading wasn’t an option unfortunately but it would be nice to see ProRaw on all the models, I’d swap the ultra wide lens for a telephoto on the standard iPhone 13, I’d personally find that more useful. More megapixels at this point wouldn’t go amiss, 16MP or so, gives more options for cropping etc. I think some better tracking autofocus would be great as well, that you see on big cameras, that will follow a subject and keep them in focus would be neat.

Top photo tip?

Take several shots of things of interest, play around with landscape and portrait orientation, think about what your trying to convey and how you can draw the viewer in.

During editing, duplicate photos, it’s a built in option, and try different cropping options to get a different feel, play around with aspect ratios, which you can change with the built in editor.

I’ll actually post some photos next update!
 
A couple of photos to get started. Primrose Hill and Holland Park, if you have visited London, hopefully you are familiar with them, as there are both some of the best parts of London!

Primrose Hill

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Kyoto Garden (Holland Park)

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Shot with iPhone 11 and edited in RNI Films, preset 'Fuji Pro 160NS', changed the resolution with Pixlr.
 
A couple of photos to get started. Primrose Hill and Holland Park, if you have visited London, hopefully you are familiar with them, as there are both some of the best parts of London!

Primrose Hill

View attachment 167129

Kyoto Garden (Holland Park)

View attachment 167136

Shot with iPhone 11 and edited in RNI Films, preset 'Fuji Pro 160NS', changed the resolution with Pixlr.
Oh my goodness, my old stomping ground! I lived in Notting Hill for about 5 years as a singleton.

Used to go to a cafe on Primrose Hill with the Sunday papers and have breakfast. And loved feeding the birds in Holland Park. The sparrows used to eat out of your hand especially in winter. :inlove:
 
Oh my goodness, my old stomping ground! I lived in Notting Hill for about 5 years as a singleton.

Used to go to a cafe on Primrose Hill with the Sunday papers and have breakfast. And loved feeding the birds in Holland Park. The sparrows used to eat out of your hand especially in winter. :inlove:

Nice, London can be idyllic at times, it can also be a lot of other things! Notting Hill, great area for exploring, colourful and a cool place to walk around, I’ll often see photos of houses from their on my feed, I have been known to take a few photos of the bright facades of the buildings too. Primrose Hill is lovely and can be incredibly popular, especially during nice weather but also when we had a snow day earlier in the year, I went there and it was packed with people sledging, got some great photos. It’s also a gateway to Camden and the Grand Union Canal, London Zoo and Regent’s Park.

And it's got the best upsizing tool on the iPad, at the moment (I think). :thumbs:

I love that feature! It took me a while to start using it but it’s so simple and can upscale I believe 1.5x, 2x or 3x, depending on a few things, which is versatile for cropping or thinking about bigger prints. I upscaled a 8MP iPhone 5s photo recently of a Dorset landscape, think Broadchurch (Miller!), if that means anything to you, and cropped it into three different photos with better clarity than I ever would have got before. From what I saw, their working on an iPhone version of the app, which would be neat and maybe we’ll see a Pixelmator Pro type app on the iPad at some point, which is more of a Photoshop type app.
 
This is an older photo, I had to check what I had edited it in (yeah for apps that record this in the Exif details) but it was with the FIMO app and X-Red 50 option, with a bit of Retouch too. Grand Union Canal near London Zoo.

View attachment 167217
Nice image! That would have been a contender in the just closed Color Challenge! The theme was BLUE.
 
Nice image! That would have been a contender in the just closed Color Challenge! The theme was BLUE.

Thank you!
And *grumble* for apps that don't record it, plus double *grumble* for apps like iColorama that wipe out previous Exif data.

Exactly, can be annoying, apps like that!

Love that.

Cheers!

Very nice, we're getting quite a following for FIMO on MobiTog.

FIMO is a nice app but can be restrictive with aspect ratios, depending on the film, that means I use it less than I would otherwise. From what I gather it’s one of best alternatives to Hipstamatic on Android.
 
Mr Bean

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Photo from April, new edit with RNI Films app, Agfa Vista 100 preset. Near South Bank.

Lots of restrictions lifted today, was thinking of going to Tate Modern, had a free ticket but didn’t leave the house in the end. So many mixed messages at the moment, I’m near an area that has this new strain, ahhh. Weather is funny too, heavy rain and lightning much of the day.
 
Continuing the gift shop theme, also from last month, this one open though hardly packed. Afterlight edit, good app by the way, they add new filters weekly, and have lots of editing features. The location I think you can guess!

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Another app I thought I’d mention, Big Photos, has a nice Info by Big Photos feature that is the only part of the app that is free, that gives you a nice read out of details. If you crop a photo or are playing around with upscaling, it can be interesting to see the megapixel equivalent. Here is an iPhone 7 Plus photo turned into a 48MP image, with Pixelmator Photo, neat!

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Continuing the gift shop theme, also from last month, this one open though hardly packed. Afterlight edit, good app by the way, they add new filters weekly, and have lots of editing features. The location I think you can guess!

View attachment 167303

Another app I thought I’d mention, Big Photos, has a nice Info by Big Photos feature that is the only part of the app that is free, that gives you a nice read out of details. If you crop a photo or are playing around with upscaling, it can be interesting to see the megapixel equivalent. Here is an iPhone 7 Plus photo turned into a 48MP image, with Pixelmator Photo, neat!

View attachment 167302
Excellent color in this one. Did you tweak that in AfterLight, or is that the way it came out of the camera?
 
Excellent color in this one. Did you tweak that in AfterLight, or is that the way it came out of the camera?

Thank you! Filter gave that look with a bit more character, all I would have edited is the highlight/shadows, actually here is the original to compare, out of the camera, though I have changed the resolution.

76B05720-0651-40E6-8604-4F48A5F272D1.jpeg
 
Sure, I just meant I reduce the resolution of what I post, specifically in Pixlr with the Resize image option, I change it so it’s a smaller image, probably unnecessary but there you go.
Ok thanks, I thought you were referring to Big Photo, I can't get my head around how it can upsize a photo. It can't make pixels out of nothing, its beyond my comprehension :lol:
 
Ok thanks, I thought you were referring to Big Photo, I can't get my head around how it can upsize a photo. It can't make pixels out of nothing, its beyond my comprehension :lol:

Computer, enhance! This is the best explanation I have come across:

https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/201...l-super-resolution-feature-in-pixelmator-pro/

It talks about conventional means of upscaling and then how using Machine Learning can bring some more precision to the process. It does work well, I am sure there are some limits and perhaps some photos it may struggle with but on the whole I have been impressed. Pixelmator have this feature on Mac and iPad at the moment.

Adobe have only more recently introduced a similar feature which is aimed more for RAWs, plus Gigapixel AI on desktop has been around for some time and gets a lot of kudos for really kick starting this into the mainstream, plus there are websites you can use that will offer a similar service.
 
Computer, enhance! This is the best explanation I have come across:

https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/201...l-super-resolution-feature-in-pixelmator-pro/

It talks about conventional means of upscaling and then how using Machine Learning can bring some more precision to the process. It does work well, I am sure there are some limits and perhaps some photos it may struggle with but on the whole I have been impressed. Pixelmator have this feature on Mac and iPad at the moment.

Adobe have only more recently introduced a similar feature which is aimed more for RAWs, plus Gigapixel AI on desktop has been around for some time and gets a lot of kudos for really kick starting this into the mainstream, plus there are websites you can use that will offer a similar service.
I would see it as much the same as using digital zoom I guess.
 
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