Day 74 – Old Mack – Kevyn Bashore’s iPhone Photo of the Day – Hipstamatic – Noir – Red Giant Software

“Old Mack”
Junk Yard, Carlisle, PA
Tuesday, April 26, 2011

iPhone 4 Camera
Noir Camera App – Red Giant Software
Hipstamatic iPhone App
Lens: John S
Film: Kodot XGrizzled
Flash: off

NOIR – RED GIANT SOFTWARE

Red Giant Software, maker of the PLASTIC BULLET iPhone App (which I reviewed on Day 56 of my blog), just released another iPhone camera app called NOIR.  At a cost of $2.99, it boasts great toned prints in a blink-0f-a-shutter.

In this post, I will give a brief explanation on how to use it, along with how it affected today’s photo of the day.

After downloading the app and opening it, you are presented with a stunning graphic first page.  Kudos to Red Giant for enticing everyone with this beautiful, simple image.  Simply tap the screen anywhere and it takes you directly into the app, itself.  Press the double-page icon at the bottom right and load an image from your phone photo library, and after a few seconds it loads it back into this page.

Now this is how simple this app is.  Press any of the six tabs in the middle of the screen for various vignette and toned effects.  And after finding one you like, simply drag the vignette markers larger or smaller or to various places in your photo, then spin the dials on the lower left to change the brightness of the outer circle, inner circle or contrast.  You can see the results in real time.

After you’ve settled on the vignette effects, press any one of the four toning tabs on the middle right to choose which color you’d like your photo to be.  The results can be seen in these samples.

When you settle on the vignette, outer brightness, inner brightness, contrast and tone, press the lower right Save tab.  The app saves the affected photo in your photo library and brings you right back into the app to start all over again with the same, or new, photo.

This app is a great addition to your phone camera app library.  The only two beefs I have with it are: 1) Sometimes it takes three times before the app loads the photo of my choice.  This hasn’t happened often, but it has happened enough times to cause me to realize it is an issue that should be fixed in later upgrades.  And 2) It’s difficult to gain a full understanding of how the changes you are making are fully affecting your photo.  What looks good on the small screen, might be blown out or just not what you thought it was after reviewing it on your computer in full size.  The solution is to continue to experiment until you begin to see how what you are doing in the app actually applies to real life results.

Other than that, this app is a fun, quick, easy and appealing tool to add to one’s creative photographic arsenal.

Enjoy!

(more samples below)

Day 56 – Review of the Plastic Bullet App – Kevyn Bashore’s iPhone Photo of the Day

“Into the Vortex”
Friday, April 8, 2011

iPhone 4 Camera
Plastic Bullet app
12.0 MPX app

PLASTIC BULLET FOR IPHONE

Today I’ll focus on the Plastic Bullet camera phone app. It’s another toy camera app made specifically for the iPhone.  It’s one of the easier and more focused apps that does one thing and one thing only: creates random lighting and color effects in photographs shot from the app or extracted from your phone’s photo library.  It creates various dreamy renditions of your photos, from black and white, to sepia, to wild and crazy colors.  You can save in low, medium and high quality resolutions.  The only down side is that if you see something you like and you don’t save it, you’ll never be able to duplicate the exact same shot again; Plastic Bullet is that randomized in it’s setup and output.

Basic procedures to use the app are thus: Open the app.  Shoot a photo or tap on the button to choose a shot from your photo library.  Plastic Bullet does the rest.  It produces four variations of your shot.  If you like one, tap on it, and then tap the heart at the top middle of your screen to save the photo.  Once finished, or if you don’t like any of the renditions, tap the circular arrow on the top right of your screen and Plastic Bullet will produce four more variations.  And it goes on and on and on.  It takes about 30 – 60 seconds to save each photo, so you need to have patience.  The good thing is that you can choose to save the original shot and then create an infinite number of variations later.  The only down side is that this becomes quite addictive: you always wonder what the next round of four photos will look like.  Thankfully, there’s no money involved in sitting around for hours playing with this app.

Here’s what the Red Giant software site promises from it’s Plastic Bullet app.

• Support for high resolution 2592 x 1936 maximum output with optimized engine for support of iPhone 4 (5 Megapixel)
• Tuned development output for iPhone 4 exposure levels
• Direct Flickr and Facebook uploading inside the application
• Resolution choice of Low (50%), Medium (75%) and High (100%) in Settings app based on the original images size. Percentage image size support assures that small images will not be scaled up, preserving the quality of developing.
• Maximum resolution support on 3G = 1600×1200, 3GS=2048×1536, iPhone 4 = 2592 x 1936
• Supports iOS 4 suspend and resume so you can return to where you left off. Developing and Upload are fully interruptible (but do not run in the background)
• Approximately 33% faster than 1.0. iPhone 4 is approximately 50% faster than 3GS.
• Support for 7 languages including: Chinese Simplified, English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish

SETTING UP PLASTIC BULLET

As I mentioned yesterday, some apps can be altered in your phones settings folder.  Simply open Settings.  Then scroll down until you see Plastic Bullet.  Click the arrow.  Now you have the choice to:

Save Original

Use Flickr and Facebook

Save as Low, Medium or High Resolution

I suggest clicking “on” for saving original and sharing through Flickr and Facebook, if you have accounts with one or both of them.  Then choose high resolution for developing.  Like I said in yesterday’s post: always, always, always choose high resolution.

EXAMPLES OF MY PHOTOS PROCESSED WITH PLASTIC BULLET

Here are several shots I processed with the Plastic Bullet.  I’ll let it up to you to decide which ones you like and which ones you don’t.  But it definitely opens up doors for creative interpretation of your iPhone photos.  I posted both a slideshow and a gallery for those who like one or the other better.  In the gallery, simply click on a photo if you want to see it larger.  After viewing my sample shots, it’s time to purchase your own phone apps and get out and shoot!

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