Android Photographer

First, I wanted to say a big thank you to those that emailed me after my last post.  I am sad to hear that so many have to go through infertility, however I do think it is important that we share our stories for the sake of all those who think they are alone in this battle.  A supportive community can really help us get through those tough times.

Now, this is a photography blog, isn’t it?  I think it is about time that I wrote a tutorial, don’t you?  It has been a while!

More and more often I have found that the only camera I have with me is the one built into my phone. While I love my Nikon, and I try to take it with me as often as possible, there are those times when I just don’t feel like lugging it around, or it is not really safe to take it with me.  For those times I rely on my Droid camera.

A little bit about the Motorola Droid camera:

I hate this camera. My previous phone, the LG Dare, was much much better, and it wasn’t even a smart phone.

The Droid does horribly in low light.  Without a flash the pictures are grainy and the camera captures very little available light.  With the flash, the images are washed out and still grainy.

As for settings, there is very little you can change. There are only 3 focus modes, auto, infinity, and macro.  You can change the exposure to 3 different settings; 0, +1, and +2, but with each addition you loose quality.  There are only 5 white balance settings; auto, incandescent, daylight, fluorescent and cloudy.  The flash can be turned on or off. There is zoom up to 4x, but as with exposure, you loose quality as you zoom in.  That is it for controlling the settings.  As a photographer, this is horrible.  I want to change my ISO, I want some screen modes (portrait, landscape, etc.), more white balance settings, better zoom, and better low light quality.

I have heard that later versions of the Droid (the Droid 3 just came out) do much better in low light situations, but they still lack in the ability to change settings.

What makes this phone bearable are the apps available through the app market.  Without these apps I would have returned this phone long ago.

Android Apps:

There are a lot of photography apps available for android, and there are a lot of posts out there telling you which ones are the best.  The problem with those posts is that the writers judge the app based on the reviewer ratings and haven’t really tested them, and there aren’t very many pictures to show you what the app can do.  However, those posts are a great starting point for which apps to try first.  I’m only going to show you the apps I use frequently and have used for a long time, and I will show you my favorite pictures I have taken with each app.

There are several apps out there that I have downloaded thinking they would be great, only to delete them later. Here are a couple that you shouldn’t waste your phone storage space on.

Adobe Photoshop: It does very little. I found I never used it.

Pudding Camera: The free version is in Korean, so I couldn’t figure it out.

Camera360: I never used this one either.  It didn’t have enough options to justify me keeping it.

Camera Magic: This one is about to get deleted from my phone. I never use it. It doesn’t have very many filters, and it has fewer options than the built in camera. 

Now, what do I use? Here is a complete breakdown of all of the apps I use frequently. All apps are free to download through the app market. I never pay for an app.

QuickPic: Use this instead of the stock photo gallery.  It is cleaner and runs more smoothly and faster.

FX Camera

This was the first photography app I ever downloaded, so I used it a lot in the beginning.  I have to say, though, that I don’t use it much now.

Likes:
It is the only app I have found that has a fisheye mode and a Warhol mode (the only other options are ToyCam, Polandroid, and SymmetriCam).

Disklikes:
Since it only has 5 options, I find that I rarely use it.

FX Camera App: Palandroid

FX Camera App: Toy Cam

Vignette Demo

This is a very popular app on the market. A lot of people seem to really love it. It is a much better option than the stock camera, and can be set to start up when you hit the camera button.

Likes:

- There are a lot of filters, something like 84 total! My favorites include Cross-processing (with 6 different color options), Technicolor (under Cinematic), Faded Vintage, Colourised Vintage, Velvia, Toy Camera, and Toy Camera Cross Processed.

- You can save your favorite filters in a different folder for easy access.

- You can add frames.

- There are options to auto-save filtered pictures and the original picture.

- You can change the screen modes. There are 11 different modes to choose from, including Night-portrait, beach, snow, action, and landscape.

- There is a self timer

- You can turn on different picture taking guides (Golden Ratio, Rule of Thirds, etc)

- There is a time lapse option ( I haven’t used this, but it seems like fun)

Dislikes:

- On the new version I found it hard to figure out how to navigate to the options (hit the back button)

- There is no preview for filters, and you have to pick the filter before you take the picture. This means that if you take a picture using a predetermined filter you won’t know what it looks like with that filter until after you take the picture.  I find I like to apply the filter after I take the picture so I can test different filters on the image to see which one I like best. For this reason alone, I find I don’t use this amazing app as often as it deserves.

Vignette App: Cross Process (X-pro Yellow)

Vignette App

Retro Camera

This was my favorite app for a long time, and some of my favorite photos are taken with it.

Likes:

- Although it doesn’t have very many filters, the few it does have are some of my favorites out there.

- The interface is cute.

Dislikes

- Like with most of the other photo apps there is no preview for the fillter.

- It does not have very many filters (only 6 cameras to choose from)

- There are few setting you can change

- The “viewfinder” is very small.

Retro Camera:Pinhole Camera

Retro Camera: Little Orange Box

Retro Camera: Pinhole Camera

Retro Camera: Little Orange Box

Retro Camera:Barbl

Little Photo

This is my go to app right now. I use it all the time.

Likes:

- You take your picture first, and then apply all changes and filters.

- There are a lot of filters (over 50). My favorites are Lomo, 2-hand lens, 201 Film, Tone Lighting, Toy Camera, Vintage Paper, and 4:50pm

- It has several different frames.

- There are several “tools” such as bokeh, text, drawings, etc.

- You can use multiple filters on one picture (although, the quality decreases when you do)

- You can import photos taken from other apps and from the stock camera and apply filters.

- You can auto-save the original picture (which I just learned how to do)

- There is a 3 second self-timer option

Dislikes

- Even though I like being able to apply filters after I take the picture, it does add extra time to the process

- There are no screen modes or other regular camera settings

- The flash doesn’t work with my phone

My favorite! Little Photo: Lomo

Little Photo: 2-Hand Lens

For more images from these apps check out these flickr groups

Vignette for Android

Little Photo

Retro Camera

FX Camera

Android Photographer

For camera phone inspiration check out these amazing images from a recent Pioneer Women post (unfortunately, none of mine made the cut):

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

If you have any questions about any of these apps, or you want me to try out one of the other photography apps available for Android, let me know in the comments section or send me an email.

All  photos were uploaded to Photoshop where they were water marked, changed to the correct color mode for the web, and saved. Besides that all images are straight from my phone (and appear as they do on my phone's screen), no other actions where taken in Photoshop.

TTV and a Winner!!!

The hubby got my a Kodak Duaflex IV for passing my qualifiers. I am still getting used to shooting through it, but it is so much fun. If you want to learn more about shooting "Through the Viewfinder", here are some places to check out:
Russ Morris Tutorial
Flickr TTV Group
TTV Blog (not updated recently)
Kodak

Be careful, it is somewhat addicting. Now I need it to stop being cold so I can go outside and take some pictures, brrrr.


And now, for the winners of the Pay it Forward Contest.
Sarah
Congratulations Sarah!!! Email me your address and I will send you your present as soon as I get home.

Heather, I was going to send you something anyways, haha.

Photoshop Actions

Irene wrote a wonderful tutorial about her post processing techniques, which got me thinking about the last time I wrote a tutorial. Lets just say that it has been awhile, sorry about that. Shinade, and my hubby, asked me how I post processed my ginko photos, and I have one simple word for you, actions.

I use actions probably more than I should. I have written my own, but sometimes it is just easier to use someone elses. Where do you get them? How do you use them? Well, I'm glad you asked because I was just about to tell you :)

Where do you get them? These are some that I use, and they are free!!!

MulletGod's Actions (these are some of my favorites, his vignette is nice and soft, the vintage actions are great, I love the color burst action, the grunge action, and the sharpen your pencil is a great sharpening action. They all come together so you can try them all out)
Coffee Shop Actions
Christabelle's Actions
Glass House Actions (I think you have to join the Flickr group to download these)
The Pioneer Woman Actions
Large Selection of Actions
Another Collection of Actions
DeviantART

Now what? Download the actions you like. I save them to a seperate actions folder. Then I open Photoshop. Go to File>Open, find the folder with your actions, and then open each one. Now you need to go to Window>Actions, and the Actions toolbox will open. Click on the action you want to use and press play.

I usually duplicate my image first, just in case I don't like the action. Go to Image>Duplicate, ta dah.

Try using more than one action together for cool effects. The nice think about some actions is that they create separate layers, so you can turn some layers off to get a different look. That is what I did for the Ginko pictures. I used the Vintage Gold MulletGod action, and then turned off the desaturation layer so that the colors were bright.

Try it out and let me know what you come up with. If you know of any other great Free actions leave me a comment and I will include it in the list.

I would totally recommend looking at what the action you use is doing. Click on the triangle next to the action and it will give you a list of what the action does. You will learn a lot from doing this, and you can come up with your own post processing techniques in the process. I recommend actions, but I also recommend taking the time to learn what they do and attempt your own techniques.

Photoshop: Sharpening your Image

Welcome back for another round of Photoshop techniques. This week let's talk about sharpening. I pretty much always sharpen my photos unless I want a soft look, then I don't. Why do we need to sharpen anyways? Well, its all in the lens baby. At least, that is what I was told. The better the lens the crisper your images, and since it's not my birthday yet, and I don't have a 50mm f/1.4 lens, I have to make do with my kit lens to get close shots. As you can see, the kit lens isn't the best, so we need to sharpen it up a bit.

Let's start with this pretty lily that was in my yard, and is now dead.


Next I applied the soft light technique that we talked about last week. Plus, I bumped up the brightness a bit using curves. (I didn't save after this step in my next photos, so this one is a little brighter than the rest)


Now, I am going to show you two different techniques to sharpen your photos. This first one I used all the time, but I have since switched to the second method. It is all up to you which one to use.

The first one is called Unsharp Mask. It sounds counter intuitive, but it really means that it is masking the unsharp parts of your image and allowing the sharp parts to come through, at least that is what I was told.



Go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask, and this box will pop up. It is nice because you can get a preview of how sharp your image will be so you can play around with it a little. I usually set my radius to 2 for an overall image. The radius will determine what scale you will be sharpening. The smaller the radius the more detailed the sharpening will be, I think.

For people shots I usually set the Amount to around 50 because I want people to have a softer look to them. For landscapes I set it at around 80 or higher. The amount is exactly what it sounds like, the higher the amount the sharper you get.

The threshold I usually leave at 0, but have turned it up to around 3 or 5. I'm not exactly sure what the threshold does, play around with it until you see something you like.

Hit ok, and you have the image below. Nice and sharp.


Another method is the high pass filter method. First, duplicate the layer by right clicking the background layer in the layers box, and hit duplicate. Call the layer High Pass (or not). Then, with the new layer highlighted, go to Filter>Other>High Pass. This box will pop up and your duplicate layer will turn gray.


I set the layer somewhere between 3 and 6. The lower the radius, the less sharpening you get. The higher the radius the more sharp you get. Hit ok. Now change the layer mode of the High Pass layer. I set it to overlay for a more pronounced sharpening, or soft light for a more subtle sharpening. Play around with the different modes and see what you come up with. Now flatten the layers and you have a nice sharp image. The top one is with soft light, the bottom one is with overlay. Very subtle differences.



Here is a detailed comparison between all the methods. They are very subtle, you just have to choose the one you like better.


Some people choose one method over the other because they say one method gives more background noise than another. There is a lot of debate about it, so I decided to test it out myself. I cropped the images to a small part of the background. Here is the comparison.


To me, it looks like the High Pass filter has a little bit more noise than the Unsharp Mask, but it doesn't appear as if it is enough to be noticeable in the full scale image.

Now, get out there and sharpen some photos. You can't just take my word for it, try it yourself. Let me know which method you like better, or if there is something else you use instead.
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Photoshop Techniques: Soft Light

One of my favorite ways to add some pop to a photo is to use the Soft Light layer mode in Photoshop. I think I first learned this technique over at The Pioneer Woman, but I have a horrible memory so I could be wrong.

Anyways. This is a really simple technique that can really brighten up a photo. Let's start with this picture I took last weekend of a lady bug.



Now, in the layers palette (below) right click the background layer and hit "duplicate layer". You can name the new layer whatever you want, or you can be original like me and leave it as "background copy". Next, go to the little drop down menu and change it from "normal" to "soft light" like I did below. This time I left the opacity at 100%, but you can play around with it until you like what you see.



Then you can go to >Layers>Flatten Image to combine the two layers. I usually do an unsharp mask filter at this point to get rid of the blur and make it sharper (sounds funny, unsharp to make it sharp). Now we have a new photo with brighter colors that gets rid of what I like to call the "gray film" that is on most digital camera photos.



Here you can see them side by side. Notice, no gray film.



I did the same thing with the bee photo from yesterday, see?



Now, there are definitely times when you shouldn't use this technique. In general, soft light will brighten up the highlights and darken the shadows. So if you have an image with shadows, and you want to preserve the details in the shadows, then I wouldn't use soft light. I found it also doesn't work well if you have shadows on a face in a portrait shot, it just gives too much contrast.

You may also notice that there are other layer modes to choose from, hard light, screen, vivid light etc. I find that playing around with the different modes can give some really cool effects on certain photos.

Don't just take my word for it (I'm definitely not an expert), go play around with it and see what you can do.
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Zapping Zits and other Blemishes in Photoshop

Don't you hate it when you get that perfect shot and it is ruined by a big red zit, or a cookie crumb you were saving for later. Well, I know how to fix it, and I will let you in on my secret weapon. It is called the healing brush tool, and you can find it in any version of Photoshop CS.

Because I am a nice person, and I don't want to embarrass any of my friends or family by using a picture of them with a zit, I will offer myself up for demonstration (ignore the crazy man on the left). Here is an old picture of me with a giant zit or two on my chin. Do you see it, it is glaring at you in all of its redness. (Sorry about the pixelyness of the photo, old camera). There is also a scar on my forehead and several small zits I will try to get rid of, but focus on that giant one on my chin.



Now we want to zoom in so that the evil blemish is clearly visible. Choose the healing brush tool in the tool box, it is the one that looks like a band aid, or simply press "j".



Now, choose a brush size that is just a tad bit bigger than your blemish. While holding down the alt key click somewhere nearby that doesn't have a zit. Release the alt key and then click on the zit. Zap, it is gone and the area is blended in nicely with its surroundings.

Here is the image with the zit removed. My scar is gone too, and so are some pesky little zits, see?



Isn't that a fun trick, now you never have to wear makeup again. Yikes, that could be scary. Have fun :)

Lab Color in Photoshop

My favorite way to brighten up the colors in a photo is to use lab color. Out of all the methods I have tried, it seems to give the most natural appearance.

Let's start off with this picture. The green of the crazy green man seems more dull than I remember it being.



First, open your image. Go to Image>Mode and change from RGB to "Lab Color".

Next, Go to Image>Adjust>Curves. When the curves box pops up change the box where it says "lightness" to "b". This will now let you change the blue and yellow colors in your image. Grab the bottom of the diagonal line and move it to the right (like the image below). This is changing your blue. If you want more blue then move it more, if you want less then move it less. Play around to see how much blue you can get.

Now move the top part of the diagonal line to the left. This will change your yellow. I usually move it the same amount as the blue line to even out the colors, but if you have too much or too little yellow in your photo you can fix that here by moving it more or less.

You should have something similar to what is in the picture below. Don't close the box yet.



Now change the dialog box to "a". This will change your green and red colors. The green is at the bottom and the red is at the top. I typically move these bars less than the blue/yellow bars, but play around with it until you get what you like. You should have something similar to what is in the picture below. Don't close the box yet, we have one more step.



Now. to add a little contrast to Mr. Crazy Green Man we change the dialog box to "lightness". Now we will do the typical "S" curve like the one below. Click on the two spots first, then move the top one up a little and the bottom one down a little. You really only need to move them a little to give a lot of contrast. In this example I may have moved them just a little too much (it feels like too much contrast to me), but do what you like. Now you can say OK and exit out of the box.



Here is the final Mr. Crazy Green Man and his friend Crazy Yellow man. I did some unsharp max on them too to make it a little more sharp (we can talk about that another time). Make sure you go back to Image>Mode and change the color back to RGB.



Here are the two side by side. See how the colors are sharper. They look more like the colors I remember.



Here is another example:



Play around with this technique, let me know what you come up with.

Whitening Teeth in Photoshop

This should be entitled, "Kim, why are you teeth so fricken yellow?", especially since I don't drink pop or coffee, but I will put myself out there for the sake of teaching Photoshop. How my beautiful, red headed, sister-in-law has such white teeth when she drinks coffee and pop is beyond me.

Let's look at three different methods, and then we can decide which one does the best job. Here is the original shot:



Some tips before we get started:

Always make a duplicate first, cuz we all make mistakes.

If you want to see the original image next to the one you are working, on so you can get a better feel for the changes, go to View>New View. Put both views next to each other so you can see them at the same time.

To hide the selection box (or the marching ants) click Ctrl-H

The first thing you should do for every step is to zoom in so the teeth fill the screen, aren't they lovely. Use the magnetic lasso tool to select around the teeth (This tool can be found in the tools box, second one down under lasso, click it and you should see the magnetic lasso tool.)



Let's try the Hue/Saturation method. With the teeth selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Now click the box that says Master and change it to Yellow. Then, turn down the saturation slider as much as you think is needed. Zoom back out to see what it looks like.



Here are the results:



Here is another take on that method. With the teeth selected, go to the layers box and add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, like so:



With master selected turn the saturation to -18, and the lightness to +18.



Changing the option to yellow, put the saturation at -100 and the lightness at +32.



Hit OK, zoom out, and check out the results:



Next, let's try the Selective Color Method. Go to Image>Adjustment>Selective Color. Change the drop down selection to yellow, and move the yellow slider to the left until you are happy with the color.



Zoom back out and check out the results:



The final technique is the Dodge Method. With the teeth selective pick the dodge tool (this is the one that looks like a black magnifying glass). In the top options pallete change the exposure to 20% and make sure it is set to midtones. Set the brush to a round, feathered brush that is bigger than the selection. Make one pass over the teeth and check out the results. Keep doing this until you are happy with the colors. Here are the results:



I prefer the Hue/Saturation Layer Method. It brightens the teeth, but still looks natural. Each person has their own preference, though. Which one do you like?

One Picture: Several Ways

I have this picture of my cousin M that I really liked. The only problem is that the background is way too busy. So, I tried several different techniques to try to downplay the background.

Here is the original, with some sharpening and lightening.



First I cropped the photo to get rid of some of that distracting background, no one likes a distracting background. In some of the images I blurred part of the background, and in some I didn't.

The first thing I tried was the selective sepia technique I tried awhile back. In this one I took out all of the yellow and green. It looks ok, but let's try something else.



This one I used the half sepia technique, plus I blurred the background. It looks pretty good. I kind of like how it looks a little old school.



This one is a half black and white technique. I duplicated the image and used my favorite black and white technique. Then I overlayed the two images and messed with the opacity until I was happy. I think it may be a little dark though, maybe if I lighten it up more I may like it better.



Finally, this is a combination of some black and white techniques, which I will talk about later. Again, it is a little dark.


Overall, I'm not all that happy with any one photo. I'll keep trying. Which one do you like? Do you have any suggestions?