Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We went to a local nursery today. It always has great holiday items. Here is a group of crystal style decorations. I took an HDR shot but the original looks better in this case.

Above is the HDR shot. It's washed out.

This looks better, but some work in an app will probably make it better. The GIMP or Photoshop could do wonders. 

Do you agree the standard photo looks better than the HDR?

I didn't really take many pictures this Halloween, but I did take this picture of one of the houses we went to. I thought my iPhone did pretty well, but I wish I'd had another camera. All I did to this picture was rotate it counterclockwise slightly and crop it just a little in Photoshop.

Simple Enhance and Crop using Photo Editor

The other day I took a picture of our cat looking out the window at some birds on the sidewalk using my iPhone. The picture showed a lot more of the room than I wanted, and the bright window made the room inside very dark. So how do we take the picture from this:

Nice shot of the window, I suppose.

To this:

There are a lot of ways to edit a photo, both on the iPhone and off. I chose to use an app called Photo Editor- by Axiem Systems. It is a very powerful app, but for this picture I just needed two simple things: lighten the photo and crop it. Not necessarily in that order. So I opened Photo Editor-:

The app opens your photo library. It might ask for access first.

I selected the picture I wanted to edit and hit 'Done.' That opened the picture into the app, where I could use the menu to select what I wanted to do to the photo.

Swipe left for more options

I want to enhance the photo, so I tap the 'Enhance' icon

That brings up the 'Hi-Def', 'Illuminate', and 'Color Fix' options.

Tapping 'Hi-Def' lightens the picture a little bit. But what will Illuminate do?

Wow, that is much better. So I hit 'Apply'. Next I want to crop the picture.

I tap on the 'Crop' icon

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That brings up the cropping grid. The corner circles are used to size it to the area you want to keep.

I've moved the circles in so that almost everything except the cat and the window are gone. I'm ready to hit, 'Apply'.

Now that the picture is cropped, I decide I want to try to bring back a little of the view outside the window - the birds the cat is staring at. So I tap 'Adjust'.

The first icon looks like a gear. It controls brightness. I subtract some brightness to reduce some of the whiteness of the curtain. A little more detail appears outside the window, but not much. 

The next icon looks like a circle with a two-tone interior. It is contrast. Bringing down the contrast just a little bit brings out a little more detail. But the birds are still almost impossible to see. Bringing them back may be beyond the capabilities of this app. The next two icons are 'Temperature' and 'Color Saturation'. Neither of them will help bring back the birds. So I'm done with this photo. 

Here is the finished picture. 

Phonecams: Which is Better, Android or iPhone?

iPhone 4 and LG Doubleplay

I have been a fan of Apple since the mid-80's, but my first smart phone was a Samsung Galaxy S 4G. Before that I had an LG ENV3, which may have been the best cell phone for picture taking that I've owned. It was only 3.2mp, but it took incredibly detailed pictures, even when driving 60mph down the road. My wife has an LG Doubleplay that takes great pictures in low light and indoors, but suffers a little in bright sunlight.

Android

I loved the camera software on my Samsung. It had a lot of options to work with to create really interesting pictures. The downside was, to use them, you had to have time to go through the menus and set them up. That is the strength and weakness of most Android phones I've used. They have setting choices comparable to a compact digital camera, but you can't just snap a shot at a moments notice if you're in low light or another situation that is outside the capabilities of the default setting. The camera was 5mp and had decent low-light capabilities, though it lacked a flash. It took nice pictures in normal to moderately low lighting on the default settings. That is true of most of the Android phones I've used.

iPhone

Moving to an iPhone, I hated it because of the lack of options in the camera software. But as I used it more I realized that the iPhone's software is pretty darn good. It adjusts for bright or low light automatically, and does a good job of it. The latest version even has some photo editing capabilities. It's a good camera for taking pictures at a moments notice. With third party software pictures can be manipulated later to create all of the effects built into many Android phones, and more.

Third Party Apps

Both types of phone have a large selection of free and for purchase software to edit and manipulate photos after they're taken. Some of the software is very powerful, yet simple to use. You will want to learn to use one or two apps to put the finishing touches on your photos. I promise you, professional iPhonographers and Androidographers retouch most of the photos they share. We'll look at a few photo apps soon.

Conclusion

So which is better? Like many things, it depends on what you want to do, and what fits your style. If you like to whip out the phone and take pictures at a moments notice, the iPhone is a good choice. An Android phone will work, but the camera software may not handle as wide a variety of shooting conditions as the iPhone. On the other hand, if you like tweaking the settings to create just the effect you want in your pictures, an Android phone may be prefect for you. Until I dropped my Samsung and shattered the screen I carried both phones with me and used them both. There were conditions I knew one phone would handle better than the other, so it just made sense. And sometimes I want to try different settings to squeeze the best picture out of a scene. For that, Android is better. Other times I want to take a quick picture before the moment passes. Many times the iPhone will take a better picture in those conditions.

To put it clearly, if you like point and shoot compact cameras, the iPhone is for you. If you decide later you want to mess with lighting and effects, you can get apps. If you like the control of an SLR camera, or you spend a lot of time figuring out how to use all the settings available on your compact digital camera, an Android phone will satisfy your urge to tweak settings to get the perfect picture.

Trip to the Alamo

This picture was taken in 2009 from the grounds of the Alamo. I really liked the way the building was framed. This was taken with my trusty Kodak Easyshare. It's old, it's only 4mp, but it is reliable, and has enough settings to tweak photos without being intimidating to a novice.

Someday I'll go through all those photos and remove the dates. :^)

Pigeons in the pink

Shot these the other morning outside work. I like the pink to peach tones in the cloud.

Olloclip Clip On iPhone Lenses Increase Options

The olloclip lens is actually three lenses: Fisheye, macro and wide-angle. It seems pretty simple. Snap it on the phone with the lens you want to use over the lens of your iPhone camera. I'm not sure I understand the need for a wide angle lens, the iPhone camera already gives a pretty wide angle. But I'd definitely like to try the macro and fisheye lenses. If anybody has actually used the olloclip, let us know what you think about it in the comments.

It looks a little strange, but if it adds a little more versatility, it's worth it. And it's only about $70 online.

There's more info at http://www.olloclip.com/