Photo Apps @FolkSchool ... Phun with iPhone Photos

I truly enjoyed Catherine Anderson's [1] Seeing with Quiet Eyes class at the John C. Campbell Folk School last week. I learned a lot and took some great photos. I bought an Easy-Macro [2]  iPhone (and other phone cameras) macro lens ... which I used to take this photo of a lily sticking through leaves at UNC's Arboretum.

We spent an afternoon playing with photo apps for the iPhone and iPad. Catherine mentioned 8-10 ... most of which are ad-supported / free with ad-free versions available. The ones I tried are:

Snapseed [3]
A general photo editing program (from Google). There are multiple editing options in Snapseed, and most of them can be made by finger-swiping. Editing is easy for newbies - you don't have to know about healing or contrast or white balance ... just click on an option and swipe.

• Before & After in Snapseed - as easy as clicking the landscape button on the top right of the screen: 

Photopath [4]
This lets you put multiple photos on one image. In addition, you can tweak image borders - change from square to rounded, and change the colors.
Phonto [5] lets you put text on images -- and offers a great many fonts, layout options, and even symbols.

Repix [6] lets you draw on your photos. It's not something I'd do all that often, but the sparkly effects sure are fun on this lily. I also used Repix' filter options - which you can apply and tweak to increase or decrease the effect.

Catherine also mentioned Waterlogue [7] , which turns images into watercolor paintings. I didn't download it, but the demo in class was very pretty.

For online image editing, Catherine suggests ipiccy.com [8] ; I'd already started using PicMonkey [9] (at @samkatben [10] 's recommendation) -- so check them both out.

Catherine suggested Costco (Costco Photo Center) as a great option for ordering photos. I just ordered some and am very impressed with the ordering options. These include:
[11]

• Turning off their auto-correct - useful if you've spent time correcting color or removing blemishes.
• Customizing text printed on the back of photos (I have set the default to include the date).
• Set the crop for individual photos. Tell them where you want a 8x10 cropped, which is different from where a 4x6 image would be cropped. 
• Inexpensive -- for me, 8x10 photos are $1.49 and 11x14 photos are $2.99. I even printed one at 8x8 (for $1.49).
• Catherine likes ordering larger images from Costco because larger photos don't get rolled.

Links

1. ^{^} Catherine Anderson's (www.catherineandersonstudio.com)
2. ^{^} Easy-Macro (www.easy-macro.com)
3. ^{^} Snapseed (itunes.apple.com)
4. ^{^} Photopath (javialgaba.com)
5. ^{^} Phonto (www.phon.to)
6. ^{^} Repix (www.repix.it)
7. ^{^} Waterlogue (www.waterlogueapp.com)
8. ^{^} ipiccy.com (ipiccy.com)
9. ^{^} PicMonkey (www.picmonkey.com)
10. ^{^} @samkatben (twitter.com)
11. ^{^} Costco Photo Center (www.costcophotocenter.com)

source: cogscilibrarian.blogspot.com