Buddha Full iPhone Photo Art

I found a wooden Buddha on the lanai at Hui Hoolana in Molokai, Hawaii, where Jack Davis and my hubby, Dewitt Jones, taught Photoshop for the Soul this month. Using my favorite collaging apps DXP and Brushes, I combined images for these Buddha full pix.

App Earances May Be Deceiving

One of our contributors and a digital diva in her own right, Robin Robertis has been trying some new apps as well as some old faves. Here is a mini gallery of some of her latest work.

Using Shockmypic and FrameMuse, here's her Halloween/Day of the Dead iPhone photo art pix:




She used tiltshiftgenerator to correct for the architecture in London in these two cool pix.




Lastly, we got to play with apps and Photoshop at our Hawaii class with Jack Davis and Dewitt Jones last week - this photo titled "iPhone Buddha" says it all!

iPhone Apps That Blue Me Away

More collages using DXP, the double exposure app and Brushes where you can also do some cool combining. Here's a blue series that leaves me tickled pink.

Double Explosure

Using DXP, a double exposure program with blend modes, I manipulated these images. I finished them off with FotoMuse.

Creative Block With an iPhone App

Cultivating creative block? You bet! One of my favorite apps is called ReNancyKPH. It creates a woodblock print out of a photo - you can choose the color of "ink" for your print, too. A strong graphic works best, otherwise the art just blocks up, pun intended. Here are a couple of examples:

Meeting The Muse - The Fotomuse That Is

My new favorite app is called Fotomuse. With the right image, it can be evocative, moody, or dreamy. I like the layering effects and the borders. It reminds me of polaroid transfers. Here are my first explorations. (But they won't be my last!)

My Favorite Faux HDR App

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range - an overly simple explanation is that you get detail in the shadows and highlights. (For a more complete understanding of HDR check out "Modern HDR photography, a how-to or Saturday morning relaxation" on a blog called Memoirs On A Rainy Day.)

With the iPhone, we can create a sort of faux HDR effect to recover detail in highlighted area (provided there is some info there to recover) and we can add fill light in our shadow areas (again provided there is some info there.)

Here's a shot near Baldwin Beach at Lake Tahoe one evening. Notice how the foreground is dark, without much detail. The iPhone exposed for the sky.



I used the Photoforge app which has an HDR setting that allows you sliders to open shadows and recover highlights. It's okay, but no matter how I move the sliders, it ends up being low contrast. That can be good in some cases, but I want a little more drama in this scene.



Here I use the iFlashReady app to open up the shadows - it has 3 flash fill settings and only works on adding light to the dark. Voila! Now it has the kind of drama I'm looking for. This is my favorite faux HDR tool so far.