More Ethereal than Surreal

Today's photo is another heavily post processed contribution, in fact it is using the one-click style filters that I generally dislike. However... ... you'll never know if you don't give it a go... This image (I'm not going to say it is still a photo) was completely created on my phone. Starting with a way to close selfie, then I used an app called Porta to generate the watercolour style feel with faded edges.

I'm not sure how the blood shot eye effect arose but it suits the apprehensive and ethereal mood. (My eye isn't blood shot at all).

HDR on my Phone

The technologies of addressing High Dynamic Range have come a long way in the past decade. Once the process required a couple of specialist programs with round trips through photoshop or similar photo editors. Today there are camera apps for phones that can easily do the job on the phone. I have been using a great little app called HDR Camera+ for a few years now and onto my third android phone. Of the many apps around today it seems to do the most convincing job of creating a “natural” look but expanding the dynamic range. It does take up to three photos, a normal shot one under exposed and the one overexposed. Even when the images are blown out or almost too dark to make out detail, the clever HDR Camera+ software seems to find a reasonable balance. It also does a great job avoiding ghosting when a subject moves.

My new HTC Uplay android phone comes with a built-in camera app that incorporated the HDR feature in the basic camera operations (it clearly takes abit longer that a straight photo but it only takes a second of two to process. There are no tonemapping options (or selection step) but the resulting image is noticeably more balance in high contrast situation. There is even an AutoHDR mode which seems to recognize high contrast situation and switch over to HDR. The image below is an example of AutoHDR.

This camera app software is different from the many HDR style filters (which strive to create the HDR look, normally poorly, and without really boosting the dynamic range). Once you have the higher dynamic range other art filters (like prisma below) can play wonderful games with colour.

 

More walking to KEEPMyTracks

I had started planning this walk a week ago to continue my tiny protest about google shutting down the wonderful little app called My Tracks. This app lets you record your track (wayfile in gps jargon) using any android phone fitted with a gps reciever. I had decided it might be interesting, and good exercise as well, to find some routes that trace out the google My Tracks logo (an orange arrowhead). My second walk was more ambitious (and much hillier). I had mapped out the rough route on google maps and even did a quick distance estimate using the built in tools, which suggested around 2.52km, which sounded about right and even taking a few photos should not take more than 30 mins. It even found and recharged up an old HTC phone which also had My Tracks loaded (but no SIM card). I figured without net access I’d be able to keep using MyTracks as a standalone app, even if google officially turned off the map access and sharing etc.

Then I went for the walk, only to immediately find their was no footpath for the first part of my trip. That’s ok I just cut through the trees and mga carpark. The obvious photos being the vista over to Mt Dandenong, Alas every where I tried to get a good vantage point the view was partly blocked, Then I discovered the my track on my android was frozen (or my tracks had not actually started taking readings, which is a problem I had noticed before on both my phones). The downhill on the first leg was easy. The uphill on the next two legs more challenging and rose a sweat. When I was only  half way up the second leg and the gps read I had travelled 2.33 km I started to think something fishy here. The finished loop gave me a reading of 3.91km. That’s big discrepancy that can not be easily explained by my small deviation along the way by necessity or to take photos. When I look at the tracks and compare the two phones, the newer LG phone has quiet a few jaggy bits which I clearly did not take. The HTC path is much more constant and follows the road more closely but is missing perhaps the first 300m (it gives remaining distance as 2.5km). With my confidence in the gps tracking a little dinted by this, I then discovered that the normal update to google drive didn’t work. The kmz files where making it to the web its just the desktop app that keeps a local copy of my google drive is “unable to connect”, and no way to find out why. has the desktop sync app for google drive been [DEPECATED ] as well? Google what's going on?

Maybe this gps tracking, and its precision, needs further investigation?

Please Keep MyTracks

My first deliberate “gps doodle”, I have unknowing done some before, is by way of a spatial protest icon. Google are planning to [DEPRECATED], in other words kill off, the nice little GPS tracking app MyTracks on April 30th,. I like many others would like them to let us keep using it. So here is a nice little protest activity for those who love the My Tracks android app. Go for a walk, run, ride your bike or even drive and trace out a large scale version of the arrow icon from MyTracks. Then post a screen capture of the trace, tweet the gpx or even the kmz file for google earth everywhere you can, with the hash tag #KEEPMyTracks.

My first attempt is only 1.97km long, took me 38 minutes because I took 120 photos along the way, and importantly I had fun.

The idea of “gps doodles” comes from Stephen Lund. If you are inspired to create some gps art yourself you need to begin by watching his amazing TED Talk.

Redecorating a place for my smallest camera(s)

My android phone started to complain about lack of space  a while back. I had been putting off deleting things when It ran out of battery (thanks to leaving the gps on). Once it was charged and restarted all the screens including the home screen had been reset to the factor defaults. Everything else was there including recent photos, so I’m not sure what happened. Anyway it was a chance to rearrange the screens and particularly my photo tools, which had become over-crowded (perhaps 7 different cameras is to much?). So I rearranged things mainly removing viewers altogether, with drop box, tumblr and flickr going to a separate page. I did mull over google photos, because I haven’t been using it for some time now but with the demise of picasa I may have to. The simple little cameras Camera 51 and Open Camera are getting more use, I like the simplistically of the open camera GUI, and the leveling aid that can be displayed on the screen is a great idea. Another goto favorite now is QuickPic, its simple, fast and shares with everything I need. I haven’t joined the free CM Cloud space (yet) so the tile asking me too is starting to feel like nagging. But once again I might have to find an alternate on-line “cloud” space, so I’ll tolerate the silent reminder a little longer.

Six months ago I playfully suggested I was having a race between google photos and flickr in a contest to see who could manage my phone phones. It was a real tortoise and hare epic but in reality Dropbox actually won. It remains my preferred method of uploading and backing up from the phone (because its simple, reliable and no wire have to be involved) but I also like the flickr app both to view photos on my phone and upload new ones. Its no fuss and does wait long enough for me to cull the bad images (it like Drop box only works when I have WiFI access, it is also polite and seems to always let dropbox go first). Importantly both dropbox and flickr load the photos as private. If I want to share drop box is my first choice because I just need to email a link  (the recipient doesn’t have to have drop box). Thus I don’t see an urgent need to embrace google photos on my android phone just yet.

And the winners is...

Whilst Google photos and flickr are slogging their way along, vying to be first to upload any image from my phone, I realised that there are already two clear winners in this race and its not the tortoise or the hare. First is Dropbox, which I have reinstated (I suspect it might have been nobbled by either google backup or flickr's uploadr but it did have a significant app update around the same time, so I haven't notified the stewards yet!). I didn't find carousel so useful but dropbox is really simple, solid and still has the very logical private sharing options. I could live without it but I love the reliability of knowing soon after I find a WiFi spot my phone images are up on a private cloud (flickr could safely substitute here). The second is a surprise, its QuickPic, an alternative to the native gallery app or Google Photos itself. Compared with Google Photos its a real lightweight with a tiny memory footprint but its fast and does exactly what I expect from a photo gallery app. More importantly it plays nicely with other phone apps.

Whilst the other race is still on, flickr is becoming my favourite as a stayer.

A bandwidth comparison as the photo upload race continues …

Its no secret that I am disappointed with google photos and particularly in the crippling of picasa’s wonderful sharing capabilities. However I am trying to be fair in the comparison and thus want to try and follow as much detail of the race between google photos and flickr apps on my phone as I can. So here is a comparison of (mobile) data use for last month including the period I was travelling (the light blue area of the usage graph on the right).

In theory the same photos have been uploaded to both services (in practise there are differences BUT more photos have been uploaded to flickr!). So the observation that google photos has used almost three time as much of my bandwidth for essentially the same task, is another stumble for google photos. The better news is both have used only a fraction of the space taken up by the actual photos, so they are obviously doing good things in terms of compression and effective image size/quality trade off.

And the race is on

The new apps on my phone are all busy trying to upload every image that I collect, soon after I photograph or collect it.  At the same time drop box, upon which had to began to rely to upload new phone photos whenever I have WiFi access, seems to be falling behind.

The new andoid google photos app seems to have infiltrated several other apps on my phone, including the native android camera and gallery apps.  Despite the fact I had turned off its predecessor desire to upload, it is happily vacuuming up any new graphic images and posting them to google photos whenever a WiFi connection is available (at least it remembered this part of my settings). Otherwise it seems harmless.

The new android flickr app has also taken upon itself to upload photos from a phone.  However it is probably more polite in doing this.  It seems to only upload from a limited number of directories, specifically once used by my camera apps.  Further doesn't rush to upload new photos, I have the feeling it trickles them up.  Only when I am specifically looking at new photos in the flickr app does it upload things.

So in the race to grab all of my images it appears to be a rabbit and tortoise affair.  I like fables and therefore have decided to let the race continue for a month or so, providing I can see its not going to end in tears.  The vast majority of my phone photos are unimportant anyway so I don't want to flood my “social media” presences with such mundan-ity.  So fingers crossed and let's see where this goes.

There is a big difference in what I see on-line of this race to collect everything.  The tortoise may be doing better here.  All the photos are being flooded up into the clouds are private, which is good.  Many are being automatically tagged with the most common subject tags, also good.  They are displayed in my camera roll in date order, importantly with the small padlock icon to indicate that they are private, very good.  It is a relatively simple matter to click on a specific photo and the click on the two arrows icon in the upper right to display the photo page. Then under the heading additional info the first line is viewing this photo and you are able to select from appalled and list from private through family and friends to public, for public photos you will see the padlock icon change to an eye, beside which will be displayed the number of views of the photo.

In comparison the rabbit, the google photos web view is a bit more brash. The icon are larger, the layout is still a time line (rather than albums). What is missing is any indication of weather the photos are private or public. In fact I can’t find anywhere in the google photos view that can assure me they are private. Not good enough! I’m pretty sure they are private and will remain so until you share them, but I can not confirm that at the moment So whose the bunny here?

SmartPhones :: My Android Workspace

I’ve only had my LG phone a short time but I already like it a lot. The nicest feature for making sure my camera is always at hand, are a couple of LG specific features, the first is called knock on, and it simply is a light double tap gesture on the phone screen to wake the phone up. Then on the lock screen you can set 4 app icons ready to go at the bottom of the screen, the camera app is on the bottom right. So to start the camera is just a third tap on this camera app, with a swipe up gesture. If you know morse codes its like tapping out IT (dot dot wait dash). Viola the camera app is up and ready to go. Compared with finding the power switch, turning on the phone unlocking it if necessary then the finding the camera app and eventually starting it. This is fast and natural.

I’ve seen plenty of reviews that claim the camera in this LG phone is ordinary and maybe it is but the IPS screen is really amazing, strong colours and contrast (while you’re inside!) which LG describe as beautiful colour reproduction and viewing clarity. Outside the screen suffers lot from glare and you have to manually increase the screen brightness (which can be a challenge when you can’t make out the screen). I can’t figure out why they haven’t made screen brightness automatically adjustable according to ambient light. (Other than the fully bright screen setting does eat battery life!). I soon learned you can adjust the brightness (even blinded by the light) by a swipe down gesture at the top of the screen (which brings down to notification draw and then taping again bit lower, on the screen brightness slider, and swiping all the way to the right).  K in morse code (dash dot dash).

Oh back to the real issue here, how have I setup my digital photography work space. Its actually still a work in progress but here are the basics. I have set up a whole app panel to hold camera and photo related apps. My current setup is shown below.

I have a few old favourites which came over from my HTC wildfire, the first serious photo editor I used routinely was Photoshop Express, ok it relatively basic but it does the basics well enough and recent version allows connection to a creative cloud account, if you have one. This was largely overshadows but Autodesk’s Pixlr, which quickly became my preferred on phone photo editor. It is on of those free apps that has in app purchase options (I normally don’t like them) but they are tolerable and for other autodesk modules/tools. HDR Camera+ app is the one paid app from the wildfire and was really my favourite camera there, its had limited editing functionality (specifically tone mapping options). Finally Dropbox is a wonderfully reliable facility, I just have  it working behind the scenes and synching up my photos whenever my phone connected to WiFi (ie doesn't waste my data limit on my phone) I have sister apps on all my desktop computers so recent phone photos can be accessed there (no wires or able or separate steps required.

With the new phone and upgrade to android version, I’ve reload the official flickr app. Where the old app was clunky the new version is really much nicer and does allow a seamless upload to flickr (but I have turned off the automatic upload). Flickr is quiet enough for me I’m not interested in instagram.

The real gem I discovered was Snapseed (which was incompatible with the Wildfire) and I just managed to download it the day version 2 was released. It really is a very elegant app and a great photo editor for a touchphone. I was familiar with snapseed as the photo editor for google+ photos but the phone app is in many ways nicer to use. However now for the downside. I did originally have google+ app on the wildfire but it was a resource hog so I removed it and I don’t use google+ itself as a social network place much anyway. The LG approach has been to integrate many of the google tools as standalone apps (such as GMail, Photos, Hangouts) and this initially struck me as a great approach. Whilst the LG (google) Photos app lets you access the albums on the net, but it started acting like google auto backup vacuuming up and uploading any images on your phone (so I turned that off). A real downside of this integration has been the overwhelming of the default LG gallery app with photos (not just albums) from the every increasing google+ photo mess. Haven’t figured out how to turn this off. Lightroom mobile is only on trial and I must admit I am not excited by it. 

So now my phone’s photo collection is in close connection with google+ photo, flickr and I am still trying out Carousel (the original download on the wildfire was not reliable) as a connection to the rest of the world. It is basically a gallery app for dropbox, I’m even starting to favour it over the LG gallery app, particular for sharing with other services like twitter and SMS. I also like the everpix like Flashbacks.

I have previously posted about my alternate camera apps.

Finally I also have autodesk’s Sketchbook. its not really a photo tool although you can edit photos (eg circle important parts, draw arrows etc.) I bought a cheap stylus and I find I use this app a lot as a graphics notebook, quick diagram maker, and good party trick (I sketch quick cartoonish portraits of folk)

My SmartPhone workspace is humble compared with the computer power available elsewhere but it is remarkably capable of getting decent photos and images out onto the wider net, into my albums on computers and into reports. When I started this blog over a decade ago If you’d have hinted at this power in my pocket I would have been sceptical.

Cameraphone :: One Phone 3 Cameras

   

I have a new phone an LG Android and the review’s seem to can it as very ordinary but to me it is s reasonably decent camera to have always in my pocket. Specifically to get simple snaps and collect reference material for my sketching.

One thing that many people don’t realise you are not locked into the supplied camera app that came with your phone. There are dozen of good camera enhancements out there.

Pudding Camera gets some favourable reviews and has a simple and easy to use controls, the special feature is you can choose the style of camera you wish to use (the above left photo) is Basic Camera with a vintage look.. I’m still experiment with this one but being able to see the final effect before you take a photo is great.

HDR Camera+ was a favourite back on my HTC wildfire, it takes three exposures and then creates a HDR image, all processed on the phone and it has a range of tone mapping in the form of little filter style icons. I still like it (centre image above)

A Better Camera, is another camera app from Almalence who create HDR camera+, for a small cost you can get am impressive array of extra controls for your camera, akin to the controls available on most Bigger DSLR Cameras. They are on a pull down icon menu but easy to learn and navigate. For me its bihggest benefit is that it does produce clearer and more vivid images (see the image on the right above), with the DRO (Dynamic Range Optimization) option set. This is a propriety technique similar to tone mapping that seeks to make the camera see like the human eye!

Enough of the sharing already

I’m in the process of swapping from and old HTC android phone (still on version 2.2) to a newish LG android phone (running 4.4) The transition has been very straightforward, You just go to the My Apps section of google play, from my computer, change the device (the number is the same as I just swapped the SIM over) and tick the apps you want (there are a few duds in the my apps list and a few I haven’t used much). So whenever I’m on WiFi I get the apps downloaded (a couple at a time).

Unfortunately I hadn’t anticipated that a number of the apps would be updated (for compatibility with android 4.4) and that entailed turning on the default settings, which on most of my camera related tools involved “free” upload and on-line storage. Suddenly every time I took a picture I would get a copy sent to google+ autobackup, Carousel/Dropbox, flickr, adobe and a few others. Most of which I didn’t know about. Worse google has restarted its auto awesome blooper campaign, sending me enhanced version of photo I didn’t really want rather than the ones I would have preferred and the occasional humorous miscalculation. Where’s the off switch on autoawesome again?

Ok it was easy to turn all the auto-uploads off (except the dropbox, which only uploads when I have a WiFi connection). Fortunately all the uploads where set to “private” (ie not automatically shared). Still it is a timely warning to check those “this app requires access to” settings, particularly around the Photo/Video/Media files  and Camera item(s) and what internal settings are defaults in those apps.

Weather …or not?

flickr are probably sailing close to the wind on sharing their vast photo collection, yet again! This time it is being handled more sensitively. I received an invite to join a new project they have called the weather project. The basic idea is pretty sound, via a free smartphone app called Yahoo7 Weather, you will be able to see flickr photos of your location showing current conditions, supposedly backed by "the most accurate forecasts" (aka the weather channel with temperatures in Fahrenheit), Now this is an opt-in situation whereby joining the group you can expect to have your images shared, provided that are selected as suitable, by “a team of trained Yahoo Weather photo editors". This is clearly a better way to handle the public sharing of photos. So I say cautiously, congratulations flickr.

The first drawback for me is I can’t install this app on my older android phone, not such a big deal because I already have a weather app that accesses the local bureau of meteorology (even when I’m travelling) and it works fine (and the temperatures are in Celsius. However before joining the group I want to make sure I understood the conditions of use. There is a quite comprehensive FAQ section which did deal with my primary concerns, which where conditions of submitting, who “owns” the photos and attribution. It is also clear that flickr, or yahoo, will not be making any payment for images used. Fair enough,


BUT and its a big issue for me, they don’t mention licencing, and specifically anything about creative commons usage.They do acknowledge that the photo are your works not theirs, but they want you to share them freely, unrestrictedly freely! After the fuss over their wall art I expected flickr to be more upfront about licencing.

The condition include that the photo is yours, your original work. Again fair enough. The clause "You also hereby waive the benefits of any provision of law known as Moral Rights or Droit Moral" does concern me but I'll have to research what it means in Australia, since we do have a similar rights in law, COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT (MORAL RIGHTS) ACT 2000 

I do intend to join the group and very carefully watch how they handle attribution, I don’t expect a lot of traffic from their phone apps, but will be happy if any photo I share are considered worthwhile, since I am very unlikely to share my best ones into a group with rules like the clause above!

On the Road with more than One Mistress

This is undoubtedly the area where there has been the most coming and going, change and rethinking. For a long while I kept two separate laptops, one for my consulting work (originally what is now my studio laptop) and a another one (originally an XP, which is still running but seldom used) for my photographic work. I now have a newer laptop (well its 3 years old already).
Carrying two laptops when I travels was just a bit of a luxury, so I either got by using a small netbook and/or I put any specialist tools I needed on a USB Key using the portable apps format if it was a “work” trip. This actually sever me well enough but meant I had to leave the heavy lifting (detailed post processing stuff) until I got back home. My main goto portable programs on this Darkroom USB key are RawTherapee, The Gimp and XnView. AutoStitch and Picturenaut also work perfectly well off my USB drive. This stuff has moved to a larger USB and the green lanyard has changed to a more heavy duty orange version but it still lives in my camera bag, along with a USB SD card reader. So if I didn’t have a laptop with me I could use the netbook or find a library or cyber cafe and I could review the Camera’s card contents at a larger size (providing the computer I was using had two USB ports) and I could perhaps process a stitched panorama, HDR or a RAW refinement, if time permitted I don’t use the Key to hold photos, except for perhaps some post processed image I just created. I had a test version of picasa on there for a while but it had to store its main directory on the PC so it wasn’t really portable, and this began the move to using XnView more extensively. I have recently put the portable version of chrome onto the key as well. There are a number of times when this simple USB key proved invaluable letting me perform something that would have been impossible on the average airline lounge or cyber cafe grunt computer.
Slowly different software began appearing and disappearing of my main laptop (mainly to better handle RAW files). Usually for a specific reason, like I need to edit diagrams and photos for my consulting work. Since this laptop is 64 bit I did start to notice some of the performance improvements, particularly in processing video and lesser but still noticeable improvements in lightroom (development functions particularly). The OnOne’s Perfect Photo suite are 64 bit so this laptop was the best place to set it up and it plays very nicely with lightroom. Whilst perfect photo isn’t really a RAW development system per se, its browser can read my RAW files. However the combination of lightroom (to do the basic RAW refinement steps), followed with a round trip into one of the Perfect Photo add-ins, suits me and gets the job done. I always put picasa on any computer and it looks after my Jpeg work fine, it is still my favoured way to upload photos from my camera.  I have found that AfterShot Pro is also great in this inital photo review, rating and culling process.
The only hassle I am finding is the space used having this software on the computer is not an issue, but it is the space eaten by the photos if I leave them on this laptop too long. Saving RAW+Jpeg consumes disk space rapidly! There are also some limitation and cautions about moving processed photos around a network, but that will have to be another post.

simpler HDR on my phone

 

Continuing on with the HDR theme, which seems to be this week sub-plot. I was out walk (unusually without my DSLR) and notice an interesting cloud formation. Of Course I had my phone, A normal exposure would be ok but I guess an extended dynamic range HDR  might be better. So I used my HDR Camera app, which has been changed a little lately. It still takes and processes the three bracketed images on the phone, and has the big advantage that you don’t have to keep the phone exactly steady and it now has the more common interface where you pick the look & tone mapping from small thumbnails  I like the natural tone mapping but sometimes I might do light tweaks to the exposure and colour vividness. It still does this on the phone, so you can cross reference back to what you are actually seeing.

 

I’m sure there are a lot of HDR apps out there now, Yet for those, such as an artist, who might like to capture difficult subjects straight onto the phone as close to what they are seeing as possible, and check, doing everything on the phone is a big bonus. More traditional HDR approach are normally carried out some time later under different lighting and colour context so it can become a little more challenging to get the “feel” of the colours

Looking Back … …

Last year was a big year for digital photography, not so much an obvious big fanfare, most of the changes were small incremental adjustments. Three things that have been around for a while but have come into popular view last year.

1. First there is the death of the “mine is bigger than yours” paradigm.Hardware, gear envy and megapixel concerns should be a thing of the distant past. Most camera, from smartphones, point and shoot, through mirror less to the big DSLR are all pretty good. The camera you have is probably the best one to use right now. Go take lots of photos rather than worry about new camera hardware.  The obvious camera for you, will make itself obvious when you get to about 10,000 photos. It may well be the one you already have.
2. On-line storage, This has seen some strong competition with really large amounts of disk space offered for free, most are connected with social network style groups of services. Flickr, Google+ are two I am familiar with, and I have tried out a few like Everpix (now defunked), Photofeed (I’m still persevering) and Picturelife (given up with its slowness). but honestly I have been underwhelmed and I still use the dropbox facility which has been around for a while now. This just synchs my phones via available WiFi, if and when it is available to a place both on the net and on my harddrive. Sending all your images to “free storage” on the net has a dark side it will use up a lot of your precious bandwidth (and from a smart phone that could become expensive) and if you are not careful this may expose more than you might want to the world. That 10,000 photos equal 1.6 terra bytes if they are RAW 16 megapixels images, that might be several months of your bandwidth!
3. Photo Filters and Photo Apps, the zannier the better! This unfortunately is not a good trend in my view, because they get overused and instead of creating something new and exciting, they are just really boring, after you’ve seen the same effect for the third image in a row. It could have been a great trend but it really requires some user constraint and a lot less “copycat”,”look at me”, fashionista social media self promotion. Perhaps I am being a bit judgemental?

Clipping Magic

Whilst I know the bigger software groups like Adobe and Corel are trying to provide packages that do everything. I have always been happy with a really good, and usually very simple, utility program that just does the thing I want. Ok like Apps on your phone such utilities can quickly grow into a big menagerie. Yet they usually let you get the job done quietly and efficiently.The same logic really applies to on-line applications. There are more and more becoming available, particularly with google's promotion of chrome. One such application that you need to check out for yourself is called clipping magic, and its still just and Alpha release. I know that Adobe's photoshop and Corel's power clipping can do much the same job but you need a few weeks of learning and a fair bit of skill to use them. Clipping Magic is actually really simple, you just need to draw a bit of green on the "foreground" (the part you want to clip to keep) and red over a few parts of the "background" (the part of the image you want to remove. It really is that simple and at the moment its free to try out.

Post Processing in the Age of Coffee & Free WiFi

The time taken from image capture to world wide sharing can now measured in seconds, and the most amazing part is that this is likely to be free, or only at a small cost. You may have to buy a coffee to get the WiFi free.The hardware to do this is pretty common now as well. Smartphones with camera and Ipads are in so many people's hands and a common sight on cafe tables. There are also Eye-Fi cards for DSLR and some camera manufactures are adding android processors to some models (eg Polaroid, Samsung & Nikon but these are definitely not low cost yet!). However transferring the photos is just part of the story for a lot of digital photography addicts, who really want to do at least a little post processing. Fortunately here the story is also cheaper (if not free) and faster.

A Multitude of Apps

I know the apple-verse is overwhelmed with solutions here, but I’m dragging my feet joining the party. Clearly instagram is the most popular but the apple store is awash with photographic apps. I’m more familiar with the android market, and google play also have plenty to choose from. If up have an android phone I suggest you check out Aviary, Snapseed, Pixlr Express, and/or Photoshop Express all free to download. I also love HDR Camera+, which does the processing and sharing “inphone” (no computer or other software required)

My USB Digital Darkroom

I have been carry around a universal card reader and USB key with some photo portable apps in my camera bag or a while now and they have been real life savers on several occasions. These do need a cyber cafe;s computer or your laptop to connect into but you can get very close tom if not as good as, photoshop and lightroom level work with portable apps like Gimp Portable & Raw Therapee Portable just from an application that doesn’t need to be installed!

On-line Photo Editors

There are now many places that let you perform decent post processing on full size images from a web browser, so you probably want to have your netbook or laptop connected. I personally like Aviary for Google Drive (a chrome app) but Pixlr is damn good as well.

There is really no reason why you can’t take a great photo, then collect your thoughts over a coffee while you tweak it into being a true masterpiece and have it published on-line before you leave the cafe. However please use this new power wisely don’t choke the available bandwidth with copycat blandness or fill the social end of cyberspace with banality and imitative junk.

Splashing Colour on your Smartphone.

When it comes to colour manipulation on photos of course “there is an app for that”, in fact there are many. Here are a few fun android apps to try. Of these three I liked colour splash FX best, but in the end they where all a bit frustrating to use. The colour splash promotional video below is fun and worth a look.

Color Splash Effect	Color Splash FX	Color Touch Effects

If your screen is small, your fingers are too big and your aging eyes growing dim these smartphone apps won't be for you either!

Do I really need another App?

I got a notification via google+ (which I must admit I seldom look at anymore) that +colby brown hade updated his list of 20 apps every photography should have. It’s good reading, it’s worth a look. I. decided to try Pixlr Express, from Autodesk, the AutoCAD & Sketchbook folk, who also wrote Pixlr-o-matic, which I did have installed for quiet a while.. The magic word was FREE download and it is impressive, having all the basic tools you might need to spruce up a photo before uploading it including a cool localized retouch tool. There are heaps of effect overlays and frames but sadly the controls are a bit small for my screen and my older eyes so I’m not totally convinced I’ll be using a lot. Both Aviary & Photoshop Express being much easy for me to read and use with my fat fingers. Still I think I’ll leave it on the phone for a while. My phone is becoming old, is locked back at android version 2.2.1 (by Telstra) and doesn’t have a lot of space 1.86Gb, so any apps I don’t use for 2-3 months end up getting deleted,

Such is life, but I have no plans to change phones.

Autofix Revisited

Its been a long time since I looked at autofix features in software, mostly because I consider them a feature or button that takes up valuable screen space. However I had a prompt to revisit this concept after I noticed a nifty light weight app call Color Leap on the google play site (for android phones). Its claims that “true photo enhancement was never so easy.” seemed a bit extravagant and in need of testing. I have noticed cameraphones have particular limitations when they are pointed towards the light, and particular contrasty backlit subjects. They are often hazy,having flared highlights and underexposed detail, they just look flat!  Well Color leap promises to do 4 common enhancement without any user intervention, no buttons with weird names no sliders. promises to remove under and over exposure, fix problems like smoke, haze and dirty lens smears, reduce “colour” noise in low light conditions and even sharpen objects that are “slightly” out of focus. So it was out with my HTC Wildfire and off to get a few examples. I’m sure I could have taken worse photos, but I just wanted to take some realistic examples and I used my phone’s basic camera so I had an original reference photo (you can also take the photo directly in colour leap) I then processed each “on the phone” from the gallery using the color leap app which is truly as simple and automatic as claimed, with the option to view both the original and processed result using a toggle key overlay at the bottom of the screen. I finally loaded the originals onto my computer and used Picasa’s I’m feeling lucky and Lightroom’s Auto White Balance/Auto Tone Combination. So the verdict:  clearly all the Autofixes offer some improvement but as to which is good, better or best is a more objective judgment.

Original	Color Leap	Picasa/Google+	Lightroom

Whilst I actually seldom use the Autofix features of my software I would like to suggest that as you are learning your own style of photo processing it doesn’t hurt to “have a quick look” at these best automatic attempt at “enhancement” and then do better with your own little tweaks. If you are just looking to quickly upload your photos to instagram, twiitter or facebook maybe color leap will get you there without much effort and no manual to read or complex controls to remember.