Fall scenery in the Smoky Mountains... iPhone style!

This is an iPhone image from my recent trip to the Smoky Mountains on a marvelous photo tour with John Barclay and Dan Sniffin. As always, you may view it larger by clicking the image. (Follow the links for more information on apps that I've either reviewed or covered in more detail elsewhere)

Post processing of the native iPhone 4s camera images included merging in True HDR, then using PerfectPhoto to crop and sharpen a the image a bit. Photo fx Ultra processing (taking advantage of the Add Layer feature to stack filters) was used to add Photographic/Light Balancing, Diffusion/Warm Center Spot (no blur) and Lens/Vignette/Black Square with default settings reduced to give just a bit of vignette around the edges. A+ Signature was used to sign the image. NOTE that A+ Signature has recently had a significant upgrade so my tutorial might need to be updated also.

For completely different look to this same scene, visit my other photography blog post.

Historic Canal Boat at Great Falls Park, MD

With all the furor over the iPhone 5 recently, I made an executive decision to purchase an iPhone 4s (64GB) because I have too many accessories that will not work with the iPhone 5 and I'm not willing to spend money to upgrade all of those accessories AND my phone at this time.

Since what I had previously was an iPhone 4, I did get an upgrade to the camera from a camera capable of capturing only 5 megapixel images to one capable of capturing 8 megapixel images. This will allow me to print my iPhone art/images at a larger size if I choose to do so. Today I'm sharing the processing that resulted in the image below... all the steps. The original image was captured with the iPhone 4s native camera in HDR mode. (as always, you may click any of the images to view them larger size)

Apps used included True HDR, PerfectPhoto (sharpen and denoise), touchRetouch, Photo fx Ultra (several effects), AutoPainter HD Van Gogh, Image Blender, A+ Signature (Allura text). This image is for sale on Fine Art America, as are others of my images. And I'm posting to Weekly Top Shot today... wish I could post there every week! Check it out for other nice images.

Since I've previously discussed True HDR and covered PerfectPhoto, Image Blender, and A+ Signature usage in a separate post for each app, I will concentrate on the effects that I applied using Photo fx Ultra which I have been using a LOT lately. Please note that this is NOT a comprehensive tutorial on using Photo fx Ultra. The app has a LOT of filters, effects and I'm only just beginning to appreciate the power of this app. There is a YouTube video that shows the basic features of the app and Tiffin has a bit of information about it on their web site.

True HDR merged image, the starting point for post-processing.

touchRetouch was used to remove the light post and its reflection because I found it distracting. A combination of the 'eraser' brush and cloning tool was used. Retouch (app icon name after installation) is fairly straightforward to use and has built-in help and tutorials. (look for the basic tutorial, advanced tutorial and help topics under the i in the upper right hand corner after opening an image) The one setting I would encourage you to turn on is Always Use Max Resolution.

This screen shot shows the first effect that was applied in Photo fx Ultra to the retouched image. The Polarizer/Polarizer 5 effect in the Special Effects set was applied using the Default settings for the effect. Note that the categories of effects are across the bottom; the options shown on the left change depending on which of the bottom categories and which subset of each category you choose. ANY of the effects can be modified to suit you (using the various sliders that appear when you choose an effect) and those modifications may be saved as a personal effect. To continue modifying an image after an effect has been applied, select Add Layer from the options that appear when you click on the upper right corner arrow to save (or otherwise handle) your image.

The screen shot for the second effect shows Soft Light/Soft Light 5 in the Light category being applied on top of the previous layer. I cannot recall if I changed the settings from the default settings for this effect. I continued by choosing Add Layer and choosing a third category of effects to apply.

Because I wanted to focus attention on the boat, I chose to apply a vignette next, using the Lens/Vignette/Black Circle effect. I adjusted the sliders for this effect to soften it a bit from how it appeared with the default settings.

Again, to continue the processing with the intent of drawing the viewer in to the center of the image to focus on the boat, I applied the Diffusion/Warm Center Spot/Warm Spot 2 effect and adjusted the default settings so that the overall image remained sharp but was warmer in the middle. (I did not want to blur the edges.) This Photo fx Ultra image was saved and was the image used for later blending as will be described.

At this point, I'm including a collage of the main steps used in processing from start to finish of this image. (click any link to see larger views of each image; to return here, use Back in your browser) The upper left image is the True HDR merged image after retouching; the upper right image is after the previously described four effects had been applied in Photo fx Ultra; the lower left image is the Auto Painter Van Gogh effect applied to the True HDR image; and the bottom right is the blended, final image. (more detail on the steps to achieve the final image is given below)

The final image was blended several times to achieve the result I was going for and to restore the image size which had suffered some downsizing throughout the processing steps. The first blending step involved blending the Van Gogh effect image with the image after application of the Photo fx Ultra effects. I used a normal blend and blended in only 20% of the Van Gogh image so as not to overpower the effects I'd achieved with Photo fx Ultra. I wasn't 100% satisfied so I blended the result with the original True HDR image using masking with opacity to bring back some of the detail on just the boat. This image was signed using A+ Signature, Allura text.

And last, since I noticed some loss of pixels in the signed, final image, I loaded the dark exposure of the two HDR images as the background image in Blender, reduced the background opacity so that it did not affect the blend and blended that original image with the signed final image which effectively returned the image size to the same as the original and would allow me to print it as large as 12x16 inches without appreciable loss of detail.

C&O Canal Boat, idle in Georgetown, DC

While wandering around Georgetown last Saturday before having lunch with a friend, I spotted this canal boat parked near 31st St NW. The light caught my eye even though I was quite certain the sunlight would "blow out" the white roof completely. I could see editing the image to take care of that and just maybe end up with something quite nice.

My iPhone tutorial posts will follow a general format of showing the starting and ending image at the start of the post, followed by the "expert" recipe. After the "expert" recipe, I'll show the step by step process. Please realize that these tutorials are really not intended to be a "go out and repeat this exactly" recipe but rather a tutorial to show one (sometimes two) possible processing paths for an image. Those of you unfamiliar with iPhone processing of images may not realize yet the HUGE number of apps available for post processing (both iPhone and iPad). My hope is that these tutorials will start you on a path of exploration to discover for yourselves the many possibilities there are for tuning your images into something that you envision when out exploring the world.

The top image (obtained by merging two exposures (shot with the native iP4 camera in HDR mode) using TrueHDR) is the starting point; the middle image is the image obtained from processing as outlined below through Step 6; the bottom image is the result of applying an effect to the Image from Step 2 in the outline below and blending that with the image processed through Step 5. (Note that the above images may be viewed larger size by clicking on any one of them.)

1. The two HDR exposures were merged with TrueHDR.
2. PerfectPhoto was used to sharpen, and de-noise the image (Image A in future steps).
3. The Ancient Canvas effect was applied using PhotoStudio HD and the image saved (Image B in future steps).
4. Blender was used to blend images A and B at 70% Normal Blend.
5. Pic Grunger was used to apply the "Scuffed" Effect at ~40% (Image C in future steps).
6. Image C was signed using A+ Signature.
7. One could stop at this point but I chose to try one other blend.
8. A Moku Hanga effect (will figure out which one at some point, experiment) was applied using a Preset that I saved some time ago and cannot recall exactly how I got it (danger of late night playing); result saved (Image D).
9. Images C and D were blended using the Luminosity Effect in Blender.
10. The result of the blend above was signed using A+ Signature.

I'm showing this because it amazed me to see the difference in the image after sharpening it and also using the Denoise option in PerfectPhoto; left image before sharpen and denoise were applied, right image after sharpen and denoise.

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Screen Shot of application of Ancient Canvas applied to image; saved image after application of Ancient Canvas.

The top image is the result of blending Image A and Image B using Normal Blend at 70%; masking was used to bring the Ancient Canvas effect onto the blown out white roof and leave the rest of the image relatively untouched; the bottom image is after application of the Scuffed effect (at 40%) to the blended image using Pic Grunger (Image C). (The signed Image C is not shown before continuing with additional post processing steps since it is the middle image in th set of three images at the top of the page.)

The top image is a screen shot of the application of a saved preset in Moku Hanga; the second image is the saved image (Image D) after application of that effect.

The top image is a screen shot of application of the Luminosity blend at 40% to Images C & D in Blender; the bottom image is the saved, blended image. (Again, the signed image is not included here because it is the third of the three images at the top of the page.)

How to blend two "blah" images into something nicer...

While stopping by a friend's garden, I noticed these Red Hot Poker flowers and decided to see what I could do with creating an image using them. Notice that the left image (referred to as Image 1) has nothing interesting on the far right and that the right image (Image 2) has a very boring background. However, I could visualize possibilities for a very nice image by combining elements of the two images into a single image. This tutorial will explain the process that I used to reach the following two possible end results. (As always, experienced iPhone photographers will probably find the detailed steps tedious but those of you new to iPhone photography and post processing might just learn a thing or two. At least that is what I hope!) Linking to Weekly Top Shots.

Steps in brief for the experts among you...

1. Images 1 and 2 were obtained by merging two images (shot with iPhone 4 native camera in HDR mode) in TrueHDR.
2. PerfectPhoto was used on Image 1 to Sharpen, Denoise and save the image.
3. PhotoForge was used to crop Image 2 and slightly rotate it so flower stems aligned with those in Image 1.
4. BlurFX was used to slightly blur Image 2 since it will be in the background in the final images.
5. Blender was used with masking and arranging to position Image 2 behind Image 1 and paint away the right side Image 1 to reveal parts of Image 2 that I wanted in the final blended image; blend at 100% to completely hide Image 1.
6. Retouch was used to remove parts of the image I found distracting.
7. Three painting apps were used on the blended image to achieve 3 different looks for further blending.
• Moku Hanga (later referred to as Moku image)
• Painteresque (later referred to as Painteresque image)
• AutoPainter Benson (later referred to as AutoPainter image)
8. The Painteresque image was blended at 20% Multiply (screen shot) with the Moku image.
9. The Painteresque image was also blended at 50% Normal with the AutoPainter image
10. Both end result images were signed with A+ Signature.

The top image is one option for final processing; the bottom image is a second (and preferred by me) option for the final image. Both processing paths will be explained in the following steps.

Image 2 has the Red Hot Poker flowers growing upright whereas Image 1 (shown as the first image above after the Sharpen and Denoise steps in PerfectPhoto had been performed) has them tilted (that's how they were growing in the garden). Because I wanted to use image 2 in the background of image 1 when I blended the images, I used the PhotoForge (not PhotoForge2) Crop Tool to crop and slightly rotate Image 2 using the 1° incremental arrows until the flower stems were angled similarly to those in Image 1 as shown in the PhotoForge screen shot above.

The cropped and rotated Image 2 (left image) was loaded into BlurFX and a slight bit of Gaussian Blur was applied to achieve the desired degree of 'out of focus' look for blending with Image 1. Hint about using BlurFX: Use the New button to load in an image; then select (if it isn't already selected) the Gaussian Blur effect and use the Threshold slider to tone down the blurriness (right image) until you are happy with the result.

Complete instructions for using Blender to blend and mask these two images to get the top image as the final result are on a separate page in the interest of keeping these instructions somewhat brief! The bottom image is after retouching (Retouch app) out some elements of the blended image that I found distracting.

Now for the fun part. Shown below are the results of using three different painting apps to achieve artistic effects that will be combined (again using Blender) to achieve two different looks for the blended image.

The image above shows a Moku HD (Moku Hanga on the iPad) painting effect applied to the blended image. This app seems to randomize the Style that is applied when you load an image into it. If you find a look you like by experimenting with the Styles and controls, you can save it as a Preset using the Share button and it will show up in Styles the next time you open Moku HD. It is possible to tune each Style by using the Adjust (to adjust brush effects), Paper and Border settings on the Style. I've found I like the Landscape Style with the border removed for MOST of the images I process (including this one) and have saved that as a preset.

The image above shows Painteresque processing of the blended image. Painteresque is very simple. There are no options for changing the effect on your image and no settings options. You either like what it does or you don't. I find it very interesting but somewhat overdone so almost always blend a Painteresque version of an image with another version of the same image to tone it down.

The image above shows application of the AutoPainter Benson effect to the blended image. I have the original AutoPainter app which has four effects. I've experimented A LOT with it and almost always come back to the Benson effect and apply that to my images before blending with another version of the same image.

On the left is a screen shot of Blender showing conditions of blending Painteresque image (loaded on the left in Blender) with the Moku HD image (loaded on the right in Blender); on the right is the saved output from this blend which was signed in A+ Signature to yield the result shown in the top one of the two images shown elsewhere.

On the left is a screen shot of Blender showing conditions of blending the Painteresque image (loaded on the left in Blender) with the AutoPainter Benson image (loaded on the right in Blender); on the right is the saved output from this blend which was signed in A+ Signature to yield the result shown in the bottom one of the two images shown elsewhere.