Photos now has a mass mailer built in:
- Open your Camera Roll.
- Tap the icon that has a photo with an arrow on the bottom left.
- Tap the photos you want to send.
- Press the Share button.
- Press the Email button.
Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts
Mass Mailing Photos
Battle of the Photo Fix Apps
One weakness of any camera is that exposure isn't flawless. To get some shots looking really good you have to doctor them. iPhone's camera in the new 3Gs is pretty solid, but you still have those times you'd like to get the exposure right. If you want to email these photos directly from your iPhone, you need to be able to fix these on the fly. This post examines some of the quick fix apps for the iPhone that allow you to improve exposure before emailing a photo on it's way. While there are a lot of apps that do this, these are simple apps dedicated fixing photos typically with the push of a button, like iPhoto's enhance button. Most work by automatically lightening the mid-tones without burning out the highlights, adjusting contrast, saturating colors, sharpening and modifying color, or some combination of these filters.
This photo really gives these apps a workout. Watch the faces closely. Both are in shadow with uneven lighting, but the lighting is very different on each. Only parts of each image are underexposed so the test goes well beyond just lightening the images.
Jade You don't even have to press a button and it modifies the photo. There's a slider to tweak the filter. Jade can handle some very dark images well, but can leave skin looking mechanically enhanced on these images.
BetterPix This correction app has a Flash button and slider to fix exposure and as well as a Focus button and slider. The effects of this filter can be a little more subtle. The Focus filter can come in handy.
PerfectlyClr has a patented filter. It corrects when you load the photo. It also has a five slider tweaking set to monkey with the image and well as a FixDark button that does some extra work on the deep gray tones.
iFlashReady has three buttons: Flash, More Flash and High Flash. It also can turn images sepia as well as black and white. This is the only app without a slider to control the filter. The three settings seem to be well chosen.
You can judge the results for yourself:
Jade
BetterPix
iFlashReady
PerfectlyClr
PerfectlyClr FixDark ModeMy Conclusion All apps performed well on some photos. PerfectlyClr and iFlashReady have much stronger filters for lightening and taming tones than Jade or BetterPix. Both PerfectlyClr's FixDark button and iFlashReady's More Flash button do a solid job without making this image look unreal. PerfectlyClr can work a little harder but I think iFlashReady's More Flash button maintains a little more natural look. A downfall of PerfectlyClr is that gives you a shrunken final product with a maximum picture size of 800x600.
Mailing Full-Size Photos & lots of them
Hold your finger over an image or thumbnail in your Photo Library and A little Paste Bubble pops up. - Slide your finger up to it and release it. It will turn blue and copy the full-size image to the clipboard.
- Open an email.
- Tough and hold inside the body of the email.
- Press the Paste button.
- Open your Camera Roll.
- Tap the icon that has a photo with an arrow on the bottom left.
- Tap the photos you want to send.
- Press the Copy button.
- Open an email.
- Tough and hold inside the body of the email.
- Press the Paste button.
Cropping Photos
Though it's not intended, you can crop photos within iPhone's Photo viewer. The limitation is that images are restricted to screen size of 420 x 320, either in portrait or landscape. The secret is the hidden screenshot app.
- Go to Home/Photos and choose the photo you want to crop.
- Unpinch to enlarge the photo to the magnification you'd like to crop to.
- Tap the screen to hide the controls.
- Hold the Home and Sleep buttons at the same time, then let go. You'll see a white flash when the screen shot takes.
- Tap the screen to show the controls.
- Tap iPhone Libray/Photo Albums/Camera Roll.
Photo Album Order
I have a Smart album in iPhoto that feeds images shot with my iPhone back onto my iPhone. So I'm never without those images. As this album grew by the hundreds it was getting more and more annoying to have to flick through the list to get to the most recent images. The iPhone has no control for ascending or descending order. However I found that iPhone will follow the sort order of the albums in iPhoto that you sync to your iPhone. So I changed the sort order of the Smart album in iPhoto to View/Sort Photos/Descending. Now the newer images are at the top of the album on my iPhone too.
Saving Images
You can save any image you can view in Safari or Mail to your camera roll. This will be synced to your computer with your other camera images the next time you sync your iPhone:
- Tap and hold on the image.
- Tap the Save Image button.
App: Jade Fixes Photos
iPhoto's camera is one of the better available on a phone, but there are no controls: you can't adjust for backlighting or underexposure. You take what you get. And if shooting conditions are less than ideal, the results may not be what you want. Jade is the app I have been waiting for. There are a few other image editing apps already available for the iPhone. But I wanted one that's really simple and can quickly and accurately clean up some of the issues we face with iPhone cameras: underexposure, washed out colors, lackluster contrast, haze from the lens coating wearing off. This is it.
Jade automatically corrects for these and does a decent job. You open it and select a photo. Jade goes to work and makes the correction. It works better at this than iPhoto's Enhance button, which is more than I was hoping for in an iPhone app. The Filter slider position will vary based on what Jade has done. You can slide it more if you like. In very underexposed images, sliding right will lighten the image more. Press the Save button when done. You get a 640 x 480 emailable or Web-postable image.
The app has not had good reviews at the App Store. I think people don't get it. They're expecting PhotoShop, or even worse: they're expecting miracles. If you have worked with something as simple as iPhoto, you know that improving an image is a real art that typically requires time and finessing, yet often leaves you with only a better image, not a great one. I'm seeing Jade get sensible results without even touching the slider. To compare, just tap the screen to see the original. You may still get a lousy image, but then you may have still had a lousy image after PhotoShopping. Some images are just not fixable. I suggest you do a side by side comparison with your desktop image editing app. I think you'll find Jade holds it's own.
Jade is especially adept at lightening dark photos without blowing out highlights. When photos are a little washed out or hazy, Jade can add a nice snap. The advantage is that you can do all this with a photo you've just taken with your iPhone camera and email it without being near your computer. And Jade is no simple piece of software. It's available http://jade.datamind.biz/ for iPhoto and Aperture as well.
Negs? There seems to be some bizarre texture sometimes added in formerly underexposed areas. I hope this is addressed in an update soon.
App: Face Melter
Face Melter is a great example of how a developer can take control of some of the powerful technology that's built into the iPhone's OSX and let you control it with a very simple interface. This liquid art app by Nico Becherer uses some of the built in features of Apple's Core Image. (Core Image is an invisible image engine built into OSX, just waiting for developers to toy with.)
Use of Face Melter is simple: Smudge with your finger and unpinch or pinch to magnify or demagnify an area. The Back button is a liquid undo that allows you to unsmudge with our finger. This can be useful for restoring the edges of the canvas if you've pulled them too far in. To unmelting the image: just shake your iPhone like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can use images from your albums, camera roll or call up the camera and shoot from inside the app.
Face Melter is $2. If you (God forbid) hand your iPhone over to your kids for entertainment, this one is probably more entertaining than any game. Even the really young get the hang of this quickly and love abusing the faces of loved ones. But I cringe at the thought of a tot shaking a little too hard and an iPhone flying out a pediatrician's office window.
While powerful, Face Melter has its limitations. It's designed to warp your Contact images and limits output to screen size. I'd like to see it work with the 2 megapixel camera-size images that the iPhone produces. The shake feature is a little cumbersome at the moment. It takes about the same amount of time as pressing the undo button and unsmudging the entire image.
For the price, this is a very cool little app.
Tip:
- Fill the screen with faces when taking pictures that you're planning on using with Face Melter or Contacts.
- The effect looks cooler when you put people against a plain background as in the example photo. You won't get a melted background, just a melted face.
- Use a Pogo Stylus for better control.
Better iPhone Self Portraits
Taking a self portrait with your iPhone seems like a crapshoot, but here are a few tips that can substantially improve your photos.
- Pose in ample, indirect light. It may not seem it, but indirect light coming from a window will be brighter than any artificial light source. The more light the sharper the picture will appear. Noise and reduced contrast in low light scenes makes images look less focused. If there's too little light your image may also be blurry.
- Your iPhone should be between your light and your face.
- With the screen of your iPhone facing you, hold down the shutter with your index finger. Turn the camera toward you and release. The shutter button sits about 1/2 inch above the home button if you're working by feel.
- Hold the camera at eye level about a foot to arm's length from your face. The further away from your face you hold the camera, the smaller your head will be, but the less distorted it will look.
- Look in the mirrored Apple on the back of your phone. When you can see the right side of your chin, your image will be centered.
Taking Screenshots
Hidden in the iPhone's OS 2.0 is a screenshot utility. It's easy to use: Hold the Home button and the Sleep button at the same time and release. Your screen will flash when the screenshot takes. It's saved as a nice sharp PNG file in our camera roll and will be transferred the next time you sync.
App Review: Sketches
Late Night Software's Sketches app was the first and still best drawing app for the iPhone. Sketches sells for $5 and is worth every penny. Just draw with your finger. Finger too big? There's a zoom tool that helps. There are 24 pen colors plus eraser and a variable size pen. The slower you draw the smoother the line is. To undo tap the Undo button on the left or just shake your iPhone like an Etch-a-Sketch to undo all. There is also a Revert to Saved feature if you hold down the undo button.
There's a library of backgrounds and basic clip art you can use. You can import images from your photo albums and draw over top of them or use the camera while in the app. You also can take a screenshot of a web page or map (it can find your location) that you can mark up. If you double tap the screen, the controls go away and you can work full screen. And the Index is a cork board of thumbnails that you tap on to call up your image. As a matter of fact, the user guide is a series of images on your cork board. Check them out thoroughly before deleting so you don't miss any features. You can also reinstall these from Home/Settings/Sketches.
One of the coolest features that really shows off the power of the touch screen is shapes. Unpinch to draw the shape and size it. Without lifting your fingers, move them to place it or move them in a circular motion and you can turn most shapes. Pen size and color determines the shapes boundaries. And there are three fonts for the text field. Text can be placed, sized, and rotated as you like. You can export to Twitter, Web (view from any browser), email or an iPhone Album. Once in an iPhone Album it's available for as a contact photo, wallpaper, or to send to a MobileMe album. Examples of some of my stetches are on tumblr.
With 2.0's new ability to save images from email and Safari, you have even more options for images to draw on while mobile. Sketches is what an iPhone app should be.
Tips:
- If you use a basic drawing a lot, save it as an image and call it up when needed. For instance, I created a drawing of a ukulele fretboard that I keep in an album and can call up quickly to draw chord tabs on top of.
- I regularly post screenshots to the Web from my iPhone but they're big fat PNG files. Open them in Sketches and export them to an album and they're saved as leaner JPEGs.
- If you do a drawing without a photo for a background, Sketches orients it to portrait. I created a clean white image with the horizontal orientation tag. When I use it as a plain background and export, I get the drawing in Landscape mode for Web posting from my iPhone.
- Since the background is interchangeable at any time, you can trace over a photo of someone and then change the photo to a white background for easier portrait drawing.
- Save regularly when you're at a stage you are happy with. You can experiment and Revert to Saved by holding the Redo button.
- Change Pen size before changing the color. You won't have to call the pen window up twice.
Use Mac Desktop Wallpaper
Any of the standard Mac desktop wallpapers can be put on your iPhone with a few moves in iPhoto. I particularly like the Jaguar Aqua Blue of contrails and use it. Note that you'll be cropping the image to become a vertical image instead of horizontal:
- On your desktop go to HD>Library>Desktop Pictures (This is the folder where they're all stored)
- Drag the image of your choice to the iPhoto icon on your doc (This imports the image)
- Double click on the image to open it in the Edit mode
- Click Constrain
- Choose 2/3 from the list
- Hold the Option key while dragging the constrain box to full screen (This rotates orientation)
- Click Apply
- Click Done
- Drag the image to a folder you have set to sync with your iPhone
- View the image in Photos
- On the bottom of your screen, tap the icon of the photo with the arrow coming out of it
- Choose Use as Wallpaper
- Tap Set Wallpaper
Camera: Avoiding Under Exposure
A little understanding of autoexposure will go a long way in helping you take better photos with your iPhone camera. Examine the two images above. Both shots are of the same buildings taken just seconds apart. So why is one darker than the other? It's simply a matter of brightness. Though it may not seem that way to your eye, the sky is substantially brighter than these shaded buildings. The reason we don't perceive that at first is that your eye and brain have their own built-in autoexposure controls.
When the differences in light in the scene are as great as they are in the darker image the camera makes it's choice based on what's brightest. So the sky won. The lighter image was taken at a lower angle with no bright sky visible in the scene so the camera exposed for the buildings. When you shoot follow these tips to avoid underexposure:
- Make sure your subjects are well-lit if you include sky in your image.
- Light sources like lamps and the sun should not be visible in the scene. These will darken the image.
- Highly reflective backgrounds that are white or silver can darken your subject too. Place your subject against medium toned backgrounds.
- Pointing the camera down on a subject as opposed to up will generally give you better exposed shots.
The Camera Doesn't Lie
Your iPhone camera is extremely useful for capturing evidence. All photos contain date and time information to help you prove your case.
- Shoot that dent in the rental car when you pick it up to prove it was already there.
- Snap new purchases in your house as proof for insurance in case of a robbery.
- Shoot apartment damage when you first move in to protect your security deposit.
- Snap your luggage at the airport so you can show the airline what you lost.
- Take a photo of the kids before shopping or public events in case they get lost. Not only do you have a photo that can be passed around, but you won't have to tax your mind at a time to panic to try to remember what they're wearing.
- Shoot damaged packages you get in the mail as proof that it was broke when you got it.
- Not as critical, but extremely useful is to shoot a descriptive photo of where you parked your car.
Faster Notetaking w/ your Camera
While the iPhone's keyboard is easy to use, your camera is often a faster way to take notes. Taking photos of a whiteboard or blackboard can save you a lot of typing time. The 2 megapixel camera has enough resolution that you'll be able to see everything.
Don't clutter your pockets with business cards. Take a photo and hand it back. When you have time later at home you can enter it into your desktop contacts. Or if you go to a great restaurant, snap the menu. You can use your camera to capture screenshots or anything that you'd use a scanner for. The advantage is that you can even "scan" posters on the wall that you can't get into the scanner. Decent OCR software may even be able to characterize notes for you.
Visual To Do List
Your camera roll makes a very handy To Do list. When you're out of a food item, take a photo of the package before pitching it. When you go to the store browse your camera roll thumbnails for what you need and delete what you put in your cart. This is especially useful for things like ink jet cartridges that you never can remember the number of. The iPhone camera can be used at about a foot away, so you can accurately capture readable serial and model numbers.
Home Screen Photo Link
Want of photo of your loved one(s) on your Home screen? (It makes them think you care.) If you have Web space you can create a Web clip for your desktop that turns the image into a thumbnail.
- Copy the image to your Web space
- Open it in Safari
- Tap +
- Tap Add to Home Screen
You can also create a custom icon for of any image in your .Mac Web gallery. Just go to the photo on your iPhone and add it to your Home screen. When you tap the icon you'll be taken to that specific image in your gallery.
Trouble: Sync
Sync Problems w/ Your Desktop like incomplete syncs and garbled photos are usually the results of USB issues. Make sure your iPhone is plugged directly into the USB port and not through a hub. Disconnect any other USB Devices. If you have scanner software running it may be looking for a USB device. Quit the software. Restart the computer with all other USB unplugged. Then sync again.
Trouble: Photos
Too Many Photos Sometimes you'll get an alert that say you have have too many photos. This is often accompanied by your camera roll scrolling slowly. The problem is that the camera roll is really set up top be effective with about 100 photos. It's a good idea to sync and download them to your desktop before that point.
Photo Total Comes Up Short It's common that the Photo Library total is less than the sum total of the albums.
Camera Specs
As phone cams go, the iPhone is one of the better cameras available. Here are a few of the specs:
- 3 megapixels (dumbs images down to 640x480 for email and Web Gallery. Even smaller for Contacts.)
- auto focus F2.8 lens (focused from 2 feet to infinity, good in low light.) Focuses in center of frame. To change focus, tap the area of the image you want focused.
- CMOS Sensor (holds still better in low light.)
- Does GMP tagging.
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