Although, shot through painfully dirty glass, I had to capture the Jackalope! This window display is directly behind our local art museum. The items can be found at a communications firm. Snapseed’s brush tools really allowed me to bring out the details. Notice how my “chrome dome” assists in lighting the shot!

A few shriveled grape tomatoes.

Captured with iPhone and Olloclip Macro lens.

Was surprised to see that tomatoes had little pointy hairs sticking out of its skin.

Edited and converted to black and white on the iPad in Snapseed.

I have been experimenting more with Snapseed's Noir options. It seems to have improved a bit over the years.

But there are still times when I am not happy with the way the shades of gray are blending.

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Been looking back through old photos and revisiting, re-editing from a new perspective.

This one I newly edited in Lr, reducing contrast to eradicate the blocked blacks and unclip the highlights. Then brought into Ps to work on with selected dodging and burning, selected high pass for sharpening in small areas. Then finally turned into a jpeg and dropboxed to get it into the iphone and used snapseed's sliders for some outer blur. Then back into Ps and the snapseed edited image layered on top of the previous, with masking to let some of the previous through.

The Lr version is in the first comment box below. If it doesn't show, you can try clicking the refresh button. That often works.

Happy sliders sunday!

Got this one a few weeks ago, but didn’t take the opportunity to make a photo of it. This is a metal model, with the windscreen, wheels, prop and cowl the only plastic parts. Like many of these Texaco planes, it’s a bank. Rotating the cowl reveals the coin slot. Interestingly, all of the Texaco planes were actually modeled off of real aircraft that flew for the company.

This was a tricky photo as there were a few different light sources. I used Snapseed’s Brush Tool to desaturate the wall and then went back and forth on the plane to try and get the colors right. I gave myself a grade of B- for all of this effort. Sheesh!

2014 Weekly Alphabet Challenge, Week 45, S is for Selfie

With the help of my iPad, Photo Booth's tunnel effect and a bit of Snapseed's grunge :-)

WACO Classic Aircraft, Model YMF F5C | Built in 1930

7 Cylinder Reciprocating engine

This is another version of a photo of an airplane that my grandson, Jackson, and I took a on the 16th. Using Snapseed’s tools and filters I attempted to make it look like a 1930’s photograph.

Our old pupper enjoyed relaxing on the big area rug at Eloise and Jim’s place on Weiss Lake in Centre, Alabama. This exposure was at a happy family gathering was enjoyed by all. included Ritzy. Note: Ritzy’s hair is not so deep. At about eighteen years old, she’s pretty much gray. I used Snapseed’s tools to knock back this sweet’s age a decade.

Last week I photographed a series of sidewalk sayings along the light rail track on SW Lincoln St in downtown Portland. Today I attempted to match some of them with scenes from my Sullivan's Gulch neighborhood. I used Snapseed's double exposure effect to combine the photos. Not entirely pleased with the results. But i spent way too much time on this series of three pictures to not share them. This first one is my favorite. ODC: Expression

back in April, our three month motorcycle trip landed us in St George, UT where my cousin Brooke lives. She took us to snow canyon and we hiked to the lava tubes. While we were underground, I had a minor creative breakthrough.

The ability to create a good image in a busy scene is something I’ve always lusted after and have also always been afraid of, hence most of my subjects up until now are deliberately “simple by default”: sand dunes, distant mountain peaks, silhouettes, etc….at this point, I believe these are the low hanging fruit in the photography scene. There have been SO many good scenes I’ve passed up, too scared to press the button because of mess that I couldn’t crop out. But there IS a way to find order in a busy scene. There is a perfect angle that would make sense of it, probably more than one. I know there is, because I’ve seen work from my peers that accomplishes what I am describing.

The lava tubes are nothing but a hot mess of textures and shadows and harsh light. Perfect for my new experiment/study on finding order within chaos. What absolutely made this image, in my opinion, was the smoky atmosphere created by kicking up dust for several minutes before shooting. I also love the sharp light hitting the rocks in the foreground. I believe those two details add great depth to the scene. Does it represent order within chaos? Maybe a little. It was a busy scene, and I am satisfied with the result. It’s a start.

Equipment:

Canon 5D Mark III

Canon 35mm f/1.4L

Processed in Adobe Lightroom Mobile using a derivative of a Mastinlabs "Ilford Delta 3200" preset. Processed further using Snapseed's "selective" tool to draw focus where needed.

This is another take on soda cans ready for recycling. The purple cast suggests a new variant. Maybe some Mogan David flavored Coca-Cola? Also, I think that crushed cans are interesting objects by themselves.

Edited with the Prisma’s Antarctic filter

Edited with Afterlight’s tools

Edited with Snapseed’s tools

The challenge:

Look for light that catches your eye and work the scene to capture a strong composition. You can take your photo either outdoors or indoors, daytime or nighttime, but do not set up lighting around a subject. I want you to first be inspired by a play of light that catches your eye. Your final image should be a B&W grayscale image, but you can come to that image any way that you would like from capturing B&W in camera to converting in post-processing.

My process:

Since I had already spent a lot of time on this topic while writing the challenge, I decided to add an additional parameter for myself: complete the challenge using only mobile devices. (We are planning a few trips this year, so I am curious whether I can get comfortable using mobile apps for post-processing on the road.) For me that means using my Google Pixel 2 XL phone and iPad Pro. I was mostly successful, but I will admit to using my calibrated desktop monitor to check my work which definitely pushed the boundaries of my original goal to use only mobile devices.

“Finding the light” was the easy part this week. My husband took me out to lunch for my birthday and we were seated at the most beautifully lit table in the entire restaurant. The sun was streaming in the window at the perfect angle and I stopped to snap a few photos before sitting down. I did not take the time to rearrange any of the items on the table because I didn’t want to cause a jam in the very busy flow of the restaurant. I relied on my phone to auto-capture the scene (in color) and hoped I would have something to work with. (I had gone through enough photos last week while writing the challenge to know that if the light was compelling enough, the scene would convert well to B&W.)

While my phone has the ability to capture RAW files, I don’t have it set up for that on a daily basis because that would take up a lot of memory, so I was working with a JPEG image for my conversion process. The first thing I noticed about my image was a couple of cars in the parking lot outside. Those had to go because they became more prominent in B&W and detracted from the scene. I used the Photoshop Fix app on my iPad for that. I even pulled out my Apple Pencil for the task which I don’t think I’ve used since I got it with the iPad a year ago. It was a bit tricky because of the wire pattern in the window glass as well as a chain link fence. I did the best I could, but it looked pretty messy in the end, so I knew I would need to minimize that area in my conversion to B&W.

Next I opened my image in Snapseed to convert to B&W. I have heard a lot about Snapseed recently, so I wanted to try it. I ended up with an image that I thought looked perfect. That is until I looked at it on my desktop monitor and it looked extremely dark. It made me realize that processing a photo with the screen brightness on my iPad turned all the way up might not be the best way to go. I returned to Snapseed to brighten the image, but it still looked very heavy in the shadows.

I decided to start over in the B&W conversion process using Adobe Lightroom CC (the mobile app). I have to admit this was much more enjoyable for me because I already know Lightroom. The ability to copy settings from one photo to another came in very handy when I realized that the edge of a chair was distracting in B&W. I returned to Photoshop Fix with the original color image to remove the chair, then opened that second version in Lightroom and simply copied all of the work I had already done on the first version with a few taps on my iPad. Nice!!

Now comes the part where I pretty much cheated on my goal of using only mobile devices this week. I looked at my “final” image on my desktop and found something I didn’t like (and that I hadn’t noticed when looking at the image on my iPad). So I went back to my iPad to make the change. I repeated this back and forth FIVE times! I’m not sure if the issue was the uncalibrated screen of the iPad or the fact that I could view the image on my 24” monitor at more than 4x the size of my iPad screen. It was probably a combination of the two. (To be clear, I didn’t have the iPad next to my monitor. I made sure I had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the iPad each time I needed to change something. LOL)

Lightroom CC let me export my photo at 2048 pixels, which is very handy because that is one of the native sizes that Facebook recognizes. (Snapseed’s closest equivalent size is 2000 pixels which Facebook will resize.) I added my signature to the resized photo with Photoshop Mix.

Lessons learned:

- I need to find where the RAW setting is on my phone and learn it well enough that I can turn it on quickly when I want it. (Answer: I need a third party app. One option is simply using Lightroom CC to take the photos. I definitely need to check that out!)

- My iPad doesn’t show details in the shadows very well, so I need to be very careful when cloning in dark areas of my images. Dark areas that look good on the iPad may in fact have very visible and messy cloning tracks when viewed on a calibrated monitor.

- I rely a LOT on the histogram when processing a photo to make sure I’m not blocking up the shadows or blowing out highlights. I didn’t find the histogram in Snapseed until after I’d processed my photo, so that could be why my original attempt turned out so dark. I want to try again with the histogram turned on and see if I can do any better.

- I need to work a lot more on my iPad so that I can learn the idiosyncrasies of the screen brightness compared to my calibrated monitor. If I can figure that out, I may learn to trust what I see on the iPad more.

- One thing I wonder about is how much the image is degraded every time it is exported to JPEG from one app to open in another since I did that three times to come up with my final image. It’s possible I did that incorrectly. I think I can use “Open In” from Lightroom, but I wonder what the intermediate format is to transfer from one app to another.

- I also rely a LOT on my dual monitors on my desktop. It feels a bit cramped when working on my iPad. Not sure how to get over that.

- I need to find an app that will allow me to compare two photos.

- Why oh why can’t I change the filenames of photos on my iPad?! If someone knows how to do this, please enlighten me.

Google Pixel 2 XL with HDR+ turned on. Post-processing with mobile apps: Photoshop Fix, Lightroom CC and Photoshop Mix.

CC appreciated.

Snapseed's drama filter applied at low levels.

I absolutely love their slogan, “We turn chaos into harmony.” Worth sharing I think and hope that you agree. Sounds more like the slogan for a religious congregation to me.

Lots of touches of Snapseed’s tools were used. Sort of a happy accident to stop behind this one.

Shot at Weiss Lake in Centre, Alabama. Snapseed’s various filters and tools transformed it into a monochromatic image and killed the background. Added the rose color with the Color Effects app.

I've been trying out this app by Nik software called Snapseed.

The selective adjustment feature is a standout for photo editing on a touchscreen. What you do is touch the point you want to adjust. The software creates a resizable circular mask anchored around the point you selected and automatically limits the editing area to the object - probably using some sort of colour and luminance matching eg. A symbol or underexposed shadow. You can then adjust the exposure, contrast an saturation of the selected object in quite a natural way without affecting other parts of the photo. It's like the old darkroom techniques of spotting and dodging, but done with digital precision. It's hard to explain in words so here's the demo video

On my last trip I also tried pairing my DSLR with my iPad to backup and process photos on the fly. All I needed was an iPad USB adapter and USB cable to hook it up directly to any digital camera. I usually lug around a MacBook + hard drive.

The workflow from camera to publishing is still a little clunky:

1. Use the standard iOS Photo app to import photos from the camera. It would be really helpful if they made the previews larger so you can actually choose the best shots to import. Instead you get small thumbnails that don't show you much detail.

2. Open Snapseed and of the photos you did import, try guessing the best one to edit from the small thumbnails. You end up opening and closing photos several times to get the right shot to edit.

3. Use the Snapseed touchscreen editing tools - which are great!

4. Save back to the iOS Gallery.

5. Use whatever it is you do to share photos. With the Flickr app you can tag and upload up to 10 at a time.

It would be great if there was a way to sync all your work back onto a desktop when you finally get home to view and continue editing via a bigger screen so that you can continue on with the editing.

However, I've never used a more efficient tool for the editing part. The touchscreen enables me to apply delicate exposure and contrast adjustments and I didn't have to wait till I got home to get my photos off my DSLR and onto the web. Lookin forward to the next version of this app.

Pros

- selective adjustment for fine and precise image control

- ambience adjustment is a good alternative look to vignette

- great natural adjustments and effects

- brilliant value for AUD$5.49

Cons

- each edit is burnt in each time you use one of Snapseed's tools with no undo button

- you can't batch process

- no end-to-end workflow. It would be greatly improved with better import and export/sharing tools

Comments and links please!

I was keen to try and see if I can do everything I need to on my iPad without having to sit in front of my desktop... seems like we're not quite there yet. At the moment I can only really use Snapseed for ad-hoc editing but what I'd like to do is pair my camera with my iPad for most of the edits and relegate the Desktop to backups and high detail edits in Photoshop.

If anyone has a better way to process images from their DSLR on their iPad, do tell!

Discussion Thread over on the Snapseed Group

I used Prisma’s Comic filter and Snapseed’s perspective tools to have a little fun with this one. The original version was taken on the 24th of September, 2020.

Edited in Prisma app with Lizard

I literally ran down our street, following these two birds, in order to get a photo. This is a telephoto image. I used Prisma’s Lizard filter and editing tools to bring it out. The border was done using Snapseed. I was able to add color saturation to both Turkeys using Snapseed’s brush tool.

Another “Mining my Camera Roll®” adventure!

Using Snapseed’s Brush Tool, I completely transformed this very pale, flat exposure. Oh yeah, I’m bragging...

Last week I photographed a series of sidewalk sayings along the light rail track on SW Lincoln St in downtown Portland. Today I attempted to match some of them with scenes from my Sullivan's Gulch neighborhood. I used Snapseed's double exposure effect to combine the photos. Not entirely pleased with the results. But i spent way too much time on this series of three pictures to not share them. This one was my first attempt. ODC: Expression

This truck stopped next door to deliver a few pieces of furniture to our new neighbor. I like the huge photographic sign; the image of which is Chattanooga’s riverfront aquarium and the Blue Bridge. Good old doggo, Gibson, looks on and supervises the activities.

The shot is looking due north. Deep shadows from tall trees made the sign look uneven. Couldn’t be helped. I used Snapseed’s tools to do a lot of perspective correction.

Shot in color using my iPhone SE. Very tightly cropped, from 12 megapixels down to just under 4. I used Snapseed to convert this image to a monochrome. Then I added Snapseed's b+w red filter. It had the effect of deepening the leaves and turning the red flowers into a bright white

Just playing with Prisma this morning. After applying a Prisma filter I added one of Snapseed’s filters. I can’t really say that this is a factory mould, but it’s similar to others that are.

A bit different view of the venerable Old Mill. For the first time I’ve played around with Snapseed’s Double-Exposure tool, trying various combinations of black and red layers. At last this one seems to be about as good as I can make it.

Olympus E-PL1 + Fujian 35mm f1.7

Originally shot in monochrome, but used Snapseed's RetroLUX to bring out some flare and scratch.

A fitting photograph for the end of my p52. It has been a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who have favorited and liked my work.

This is a modern fire house in the heart of the Vinings area. Shot this with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX100. Worked on it a whole lot in Snapseed. Used Snapseed’s perspective and straightening tools, as well as a myriad of other small, but useful adjustments.

That’s my wonderful wife, her mom and her mom’s husband under the shade of a Crepe Myrtle. Rome’s Broad Street is mostly a boulevard and just lovely. Shot this one just after lunch at Harvest Moon on Broad Street. Used my Lumix LX 100 and fixed it up with Snapseed’s filters and tools.

Playing with Snapseed's image enhancements

Fog below us, as we descend down from 5200' on Mt. Lafayette in White Mountains.

Playing around with Snapseed's desktop version.

This WWII fighter plane is partially tucked under some trees, right in front of the 57th Fighter Group Restaurant. Shot originally in color, I worked to make it as good as possible. Then I converted it to b+w and using Snapseed’s Brush Tool, It took a lot of work to balance the values in order to bring out the aircraft. Hope you like it.

Photo by former AMPt member Nick White

(IG: nickwhite73)

Process:

Picture taken with SlowShutter. Opened in Photo fx to crop & then convert to black & white (orange filter). Then used Snapseed’s Tune Image function to increase Ambience & adjust white balance. In Camera+, Clarity and the Contessa filter were added.

Using Iris, the version saved after the initial crop (pre-b/w conversion) was blended with the last version saved in Camera+. Again, using Iris, this blended result was blended with a file image (abstract with rain effect & red tint); often when working on images there may be unused edit results that are kept in my layer file for future use, as in this instance.

Moved back to Photo fx to add a gentle Light Streaks effect. Next, opened in ScratchCam for some texture. Finally, used Pixlr-o-matic to add the frame.

This huge board is in an interesting spot near the intersection of Powers Ferry Road and the North Loop in Marietta, GA. Not very visible from the smaller streets around it, the board is very visible from the Loop. The Loop carries at least twenty times the traffic than all of the nearby neighborhoods.

About this photo: I shot it in color through the windshield (or windscreen if you will) at an obtuse angle. That, and the unusual light at that moment, made is very difficult to get the photo looking natural. It was shot at about 10x telephoto, as well. So, using Snapseed’s default selections, I picked ‘Silvertone” to uncomplicate the scene.

iPhone's in-camera HDR plus Snapseed's HDRScape filter. The combo retrieves a lot of detail but introduces quite a bit of noise. I wish Snapseed would add noise reduction.

This WWII fighter plane is partially tucked under some trees, right in front of the 57th Fighter Group Restaurant. Shot originally in color, I worked to make it as good as possible. Then I converted it to b+w and using Snapseed’s Brush Tool, I worked a long time to balance the values in order to bring out the aircraft. Hope you like it.

A deeply backlit photo was brought to light using Snapseed’s tools primarily. Some fine tuning was done with Afterlight as well. This can was twisted and crushed.

The old and the new. Our brand spankin’ new library/community center awaits its official opening while the old building is just a pile of rubble. Shot with my LUMIX LX100 and fixed up using Snapseed. NOTE: I used Snapseed’s brush tool to desaturate the power shovels at the far left. Their intense yellow dominated the entire panorama.

This image is as much a painting as a photograph. Shot in the early morning in a shadowed place in our front garden. I spent the better part of an hour building up color, saturation and other values using Snapseed’s brush and other tools. Towhees are constantly moving, so it’s a bit fuzzy. The darkest feathers have been exaggerated while the others are a bit deeper than the light had shown them. I desaturated the surrounding area in order to bring out the subject.

Using Snapseed's HDR function

NEX > iPad > Snapseed > Flickr

I'm still not convinced by HDR, but I am always impressed by Snapseed's UI

Reflection of trees from the Eno River near Durham, NC. I took the original photo with a polarizer, which made it very dull. So I applied Snapseed's Accentuate filter to create this dreamlike forest.

Between Windy Hill Road and the Perimeter Highway (I-285) there are myriad apartments being constructed. This photo was made from the east side of this structure. Powers Ferry Road is on the west side. Snapseed’s tools allowed me to fix the perspective in this wide angle shot.

Naturally, no plans to handle a massive increase in traffic seem to be in the works. I wish that I had the resources to follow the money!

Matt smiles at Donna, Amanda and Morgan (facing away from the camera). Snapseed’s HDR tool brought Matt out of a dark shadow and made the shot. Shot at Matt & Morgan’s place in Marietta.

Oh Yeah, I played with this one! What if this place was squeezed sideways and stretched vertically... and blue! There you have it. Just having fun with Snapseed’s tools. See what happens when I’ve been cooped up for almost a month already! Only a few weeks to go! G-d willing.

It is almost impossible to sneak up on Red-Winged Blackbirds when they’re feeding. I shot this photo with my little Sony and did a substantial amount of work with Snapseed. This included a lot of hand-work with Snapseed’s brush tool.

playing with snapseed's retrolux edit feature

Rachel is not only beautiful, but this mom of two boys is energetic, friendly, sweet and dedicated to her family. She is simply a joy to have around. Rachel is also a woman who takes her Christian faith seriously. I enjoyed taking a quick portrait shot. Worked it up using Snapseed’s regular and special portrait tools.

Absolutely blown away by Snapseed's new RAW editing capabilities.

This is a pre-edit shot, the next photo is post-edit. RAW file from Sony RX100iv straight to iPhone edit to JPEG export.

This could really make filing for photojournalists amazingly quick and practical without quality loss when you don't have laptop with you.

This is the Antonov 224 that carried a disassembled Orion P-3 back from China when an encounter with a Chinese Mig fighter caused the U.S. Navy P-3 to make an emergency landing on Chinese soil. Dobbins ARB is where Lockheed/Georgia built the P-3 and it was reassembled and flown out some months later.

I took this 35mm film photograph. When I arrived at the perimeter of the Air Reserve Base, I was amazed to see that thousands of people had gathered along the highway. The antonov arrived around 7 a.m. that morning.

I’ve cropped my original photo and used Snapseed’s tools and filters to “improve” this shot. It has a bit more grain now, but the color and details are significantly better.