'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it… The goal should be an interesting life."

Dorothy Rowe

Tuesday 12 June 2012

I admit it...

I've been getting lazy about posting recently.  So after a trying afternoon persuading Big Mac to talk to  Big Epson after Apple's iPhoto update I gave myself permission to play with Paddy.

During an insomniac couple of hours this morning I decided it was time for another series of doing things to photos and boring you all with the results. [New readers can find out what they are letting themselves in for by typing 'photo manipulation' into that handy little search box on the right.] [There is something about insomnia which leads me to this sort of unwise decision. For an alternative, impressive approach  go here.] [Too many brackets? Too right.]

Since I got Paddy I have downloaded a ridiculous number of photography apps. In my own defence, many were free - I'm a sucker for freebies, and recommend The App Whisperer if you are too.

I decided it was time to work through them, finding out what they can do, and weeding out any that aren't worth the space devoted to them. I'm going to be a little more scientific about it this time, and try each on three types of image

a landscape [Yorkshire in June]







a portrait [Babybel and the VHC last summer]


















and, for old times sake, a flower, a camellia [I think].















I'm going to try each app out on each image and see what I think - your comments gratefully accepted. And, given the struggles I've already had with some of them, I shall be rating them for the amount of intelligence needed to use them - or 'INTUT'. [Unlike star ratings, a high INTUT rating is not a good thing.] I figure this way I learn more about my apps and I get motivated to post. And I have a good excuse for playing with Paddy. I keep pointing out to Wensleydale that before I had Paddy I used to sit at the desk playing with Big Mac, and now I sit next to him on the sofa playing with Paddy - so it must be better!

But I digress.

The first app I tried was 'I-Bit Camera'  - or, as I prefer to call it, the 2-trick pony. It has 2 'dithering modes', Atkinson and Bayer, each of which has two settings - high and low contrast. And that's it.

Bayer is the mode which gives squarish blocks, and Atkinson is curvier. If the resolution isn't good enough after the images have been Bloggered, the camellia is Atkinson and Babybel and Yorkshire aren't.

As you can see, the originals got cropped in the process - and they look much better on the retina display, but doesn't everything?



I kind of like the effect, and I think if I had the patience to experiment, perhaps by posterizing the initial image, it might be possible to come up with blackwork patterns, especially from Bayer.

The description on the link suggests that this app probably appeals most to those who understand what dithering modes are. I got it for free [I think...] - whether you think it is worth paying for probably depends on your geekiness/interest in blackwork.

But it's dead easy to use, so it gets only 1.5 INTUTs -the .5 because working out how to save the image taxed my aged brain a bit.


















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