Popular iPad photo editing app FX Photo Studio HD goes free for a limited time

By Cody Lee on Apr 23, 2013

Those in the market for an iPad photo editing app will be happy to hear that the folks over at MacPhun have just announced that following the success of last week’s free iPhone app offering, they’ve made their popular FX Photo Studio HD free for a limited time.

The team says that the $1.99 discount is in celebration of the iPhone version of FX Photo Studio hitting over 1 million downloads during its 3-day free promotion last week, where it became the top free photography app in the App Store of 39 different countries… Read More

 

Make your photos pop with PopAGraph

By Lory Gil on Apr 12, 2013

Since the dawn of the camera phone, photography hobbyists have found ways to turn low-resolution, pixelated images into works of art. When Apple put a camera in the iPhone, it literally changed the photography landscape, allowing anyone to turn the most mundane images into interesting photos using a wide variety of apps.

PopAGraph is a photo-editing app for the iPhone and iPod touch that takes it one step further by allowing you to mask objects and “pop” them out. This gives the impression of a virtual three-dimensional picture that you can share immediately on social networking sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter… Read More

 

500px app updated with Flow for iPad and other improvements

By Cody Lee on Apr 2, 2013

Premium photo sharing site 500px made a big splash last fall when it finally launched a native app for the iPhone. And despite getting pulled from the App Store for a week in January, it’s managed to garner more than a million downloads.

Today 500px has updated its iOS offering, bringing the app to version 2.1. The update includes a new Following and Followers list, so you can keep track of your network, performance improvements and adds the Flow feature to the iPad… Read More

 

Quick review: Handy Photo for iPhone and iPad

By Christian Zibreg on Mar 26, 2013

Sebastien and I share a passion for iPhone photography so when he asked me to take a look at Handy Photo the other day, I was overly excited. So what does this new photography app does that your favorite software can’t? How about AntiCrop and TouchRetouch, two interesting features that work a lot like content-aware fill in Photoshop?

Or, perhaps you’ll be impressed by the ability to perform complex touch ups and work with 36-megapixel images (not a typo)? The promo video is a bit cheesy and heavy on superlatives, but it does a nice job highlighting key features of this handy program. I’ve included more info and a few screenies after the break… Read More

 

How to easily turn a Photo Stream into a public website

By Cody Lee on Mar 16, 2013

I’ve been using an iPhone since the first one launched in 2007, so almost 6 years. And in that time, I feel like I’ve learned most of the ins and outs of iOS. Like many of you, I’m the one friends and family come to with their tech questions.

But I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know everything about Apple’s mobile OS, as I learn new stuff everyday. And yesterday, I found out that you can turn your Photo Streams into websites, viewable by anyone, in just a few easy steps… Read More

 

Apple researching high-res iPhone camera with optical zoom

By Ed Sutherland on Mar 14, 2013

Cameras with optical lenses frequently produce images superior to all-digital alternatives most often required in mobile phones. Now Apple appears to have found a hybrid approach permitting future iPhones and iPads to offer a high-resolution camera with an optical zoom lens, but not disrupt the devices’ slim lines.

While many patented Apple inventions never see the light of day, iPhone photography buffs in particular will welcome Apple’s camera advancements, especially should the company decide to implement them on future iPhones and iPads.

Additionally, the patented technology could even save money for the consumer electronics giant. In 2011, the company filed for a patent entitled “Digital camera with light splitter.” The iPhone or iPad camera includes a zoom lens with a moveable lens made possible by a cube which splits light into its component red, green and blue colors… Read More

 

‘Instahancer’ brings a bunch of new options to Instagram

By Jeff Benjamin on Mar 14, 2013

Instahancer is a new jailbreak tweak that enhances the usability of the iPhone’s Instagram app. It does so in a vein similar to another recently released jailbreak tweak called InstaSave, a tweak primarily focused on saving photos from the service.

While this tweak, too, focuses on saving Instagram photos, it attempts to justify the price premium with the addition of extra features like zooming, caption drafts, and the ability to copy direct URLs. Does Instahancer succeed in its endeavors? Take a look inside for the full scoop… Read More

 

PanoPerfect moves to the iPad and adds web galleries

By Jim Gresham on Mar 7, 2013

Since our first look at PanoPerfect for the iPhone, it has become more widely accepted as a great way to share only panoramic photographs. I am a big fan of the ability to take panoramic photos with my iPhone and it only makes sense that HalfPeeled provides a great new way to view and share them. As featured in the App Store’s “New and Noteworthy” section, PanoPerfect lands for the iPad and boasts a new web browsing feature… Read More

 

Photoshop Touch finally lands on the iPhone

By Jeff Benjamin on Feb 26, 2013

After what has seemed like nearly an eternity, a useful version of Adobe Photoshop has finally landed on the iPhone. Officially dubbed Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone, the app is largely the same as the original iPad version, which was released some time ago.

For those of us that have to alter images on a day-to-day basis, this is a welcomed addition to the App Store library.

Read More

 

Instagram surpasses a hundred million active users

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 26, 2013

Facebook-owned Instagram, despite negative publicity surrounding the controversial terms of service brouhaha, continues to grow its installed base. Today, the company announced a major milestone: Instagram now has over a hundred million active users across mobile platforms. That’s ten million more active monthly users since it announced the 90 million milestone on January 17. By comparison, Twitter over a six-year time span hit 200 million active users, as of end of 2012.

Commenting on the development, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shared an anecdote in a blog post about how he realized Instagram was going to be different when fans at the Giants Stadium starting posting their Instagrams after another co-founder “with a few quick commands at his terminal” filled the service with images of the game… Read More

 

Another try at group photo sharing: Albumatic

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 21, 2013

A new iPhone app called Albumatic hopes to succeed where the likes of Color and Highlight have failed, to make sharing between groups of people easy and fun. It has a clean minimalistic interface that lets you easily start an album and add photos for others to see. Whenever you add a new photo, all the folks you’ve shared an album with get notified.

Folks nearby can join the album and add photos of their own and those that are farther away are only allowed to view the album, but not interact with the photos (likes, comments, etc.) We’ve seen this location-based photo sharing focus before and it didn’t work out well (hint: Color), but Albumatic nonetheless bets party-goers will use it to share embarrassing cocktail snaps between themselves, Galaxy S III style… Read More

 

Flickr updated with comment alerts, @username tags, volume shutter and more

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 21, 2013

After a long time, I recently fell in love with Yahoo’s Flickr service, all over again. I mean, not everyone is on Facebook. More importantly, Instagram leaves a lot to be desired in terms of screen resolution so Flickr, which stores original-res photos, is becoming increasingly relevant to my iPhoneography workflow. The freshly updated software now supports @username tagging (with tags linked to users’ photo stream) and can notify you via push alerts when someone tags you in their comment.

And if you happen to find the volume shutter feature of the stock iOS Camera app useful, you’re going to love this update as it lets you snap a photo using your iPhone’s volume up button. The program also includes a few other improvements, mentioned right below… Read More

 

Conceptualize your compositions to improve your iPhone photography

By Justin Balog on Feb 16, 2013

In today’s lesson in iPhone photography, we will be digging a bit deeper into the mystical ideas of composition. Remember, before you consider the post processing of an image you need to expose and compose properly. In previous lessons we examined the Rule of Thirds. It is pretty straightforward and a great creative technique to have in your tool box. However, we never explored why, or how, it works. In this lesson, to better understand it, as well as other compositional guidelines, we will explore the idea of static vs. dynamic compositions.

Before we explore the ideas of composition, it’s important we understand the concept of ‘visual weight’ (or strength). Every elements in our compositions have varying weight/strength associated with them. It could be heavy, light, dark, strong, soft, etc. Obvious properties that influence a subject’s weight (or strength) are its size and position. Is the element in the background or in the foreground? Is it big or small? Read More

 

Quickly snap photos from Notification Center with Kamera

By Mike Schnier on Feb 11, 2013

Do you hate it when you’re trying to take a picture, you load up the Camera app, and the wrong camera is active? In photography, every moment counts and the delay in fiddling with camera modes could cost you that perfect shot.

Kamera is a Notification Center shortcut for the native Camera overlay in iOS 5 and 6, allowing you to take pictures from anywhere. What makes Kamera special is it allows you to start the overlay with either the front or rear camera active, depending on the button pressed… Read More

 

Photo Organizer let’s you easily edit the Camera Roll and Albums

By Mike Schnier on Feb 6, 2013

The developer who goes by the name of Lordscotland should call himself LordOfAwesomeTweaks. His backlog of jailbreak apps includes incredibly useful freebies like Safari Download Enabler and PDF Printer for Safari. His latest tweak is called Photo Organizer, which provides users with more control over all their photo albums including the Camera Roll.

Want to reorder photos and videos in your Camera Roll? Delete photos from your camera roll without removing them from every other album? Move photos without constantly making duplicates and wasting space? If so, Photo Organizer shows us that Apple’s default methods aren’t always best… Read More

 

Instagram launches photo stream on the web with comments and likes

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 5, 2013

Good news for iPhone photography buffs who love to show off their snaps on Instagram. The Facebook-owned photo sharing service announced Tuesday that people can now view their entire feed of photos in any web browser, including Instagrams shared by the folks they follow on the service.

Commenting and liking is supported and the web app is optimized for both desktop and mobile browsers.

With these new capabilities, users can bypass the mobile app and instead interact with their followers using any device that runs a standards-compliant web browser. That’s a new territory for Instagram as it was dependent on the free iOS/Android app. There’s one thing missing from the new web app, however… Read More

 

Instagram says it has 90M monthly active users, releases other stats

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 17, 2013

Facebook-owned photo sharing service Instagram today for the first time revealed some hard numbers on its performance and user base. Instagram has passed 90 million monthly active users, which is a huge number for any casual photo sharing service, no matter how you look at it. The company also confirmed that it is serving 40 million photographs each day, averaging to a little more than two photos per user shared each day. Wondering about how many likes and comments people post each day? Read More

 

How to copy all your Instagrams to Flickr

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 29, 2012

Instagram’s exploding popularity is having long-time iPhoneography buffs pay notice and watch in horror as mainstream users cannot get enough of its crappy filters and the obscenely low 612×612 pixel resolution. And with Facebook and Android now in the picture, no wonder some early adopters go to the extremes of closing their account while others, like Apple’s marketing honcho, stopped using Instagram for it “jumped the shark”.

To the most ardent fans, the last straw was Instagram’s confusing handling of the recent terms of service changes - even if it was much ado about nothing.

If you’ve been seriously contemplating importing your Instagrams over to Flickr but were put off by the tedious manual uploads – worry not, turns out there are a few ways to get that job done without too much fuss. iDB has you covered with this quick guide to bringing in all your Instagram photos to Flickr with just a few clicks… Read More

 

White balance: the iPhone photographer’s little secret

By Justin Balog on Dec 22, 2012

I hope you have enjoyed the last few weeks exploring the creative possibilities of exposure. I wanted to continue on our adventure back to the basics of photography. Something I’m sure you have seen at some point in your photographic pursuits is a dial, slider, or some other control annotated with a cloud, sun, flash, shade, and light bulb. Although, camera companies have done a great job researching the iconography that best represents ‘it’, they really don’t explain what ‘it’ is. In today’s lesson we will quickly learn what ‘it’ is and then explore creative ways to use ‘it’ to our advantage! Read More

 

Fuzel Pro brings snail mail back in style

By Jim Gresham on Dec 21, 2012

It is the holiday season and, inevitably, you will be snapping lots of photos at the dinner table, the bar, and your favorite aunt Suzi’s house. Truly, the best of times and the worst of times are captured digitally and you need to share that giant family portrait everyone loved by the Christmas tree. Aside from the usual, Facebook, Twitter, and everyone’s favorite social app to hate, Instagram, you can try sharing photos the old school way, with snail mail. Blending tech and print, Fuzel Pro, App Store Best of 2012, creates picture collages and mails them straight from your iPhone… Read More