iPhoneography

Create, add, and share beautiful filters for your photos with Digiback

There is an embarrassment of photography and filter apps on iTunes. If you're not keeping track, Hipstamatic allows users to play with swappable filters disguised as virtual camera equipment, Instagram shares retro-filtered photos to a community, while Snapseed gives mobile users fine control of photo editing on the go. That barely scratches the surface of iPhoneography. In a flooded marketplace, what else can an iOS photography app allow users to do?

Digiback is a recently released photography app that allows users to not only share pictures they've taken, but to also share their custom filters with other users. Not only can users create impressive photography effects for their own use, you can also share these effects with others, and then benefit from effects created by Digiback's community...

Improve your food iPhoneography with the Camera+ white balance lock

If you remember our last lesson in iPhone Photography, we learned a bit about white balance and how to control it using KitCam. In that lesson I mentioned using Camera+ as an app to control white balance. I thought in today's lesson we would extend our understanding and take a look at Camera+'s way.

In our last lesson, we looked at controlling white balance by setting the appropriate light source that was illuminating the scene (i.e. sunlight, fluorescent light, incandescent light, etc...) . With Camera+ we do it a little differently...

How to copy Instagram photos to Flickr

Instagram's exploding popularity is having long-time iPhoneography buffs pay notice and watch in horror as mainstream users cannot get enough of its filters and max 1080 pixel wide 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 Instagram photos 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.

White balance: the iPhone photographer’s little secret

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!

Instagram returns to original ad terms after fallout

Things have been pretty rough for Instagram here lately. Earlier this week, the photo sharing network announced an update for its TOS (or terms of service) that included talk of "advertising" and "your photos." Obviously, this didn't sit well with many of its users, and mayhem ensued.

To stop the wildfire, co-founder Kevin Systrom published a blog post assuring the community it was all a misunderstanding, and that Instagram would be changing the language in its TOS to clear things up. Now its reverted to the original terms to try and get everything back to normal...

Instagram app updated with new Mayfair filter and the usual bug fixes

Instagram has been taking a lot of heat this past week and while everything seems to almost be back to normal, what better way to remind everybody that Instagram is the best way to share underexposed waffle pictures than releasing a new filter?

Just about 10 days after launching the new Willow filter, the Instagram app has been updated with one new filter labeled Mayfair, as well as the usual bug fixes...

Flickr for iPhone gains better sharing features

Yahoo really seized an opportunity by giving its Flickr iOS app a much-needed love in last week's major version 2.0 update, didn't it? I mean, the app couldn't have arrived at a better time just as Facebook has suffered a major PR blow due to the public outcry concerning Instagram's new terms of service. Seven days later, Yahoo brings us a new Flickr update. Based on customer feedback, Flickr version 2.01.772 is now available for download, sporting several interesting new features missing in the previous release...

Camera+ finally gains full-res sharing

Camera+'s inability to share snaps at full resolution on Facebook has been ticking me off for some time. I prefer to share my images in full-res whenever possible, but the otherwise perfect Camera+ app stubbornly kept insisting on reducing my uploads to a paltry 1,024 pixels horizontally.

Thankfully, the annoying limitation is gone now. What's more, developer tap tap tap has also bumped up the quality a bit for Twitter, Message and web link sharing, meaning you’ll get higher quality shares even if you don’t change a thing.

The iPad version now does a better job handling atypical image formats and the team is already talking about the upcoming version 3.8, "which is right around the corner".

In addition to "a few other really cool things", this will be the update you've been waiting for, one that will finally converge the features in both iPhone and iPad version of the program...

Yahoo updates Flickr app with the obligatory Instagram-like filters

Following Instagram's update that added a new Willow filter and yesterday's big refresh of Twitter's iOS client that now lets you crop a photo and apply up to eight brand new filters before tweeting it out, Yahoo too has joined the fray by revamping its aging Flickr iOS client this morning. And guess what? The redesigned app also touts filters as Yahoo attempts to stay relevant in the social photography space. There are sixteen unique camera filters to choose from, twice as much as in Twitter's app (and also powered by Aviary). More features and screenies right after the break...

Twitter app update with Instagram-like filters now available for download

As I reported yesterday, Twitter has updated its Android app with the promised Instagram-competing photo filters, a first for the micro-blogging service seeking to supplant Instagram as your favorite photo sharing service. That, my friends, is a pretty tall order given Instagram's popularity, the Facebook backing and a growing number of new features Instagram's gaining. Be that as it may, Twitter has waited until this morning to roll out filters to its iOS client.

You're gonna love the ability to snap a scene, edit the photo with the filters supplied by Aviary and tweet out your work without jumping back and forth between Twitter and your go-to iPhoneography app. You can grab the free download right now from the App Store. More on other features right after the break...

Instagram gains enhanced camera, new Willow filter, nice little tweaks

iPhone photography fans, rejoice. Instagram today pushed an incremental update to its mobile app for iOS and Android, bringing a few improvements in the camera department, a brand new filter and more. The camera interface has been revamped with a nice Instagram-themed shutter button. The camera now displays a preview of the most recent photo on your camera roll and you can turn on an optional grid separately for the camera and the scale & crop screen.

You may also appreciate the enhanced Camera Roll picker as it now lets you quickly access the last photo taken, though that capability is inexplicably available only on the iPhone 5. More on other changes and the new Willow filter right after the break...

iPhoneography: back to the basics with KitCam and its powerful controls

I hope everyone had fun making abstract landscapes using the intentional camera movement (ICM) techniques from our last lesson. This week I decided to take a quick step back and return to the basics for a bit. I know many iPhone Photographers who are just starting to discover the creativity inside themselves might have never owned a camera before their iPhone. And just because your camera happens to be a phone doesn't mean that it operates any differently than this camera. My old Shur-Shot Jr!

I don't want to bore you details, but these ideas are important to understand as we begin to explore new concepts in future lessons. So bear with me and let's take a quick look at the way cameras work...