jlfiala

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Artistic iPhone Photography Tutorial.

Over several months I've been asked about my workflow and about what apps I use to create some of my iPhone artistry. So, I thought I would attempt to post a blog about it. The image above was originally taken with my iPhone while on a recent visit to Venice. Below is the unedited photo taken with my iPhone.

If you look closely, you will see one of our workshop instructors, Marilyn Sholin, and her husband, Mickey, standing across the way, taking a picture herself. As you can see, it's just an ordinary photograph taken with an iPhone.

The first thing that I did, and almost always do, is take the image into Snapseed, crop and straighten if necessary and then run HDRscape on the image.

As you can see I reduced the filter strength a bit, but running this filter really brings out the detail.
Under this same filter, I also increased the smoothing slider just a bit.

I then applied this filter by hitting the check mark button on the lower right. My next step with to use the tune filter in Snapseed.

Using the Tune filter, I typically will increase the Ambiance by a little, the saturation-a little, and the warmth. See above. I apply this filter the same as before by hitting the check mark to apply. Lastly, in Snapseed I will use the Details filter to increase the sharpening and structure. I particularly like the structure part of this filter. It just brings so much clarity to the image. See below.

My next step is to make an outline of the image. There are two filters that can be used for this. ToonPaint and PencilFX. I chose the ToonPaint app for this project. And when doing so, I save immediately after making the outline. You have the option in the app to fill it in with color, but for this tutorial I just need the outline.

In addition, I typically decrease the edges slider. I then hit the Share button and save to my camera roll.

My next step is to take the earlier image (before the outline) and bring it into iColorama. The first step is to run it through the Effects/Flow filter.

I'm usually fairly happy with the default settings in Flow, except that I reduce the Opacity a bit. I then hit the apply button in the upper right corner.

The next step is to use the Style/Simplify filter.

I will usually the default of this filter as well, except that I also lower the opacity a bit.

I'm pretty satisfied with this so far, although, sometimes I will also use the Adjust/EQ filter to brighten it up a bit. However, I didn't think it needed it this time. Apply and then save this image to your camera roll.

The next step is to take this saved image into Glaze app. You will need to experiment with the different filters in this app to see what works the best, and you can even save and mix the filters if you want. In this particular, I was pretty satisfied with the last of the second groupings. See below.

For the most part, I like this a lot. I do think that the sky is a bit harsh, so I will take this image into Repix to soften that sky.

The two filters I used to soften the sky was the Daubs filter and then the Charcoal filter. This I saved to my camera roll.

The next step is to take this image and the outline image into Superimpose App.

First load your background image, which is the most recent saved image right out of Repix. Secondly, you need to load the Foreground image which is the Outlined image. Hit Choose, then Transform and then the ScaleFit button in the upper right hand corner noted by a cross symbol. See below.

From this point you can choose your blending mode. I happen to think that the Multiply blending mode looks best, however I do reduce the transparency a bit.

I like the way this looks, so I flatten the image by using the upper left corner button, and then I save the image to my camera roll.

The final process is to use the PhotoToaster app. PhotoToaster is probably my favorite app and I generally finish all my images with this app and/or Distressed FX.

I will usually put this app through its paces, because what looks good on one image may not always look good on another. The preset that I liked for this image is the Amplify filter under the Deluxe presets. I don't particularly like the border, so I then bring up the borders filters by clicking on the v at the lower left hand corner and choose No Border.

I very much like the way this looks, so I think I'm finished with this, although I will on many occasions, add a texture and then take my images into Distressed FX to add a little texture.

So here is the finished piece again.

If you have found this tutorial helpful-let me know, as I will consider doing others.

Happy Apping!

Jane

Saturday, March 29, 2014

The Red Barn in the Woods

This is a barn that I originally took with my iPhone 5 with the camera app Fotor HDR. After transferring to my laptop, I opened it in Photoshop CS6 to resize to 11x14 at 200 dpi. I also do levels and saturation changes at this time. Then I transferred to Corel Painter X3. I did several painted iterations, an initial paint, a muck-up paint, and an emerge paint. In addition to saving in the native Painter riff files, I also save them as jpegs so that I can work with them in Photoshop. I will typically bring all three iterations into Photoshop each with their own layer and play with blending modes, adjustment layers, color changes etc. in this particular image, I used Melissa Gallo's canvas texture and masked out any unwanted areas and then added a Photoshop canvas texturizer in the filter gallery.