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Filed under: Fun, Photo, iPhone

Tiltshift Generator brings easy toy camera effects to the iPhone

by Jay Hathaway Oct 31st 2009

I'm not a photographer by any means (although I hear Download Squad's newest blogger, Sebastian, is!), and the iPhone's built-in camera isn't exactly the greatest piece of photography equipment around, but the TiltShift Generator iPhone app doesn't really care!

This neat little 99-cent app applies cool toy-camera (think 'dollhouse miniatures') effects and vignetting to any photo, and makes even the crummiest iPhone photographers look good. It can apply two styles of adjustable blur, some color controls and, of course, those hot-looking dark edges.

We've covered ways to fake a tilt-shift effect before on Download Squad - yes, you could just buy a special lens, but software can provide a cheaper approximation - but this is the first on-the-go option I've tried. iPhone features include applying effects to photos you've already taken, saving new photos you take with the app, and sharing via email or Twitter.

If you're not sure where to start with tiltshift photos, try shooting a cluster of objects from above - the creator of the app has done some great-looking stuff with houses and parking lots. Even if you're not too confident in your photographic abilities, shell out a dollar for this app and see what you can do. You might be surprised!

Tags: iPhone, photo, photo effects, PhotoEffects, tilt-shift, tiltshift

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Filed under: Photo, Utilities, iPhone

Mill Colour is an unbelievable free photo effects app for iPhone

by Jay Hathaway Oct 24th 2009

The Mill is an award-winning visual effects studio with offices in London and New York. It should go without saying that these guys know a thing or two about color. What's surprising, though, is that they're giving away a small chunk of that expertise for absolutely free in the form of an iPhone app. Mill Colour [iTunes link] can customize the colors of your photos using a bunch of tried-and-true preset effects, and it also has powerful manual color controls.

Even if you don't go beyond the prepackaged effects in Mill Colour, it's well worth checking out. I recommend the "bleached" and "noir" looks, especially. If you start to mess around with the manual side of Mill Colour, though, you'll quickly discover how powerful it is. You can fine-tune the saturation, gamma, gain and lift of each individual RGB channel, making sure your image looks precisely the way you want it to. Did I mention it's a free download?

Tags: color, effects, iphone, mill, mill colour, MillColour, photo

Filed under: Photo, Web services, Social Software

Dropico manages photos across multiple social networks

by Jay Hathaway Oct 7th 2009

If you're sick of uploading the same photos to 10 different sites, you'll love Dropico. It links up with several different social sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Photobucket, and lets you upload to all of them, or move existing images between accounts. You can even tweet photos from Twitpic or Yfrog from within Dropico. That's the "pic" part. The "drop" part comes from the site's easy drag n' drop interface.

Dropico supports creating and managing albums in some services, and importing either from your computer or elsewhere on the web. Dropico has an API, so other web apps will be able to take advantage of the service. A toolbar is in the works, too, so you'll be able to more easily save images you find on the web to your photo sharing accounts. Dropico is in private beta right now, with an email waiting list, so sign up now if you want to give it a try.

Tags: dropico, photo, sharing, SocialNetworking

Filed under: Photo, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity

Download Facebook and Flickr albums with Fotobounce

WindowsMacby Jay Hathaway Sep 4th 2009

It's easy enough to download individual photos from Facebook and Flickr, but neither site offers a way to download entire albums.

Fotobounce is an app for Mac and Windows that lets you quickly do just that, and organize your downloaded photos, too. It also has built-in face recognition, to make tagging those photos a lot easier.

You can also use Fotobounce to upload photos -- pre-tagged with the help of face-recognition -- to Facebook and Flickr. It could potentially be a real time-saver.

There's also a mobile version, so you can remotely access your photos from a BlackBerry or iPhone, and still keep them private.

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: download, face recognition, facebook, FaceRecognition, flickr, fotobounce, photo

Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Web

PicTreat effortlessly touches up the faces in your photos

by Jay Hathaway Aug 7th 2009

With the rise of social networking profiles and photo sharing sites, people are putting more photos of themselves online than ever. Retouching, Photoshopping and the infamous "MySpace angle" have all done wonders to make people look better in photos, and now we can add PicTreat to that list. It's a fast, easy way to give yourself a perfect complexion ... on the web, anyway.

PicTreat removes red eye and blemishes and adjusts brightness/contrast and color levels. A basic user of Photoshop could do the same thing, but Pictreat does it very quickly, and then gives you the option to upload the photo to several social sites. You can use PicTreat without registering, but you can also get an account, or sign in using Facebook Connect or MySpace.

Tags: facebook, myspace, photo, retouching, social-networking, utilities

Filed under: Design, Photo, Web services

ColorSuckr extracts color schemes from photos

by Jay Hathaway Aug 7th 2009

ColorSuckr uses photos to generate color palettes you can use in your artwork and designs. You can choose from one of the photos on the main page, search Flickr, or input the URL of any webpage to find source material. ColorSuckr automatically finds the main photo on any Flickr page you enter.

There's also a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser's toolbar. Clicking it gives you a choice of any image on the current page. Once you've got an image, ColorSuckr will give you a draggable selection of colors, complete with hex, web safe and RGB info so you can get them exactly right in your designs. It's a unique way to get a good palette, and especially comes in handy if you're working on a layout that has to match a photo.

Tags: color, colorsuckr, design, palette, photo

Filed under: Photo, Productivity, Web services, Adobe

Adobe discontinues free desktop Photoshop, pushes Photoshop.com

by Jay Hathaway Aug 7th 2009

Adobe is ditching the free version of Photoshop, the Album Starter Edition, and promoting its web-based version of Photoshop at Photoshop.com instead. The move is sure to annoy devotees of desktop apps, who now have to shell out the money for Photoshop Elements, which is now the cheapest (supported) desktop version of Photoshop. On the other hand, the web app can be used from any machine, and offers 2GB of free storage.

Storage is upgradeable for a fee, and there's an AIR app to handle syncing between Photoshop.com and your desktop. Adobe's also pushing a "plus membership" to Photoshop.com, with a few extra features, including templates. Photoshop.com is extremely easy to use for basic stuff like tinting a photo, adjusting levels, or removing red eye, but if you're a slightly more advanced user, the upgrade to Elements might be worth your money.

[via CNET]

Tags: adobe, image, photo, photoshop, photoshop.com

Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity

SmillaEnlarger makes images bigger, but maintains quality

WindowsMacby Jay Hathaway Aug 6th 2009

SmillaEnlarger is a single-purpose app that enlarges images without leaving them blocky and indistinct. Its algorithm obviously isn't going to do a perfect job of filling in the details, but it draws smart curves that actually look good at large sizes. Just as importantly, it eliminates the artifacts and pixelation that usually show up in enlarged images.

The display features the original image and the enlarged result side-by-side, so you can easily see which part of the source image you've selected, and you can crop and reposition as necessary. You can adjust the size of your output image either by using a slider or by entering the target dimensions. SmillaEnlarger is not a full-featured image editor, but there are a few options for adjusting sharpness and noise. It's a free app, but it would be worth paying for to anyone who has to manage a lot of frustratingly tiny photos.

Tags: enlarger, image, photo, smillaenlarger

Filed under: Photo, Yahoo!, Social Software

Flickr's search function gets a facelift

by Jay Hathaway Aug 5th 2009

Delicious isn't the only Yahoo-owned service to get a makeover this week. Flickr also added some new search features, which should make it easier to browse the site and find what you're looking for. The layout of search results has changed, giving users the ability to resize thumbnails and click for more info without opening a photo page. The results also automatically resize to fit your browser window, which is good news for users with extremely large or extremely small displays.

There's also a new sidebar, displaying related groups, photographers, tag clusters and places. My new favorite addition, although it may seem like a small thing, is that Flickr now actually tells you which search results it's showing you. Refining searches under the old system wasn't very transparent, but now you know whether you're in someone's photostream or searching all of Flickr, whether you're searching for Creative Commons images or not, and more. All in all, the new search page is a big win for usability.

Tags: flickr, photo, photos, search, thumbnails

Filed under: Design, Fun, Photo, Utilities, Web services, Web

3DSee is 3D modeling made easy on the web

by Jay Hathaway Jul 11th 2009

3DSee is a way to generate 3D models of real-life objects without doing a ton of complex drawing and tracing. You just need to take several digital photos of the object, and 3DSee can generate a greyscale "bump map" that it can use to render your object in three dimensions. Right now you can just get a low-res model textured from one of your images, but the software actually creates a higher-quality fully-textured model that might be available for download in the future.

3DSee's "coming soon" features look pretty impressive. In addition to high-def mesh models, the site also plans to support Second Life output files. If I'm reading that correctly, it would definitely save Second Life users a lot of time and trouble when it comes to getting their favorite real-life objects into the game as models. Although I'm sure it will take some time for users to get the hang of taking the right photos to get a good render, the concept behind 3DSee is very strong. A lot of non-artists would love to experiment with 3D, and 3DSee looks like a great chance to do that.

Tags: 3-D, 3dsee, model, photo, rendering, second-life

Filed under: Photo, Social Software, web 2.0

Flickr2Twitter: Twitpic killer?

by Jay Hathaway Jul 5th 2009


Flickr has launched its own service - Flickr2Twitter - for sending images to Twitter, and at first glance, it looks like it could compete head-on with existing Twitter photo services like Twitpic and Yfrog. Flickr's system is a bit different than the others, though, and doesn't yet have application support from a major Twitter client. Taking that into consideration, I think there's a good case that these apps will be able to coexist, with Flickr2Twitter dominating amongst existing Flickr users, and Twitpic or Yfrog favored by more casual photographers.

Everyone knows Flickr is a big player in the online photo game, but not everyone has a Flickr account or wants to sign up for one. While existing Flickr users will probably adopt Flickr2Twitter, folks who don't want to sign up can use Twitpic with their existing Twitter logins. Flickr2Twitter also handles uploads via email, so you need to send your photos to your account's email address to post them (the text of the tweet goes in the subject line). For mobile users, this works, but it's not as easy as Twitpic-ing or Yfrogging from your Twitter client, and some of the most popular clients support those services. From the desktop, Flickr2Twitter has the advantage: you can Twitter a Flickr photo very quickly by clicking the "blog this" button that you've probably already noticed on your photo pages.

Tags: flickr, photo, sharing, twitpic, twitter, yfrog

Filed under: Audio, Photo, Video, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Pixelpipe pushes video from your Android handset

by Grant Robertson Jun 7th 2009


Pixelpipe defies definition a bit, but basically it's a mo-blogging / mobile micro-blogging tool that satisfies nearly every sharing feature I've ever wanted from my mobile since the first time I picked up a smartphone.

When I mention Pixelpipe to people they usually say, "Oh, like Ping.fm." Yes, yes, Ping.fm lets you update a ton of services but, Ping doesn't do video or audio -- although they've been threatening to do video for a while. On the other hand, while Pixelpipe does text, audio, photo and video, until recently there wasn't a convenient way to get your video to Pixelpipe while on the move.

Friday Pixelpipe launched a new version for Android phones, taking advantage of the newly released video recording features in Android 1.5. When I read the anouncement, I realized -- as much as I've pimped out Pixelpipe on my own Twitter feed -- I've never actually posted about it on Download Squad. For shame!

With clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android, you can send quick updates, longer blog posts, just-snapped photos, just-taken video, and audio snippets to over 75 different social services. All your favorites are there (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, 12seconds, etc.. ) along with some services you might not have used -- If you can name all the logos on the PixelPipe list, you're doing better than I am.

Added to that, Pixelpipe will do traditional, non-social sharing like uploading to any ftp server, email any address or post to just about any blog.

Pixelpipe clients for all platforms are available for free at PixelPipe's site, and the updated Android client is available via the Android Marketplace from your phone.

Tags: audio, microblogging, moblogging, photo, pixelpipe, twitter, video

Filed under: Design, Fun, Photo, Web services, Web

Psykopaint is an insane online photo painting tool

by Jay Hathaway Jun 3rd 2009


Psykopaint is a new kind of online painting tool that lets you add paint effects to a photo using the photo's original colors. It's extremely easy to achieve striking -- or even creepy -- results by fiddling with Psykopaint's sliders, and the whole thing runs quite smoothly for a Flash app.

Using Psykopaint is as easy as uploading a photo and messing with some of the effects sliders on the side to adjust your brush. Don't worry that there's no way to pick colors, your brush will automatically grab them from your photo. There are sliders for both minimum and maximum, which makes your brush unpredictable and the result more organic. If you set a wide range for brush size, for example, each stroke could end up being a completely different width.

To see what some very serious Psykopainters have come up with, check out the site's gallery. There's some strange, beautiful, and spooky artwork there.

Psykopaint is currently free, but a premium desktop version is in the works.

Tags: art, artistic, flash, image, paint, photo, psykopaint

Filed under: Photo, News, Web

Can software determine the aesthetic value of a photograph?

by Jay Hathaway May 21st 2009


Professional art critics endlessly debate the merits of various photographs -- heck, that's the entire premise of a photography contest! -- but what if a computer could reliably do the same thing? Researchers at Penn State put together a photo ranking algorithm that you can now test for yourself on the web. It's called Acquine, and it's based on data from large numbers of human ratings that determined what people find aesthetically pleasing in a photo.

For best results, give Acquine a high-resolution color photo, at least 600x600 pixels. It will give the photo an unbiased rating between 0 and 100. There's a library of the photos people have already uploaded, and you check them out in rank order to see if the algorithm gives the same results you would have. It's definitely an interesting exercise, and a thought-provoking comment on the challenges of replicating human aesthetic judgments through software.

Tags: acquine, aesthetics, photo, photography, rating

Filed under: Photo, Search, web 2.0

Quicker Flickr browsing with LiteFlick

by Jay Hathaway Apr 6th 2009


LiteFlick is a fast way to see the most interesting Flickr photos of the day, and display Flickr search results in a nice-looking layout that makes it easy to find what you're looking for. It uses a jQuery lightbox plugin so you don't have to load a Flickr page to see a larger version and a caption of each photo.

Flickr's search results are great, and very detailed, but all the information they give you makes it tough to browse through pages of results looking for something you'll know when you see it. That's what makes LiteFlick's 10 x 8 grid of photos so useful. You can scan through 80 photos in seconds, and easily get more details when you want them. The crucial feature LiteFlick is missing is a Creative-Commons-only search, which would make finding photos for blog posts a whole lot faster.

Tags: flickr, lightflick, photo, photos, search

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