The Cool Cam App

One of the perks of blogging about iPhone photography is getting to try an app for FREE!   I just downloaded The Cool Cam app.  It offers a simple interface. You can either capture an image with the camera or import an existing one from you camera roll.  To experiment with The Cool Cam, I imported this shot of a rose.

There are five filters to choose from





After you choose the filter of choice you select “Use” which takes you to another screen where you can make some more adjustments to either Brightness and Contrast or Saturation on the Remix filter.

I’m partial to the Kali, Luna and Remix filters.  Below are a couple of the finished images.

Using Luna filter (above)

Using Remix filter (above) 
The black and white tones are beautiful – for this alone I may be visiting this app again and again. 
Regardless of the start size, the image is saved at 2048px by 2048px.  The sharing feature includes email, Twitter, Save to Camera Roll, Instagram. 
I like the interface a lot and with a few added features (maybe tilt shift blur, a sharpening slider this app could come in handy!) 

App Breakdown No. 2–Big Photo

An app I use to resize photos on my iPad (or iPhone) is Big Photo.  There’s an excellent and detailed review over at Life in LoFi by Marty Yawnick and more information on the developer’s website.

I’m happy with the results, but for this App Breakdown I wanted to compare the Big Photo image side by side with an image resized using Photoshop Elements. 

For my sample image I started with a photo I took on my iPhone with an original size of 2508 pixels x 2401 pixels (after it was cropped).  I resized it to 6143 pixels by 5881 pixels using the Big Photo app.   I then took the same image and resized it in Photoshop Elements to the exact same dimensions.

Like Marty, I sampled a portion of the enlarged photo to see the difference in quality up close (Portion in white square shows the area of the photo I enlarged)

Below is a close-up of the image resized in Big Photo

And here is the same portion resized in Photoshop Elements

I don’t see much difference. 

You can also use Big Photo to reduce the size of an image and you can set specified dimensions.  It’s a Keeper for me!

App Breakdown No. 1 – Cortex Camera

I’ve been wanting to take another look at all the Photo and Art apps I have on my iPhone and iPad (I lost count at 300!)  I’ve also deleted nearly 200 – you know the ones that promise great results but deliver mediocre ones!
Starting with my iPad I’m going to just address each app as it appears on my device and see what I can find out out about it and share that with you.
The first is Cortex Camera.  I was lucky to get it when it was free for one day.  I was interested in the promise of less noise in low-light conditions.  The regular price is $2.99. 
Life in LoFi had a great article about it recently, “What Exactly Does Cortex Camera Do?”  After reading it I understood why the images aren’t always clear and what the app is doing when it says “exposing”.  The app is actually capturing over 100 frames of video and then combining them to make one still image with the best exposure.
Here is an image of my keyboard taken in the late afternoon with shutters closed.   
Native iPhone 4S Camera

Below is an enlarged portion of the photo above - notice all the noise!

Below is the photo taken immediately afterwards in the same lighting conditions using the Cortex Camera.  It was taken from the same distance, although it does look like it was taken from closer range.  Note the actual size of the iPhone native camera photo was 7.99 MP and the Cortex Camera photo was 8.29 MP!

And here’s the big difference – check out the enlargement. 

One of the drawbacks is that because it’s taking a video and then combining the frames, you have to have a steady hand and obviously a moving subject wouldn’t be a good candidate. It also takes a while to process, so if you need to fire off a few shots quickly, switch to another app.  There is an “align” setting which when turned off shows the movement of the subject, so in that respect it may work a bit like a slow shutter app.  I’ll keep that in mind when I experiment more with this one. 
This one’s a Keeper!