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5 Awesome Android Photo Apps!

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Like I have said a million times before on this blog, I cannot get enough of photo editing! I like to sit back on the couch and edit some photos on my phone, I find it relaxing. Today I wanted to share with you some of my favorite Android apps for photography and photo editing. I edited a couple of my photos to give you an idea of what is possible with each of the apps below, but many of them have a wide range of features, so look around and experiment!

Magic Hour Photo

With Magic Hour, you can choose from numerous downloadable filters to edit your photos. You can even create your own filters. There's a lot of creative control with this app like changing the curves, contrast, brightness, frames, vignettes, and textures.

Pudding Camera

Pudding Camera is a fun little app because you get to choose from a few different cameras to shoot with like a fisheye, action sampler, panorama, and your basic snap shot. Then after you have chosen which camera you'd like to shoot with, you then choose which film filter you'd like to use. I think the action sampler is a lot of fun!

Instagram

Of course everyone and their grandmother knows about Instagram, but it still deserves to be on this list because it is just that good. And fun! The filters are so great with this app. You won't get a lot of creative control but that doesn't mean you can't layer them with other apps. My favorite thing about this app is the social networking side. I love seeing my friends photos before they make it to Facebook/blogs. It's like a sneak peek!

Streamzoo

Streamzoo is much like Instagram in that is a social photo app, however you have more control. You get to choose from several filters, borders, etc.

Mini Instax Cam

With the instax app, you can simulate Fujifilm Instax Mini photos. There's not a lot of control with this app but you do get to choose from a few filters. All photos have the instax border and you can change the color of them and draw on your photos like old-school polaroids. I really love this app, you get that instax look with having to buy an instax camera and film!

All of these apps are compatible starting with Android version 2.2 (and a couple work with 2.1), and of course all will work with ice cream sandwich.

Fisheye Lens Adapter Review

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I've had the extreme pleasure of working alongside one of my favorite photo companies, Photojojo! They sent me their fisheye lens to review! To start off, yes these photos are supposed to be distorted, if you are not familiar with fisheye photography. It's a way to capture 180 hemispherical degrees of awesomeness! That's the fun in it! This is a lens adapter, so I got a 58mm adapter ring to attach to my 18-55mm kit lens. Depending which lens you choose to shoot with, you may need to choose a different size thread for your lens. Photojojo has a great handy-dandy lens thread size finder tool to help you out with this, just pick "Not Sure? Choose Me!" from the dropdown menu on the product page to figure out what size you need! I use a Canon Digital Rebel XT (I know, in the DSLR world my camera is ANCIENT), but this is compatible with other DSLRs.

You lose most of the fisheye distortion when all the way zoomed in.

The first three photos I edited in post. But I want to show you what the photos look like SOOC (straight out of camera). As you will see over the next few photos the lens is soft but I really love the character it brings to the photos. I think the blessing and the curse of digital photography is that it's too perfect. This lens brings back character and imperfection that is beloved in film.

Zoomed out you can get the famous Louisville Slugger bat in the frame!
And the Clark Memorial Bridge! Look at that sun flare!

This lens also has some great macro capabilities, which I was very impressed with. If I'm going to be honest, this was my favorite! I have never worked with a macro lens before and this was FUN. I loved the abstract look of this leaf:

These two I edited in Instagram! I'm so excited it's finally on Android! (Follow me: kellythepsg)

Overall, I think this is very fun lens, and well-made, quite sturdy. You can get the fisheye effect on your photos without spending a ton of money-- the Canon fisheye lens is VERY expensive. Don't always expect perfect photos, there's some very minor chromatic aberration.

Some outtakes. No, I couldn't resist taking some photos of my kitties with the fisheye! Crazy cat-lady here!

We call this Gizmo's MySpace pic.
Of course Gizmo had to mark the lens. And Willow in the background probably pondering biting Gizmo's tail.
Willow! She's sniffing the lens.

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you to Photojojo! I had so much fun with this lens and I definitely recommend you all pick it up for your photographic arsenal, it's such a fantastic value!

Photoshop CS6 New Feature: Content Aware Move

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Adobe got a lot of folks taking about Photoshop again when they unveiled the original content-aware tools in Photoshop CS5, and since then have continued to flesh out the uses and feature set for this oft buzzed about feature. Photoshop CS6 will continue to add to this legacy, as now you can look forward to performing some content-aware moves! Check the sneak peek video below from Adobe to see for yourself.

5 Excellent Photoshop Movie Poster Tutorials

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One of my favorite things to do is go to the cinema and get lost in a great movie. I worked in a movie theater for a good portion of my teenage years, and I always loved seeing some of the cool poster designs the studios would come up with. Like most of us, I'd collect some of the posters of my favorite movies. If you're like me, sometimes you'd think of alternate designs that would awesome if only the studio would do it. Well, with the power of Photoshop, now you can do it yourself!

I may do a tutorial for this someday on my site, but for this subject these tend to be kind of long, and the format of my tutorials lends itself more to short and medium length types of things, so for now I've gone out and rounded up a variety of cool tutorials from around the 'net. So get your creative juices flowing and put on your movie studio hat, I'm sure you'll come up with something awesome to share!

Create an Action Packed Movie Poster in Photoshop
It doesn't get much more comprehensive than this. Mario Sanchez Nevado has put together an excellent tutorial that will touch upon a good number of different techniques. Lots of composing and photo manipulation is used here, make sure you have plenty of time set aside before delving into this one.

Design a Grungy Western Movie Poster in Photoshop
If you like westerns, this design will appeal to you. Not as quite as complicated as the action movie poster above, but still produces a very nice result.

Create Sci-Fi Poster Art
I had to include a sci-fi themed one in here, and this one does a nice job of using blend modes and filters to create a cool atmospheric poster.

Make a Retro Space Themed Poster in Photoshop
If you've followed my blog much, you know I love almost anything with a retro look to it. This tutorial will show you how to design the poster and give it that awesome aged appearance!

Create a Dark, Creepy Movie Poster
This is probably the quickest to accomplish of those listed. It focuses more on the typographical elements of movie poster design, which is course a very important piece to the puzzle.

That's it for now, happy designing!

Adobe Photoshop CS6 – Download the Free Beta Version

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It's almost that time again, for Adobe to unleash a new version of everyone's favorite image editing tool upon us. But before that happens, you can play with it for free and test out all the cool new features Adobe has added! I'll have more to add on the new features in a future post, but for now, grab the download at your leisure here: Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

Here is a quick rundown of some of the new stuff:

-Updated UI with some engine improvements for quicker editing with some of the more intensive tools, like liquify.
-More content aware stuff, Adobe continues to flesh out one of the most talked about features of CS5.
-Some of the core tools have been improved or redesigned, such as the crop tool.

And here is a feature list from Adobe which you can download here.

General
• Dark UI
• UI Consistency
• Properties Panel (Adjustments/Masks/3D)
• Lighting Effects Gallery
• Presets (Migrate Presets and Import/Export)
• Crop (all new and redesigned)
• Patch Tool w/Content-Aware Option
• Content-Aware Move Tool (formerly the Remix Tool)
• Scripted Patterns (Fill/Pattern)
• Contact Sheet II plug-in back in app
• PDF Presentation back in the app
• File Import Image from Device now includes ImageKit scanning and camera acquisition support
• Minibridge UI tweaks—Filmstrip Mode
• MENA Support (Middle-East and North African text support)
• Rich Cursor information throughout the app (i.e. Crop, Transform, Move, Vectors,
etc.)

GPU/Performance
• GPU Warp Transform
• GPU Puppet Warp Preview
• GPU Liquify—Button for last Liquify used and Cmd + F works
• GPU Oil Paint (Pixel Bender) Artistic Filter
• Adaptive Wide Angle
• Lighting Effects and Blur Galleries
• Background Save, Auto-Save and Auto Recover

Photographers
• ACR 7—Local controls for White Balance and Noise Reduction, new black/white and highlight/shadow controls
• Blur Gallery (Tilt-Shift, Iris and Field Blur)
• Video (No longer limited to Extended)—Video Group Layers
• Adaptive Wide Angle—Includes support for panoramas!
• Face-Aware Mask Generation—Change to Color Range
• Intelligent Auto-Correction

Designers
• Type Styles
• Type Menu (Insert Lorem Ipsum JDI)
• New Dictionaries
• Improved Font Rendering—Gamma setting in Color Settings
• Pixel Accuracy/Snap to Pixels
• New Vector Layers
• Styles on Groups
• Stack of TOP JDI’s specifically for designers
• Layer Search

Painting
• Erodible Tips
• Airbrush Tips
• Brush Rotation for Static Tips
• Oil Paint Filter (Pixel Bender)
• New PRESETS!
• JDI’s specifically for painters
• Painting Performance, CPU and GPU
• Default Tablet Pose Parameters for Mouse Film Industry
• 10-bit Monitor Support
• 3D LUTs, color adjustments

Printing
• Completely Redesigned Print Dialog
• Print Selected Area is back and the selection can be adjusted in the Print Dialog.
• “Edit” button added for the description field in the Print Dialog.
• When using Photoshop Manages Colors, the list of profiles is now filtered to hide profiles that are inappropriate for your currently selected printer.
• Users can change the “preview well” background color in the Print Dialog to better suit their needs.

Check it out and have fun!

Easy Canvas Prints

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I recently got this gorgeous canvas from Easy Canvas Prints. It has not yet found its home yet in my new place but I just had to tell you all how pleased I am with it. At first, I was little nervous about having one of my photos printed, they're like my little babies and if they weren't going to be done right I didn't want them printed at all. Especially this photo from my favorite photos post. You know it's one of my favorite photos I've ever taken because it means so much to me. The light and tones were edited just the way I wanted them to be. But I really had no reason to be so nervous, Easy Canvas Prints did an absolutely superb job with my photo. The tones were spot on, the quality and the build were so much better than I expected.

c/o Easy Canvas Prints

I decided to go with the image wrap which looks great with its chunky edges. The people at Easy Canvas Prints were very accommodating and answered every question I had promptly. I'm so pleased with my very first professional print/canvas and I encourage you all to give them a try if you're ever considering a canvas print.

Free Vintage Photo Frames

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I found these great vintage photo frames from Besotted Blog through everyone's new favorite website, Pinterest (follow me)! These are just what I was looking for. I wanted some of my photos that looked a little aged to have even more character and these are perfect for the job.

Here's one of my photos that I re-edited from my Favorite Photos post used with the square frame:

Enjoy!

My Favorite Photos from 2011

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Most of them, well all of them actually, are from my trip to Las Vegas. It was one of the best trips I've ever taken. My husband and I are obsessed with everything Las Vegas, it is where we got married after all. But this trip was a little dream for me. I finally got to get off the strip and see more of the great state of Nevada, like Area 51! I promise I'm not weird, though I am sure my family and friends might say differently. I've got this obsession with everything related to Area 51, I watch every special I see on TV about it. I love the conspiracies, the secrecy, the probably not-so-anatomically correct aliens if they were to exist. Or are they? I also live nowhere near the desert, so getting to see it up close was a treat. I know most people love the beach, but the desert may be my favorite terrain.

This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. Every time I look at it I feel as though I am walking on the pavement again; I can feel the sun, the emptiness. I love this long stretch of the Extraterrestrial Highway, there is no one there and it was just us among nature.

Ah, the townsfolk of Rachel, NV. The hangout in Rachel is, of course, the Little A'Le'Inn. A place where the "crazies", ahem, the UFO enthusiasts like me congregate. I wish that other enthusiasts were there so we could swap stories and I could ask questions. But I had to ask the one man working there that day, which I didn't want to as I'm sure he's tired of talking about possible alien life in his small town of 98.

I noticed that the door to the men's room did not say "Maliens" like it does in the movie "Paul." So I then learned that "Paul" was not actually shot at the real Little A'Le'Inn, it was shot in New Mexico. However producers from the movie traveled to the real Little A'Le'Inn to buy all sorts of alien-themed knick knacks and to take pictures for the set. And now that I have seen "Paul" again since going to Rachel there is a bit of a difference in the two, but kudos to the set designers.

There's nothing really to do in Rachel, the entire town is made up of 20-30 something trailers, even the church. I believe my husband and I deemed ranching the main trade there, and as we were leaving the townsfolk asked if we'd like to stick around to watch them castrate a horse. We declined. The sun was rapidly setting at this point and we did not want to get caught out in the middle of the desert at night, and we still had to go to look at the gate of Area 51 itself and find the infamous "black mailbox." I could not take pictures of the gate to Area 51, it's against the law and I didn't feel like going to jail that day. But we found out that it is true, you WILL BE FOLLOWED if you go anywhere near it.

We ended up getting caught out in the darkness in the desert anyway and almost hit a cow that was standing in the road, as the land surrounding the tiny towns on the Extraterrestrial Highway is an open ranch. But, there are no people, and there are no lights. Nothing. Just total darkness. I've never seen the night sky so clear, so pure, like the sky itself was about to swallow you. We pulled over and stargazed for awhile, catching a glimpse of two shooting stars. Such a magical experience.

*Bonus Photo* of something I found on one the poles of the Extraterrestrial Highway sign that made me laugh:

"Kristen Stewart,
Devon Green really wants to do mushrooms with you on top a mountain, call him..."

High quality postcard printing.

Happy New Year!

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I just wanted to quickly update everyone on the status of PhotoshopGirl.com. No, I haven't forgotten about you guys.

I'm excited that I'll soon be in a position to get back to working on the site a lot more. I didn't anticipate such an extended hiatus, but I'll be back and ready to create tutorials that you hopefully enjoy in short order. I also plan to start posting about a bit more varied topics, such as DIY projects related to photography.

I will also be adding some tutorials on an often requested topic, Photoshop Elements. Lots of readers have Elements instead of Photoshop, so hopefully I'll give those of you some helpful tutorials as well.

Happy New Year!

Have fun!

Free textures!

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I just came across something totally awesome...free textures! Lost and Taken has a texture gallery filled to the brim with high res textures ranging from watercolor, to grungy, scratched, bokeh, film, and paper. And like I said, they are free to use for any personal and commercial works. Can't wait to start using these! Enjoy!