Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Building the World



Camera App: Cartoonatic


Additional Apps used:
Iris - to crop a 1:1 part from the original 800x600px photo made with Cartoonatic and to resize the new picture to 1936x1936px. Then I used "Comic Scene" in Iris to enhance the comic effect of the picture.
Iris - to open and resize one of my texture files of horse hair that I initially made with the Hipstamatic on Cano Cafenol film, but like I did not want the Cano border I cut this off in Iris and resized the picture to 1936x1936px.
Blender - to blend the texture file with the comic file. Settings: Overlay, 100%, original file loaded left, texture file loaded right.
FilterStorm3 - to create a 25% white border. I prefer FilterStorm for that task because it is really adding the border, not just overlaying part of the picture with it. In this case I wanted to preserve that little detail of a puzzle piece laying on the edge of the picture which would have been lost under any other frame.
A+ Signature - to add my copyright watermark.


This afternoon my daughter was finishing a 3D globe puzzle that I bought her yesterday. For one time she did not protest as I grabbed my iPhone to make some pics so I took my profit out of this to make use of the Cartoonatic app. Sadly the app saves photos only in 800x600px resolution but it's no problem to boost resolution with apps like Iris. All in all it was big fun to make this picture. 

Friday, July 1, 2011

Two Friends


Camera App: iCameraHDR

Additional Apps used:
iCameraHDR - using it a second time to create a tonemapped b/w version of the first HDR picture.
Blender - to blend the color HDR with the b/w HDR, 50/50, normal mode. This was done to obtain a less saturated HDR picture.
FilterStorm3 - to crop a square shaped picture from the original rectangular photo. I really love the 1:1 format.
VintageScene - to create a grunge picture using canvas #7 (paper). Image Age set to full left - Fade Out, Image Strength and Texture Strength set to full right, no border.
FilterStorm3 - now the most delicate work on this picture started. I opened the grunge layer saved in VintageScene, then added the 50% desaturated layer from Blender as a second exposure. I now carefully erased the bikes from the grunge layer to bring them out in color over the grunge background. I love FilterStorm for that job because it allows very precise work even on the tiny screen of an iPhone. The only disadvantage I see is that one cannot save the file with the layers to get back to it later if one had no time to complete the work in one time. After I was satisfied with the result I applied the filter and saved the resulting picture. I then created a 20% white border on it and saved it again.
Pic Grunger - to give my picture an aged grunge look. Settings: Effects: aged - Style: after hours - Strength - slider to full left (0) - Texture: original.
TouchRetouch - for minor corrections.
A+Signature - for copyright watermark.

This picture is based on one of the photos that I made of my friend Jean-Pierre's converted Fat Boy and my Fat Bob during a break on last Sunday's ride through the Belgian Ardennes. I really enjoyed creating it.