Top 5 Apps For iPhone Photography – Photo App Lounge With Mel Harrison
Welcome to our new Photo App Lounge section of theappwhisperer.com. This is a very small area on our site where we ask highly accomplished iPhone photographers what their top five photo apps are and why. Kicking us off today is Mel Harrison. We previously interviewed Mel in our A Day In The LIfe column, if you missed that you can read it here. Mel has always had an artistic outlet in her life, be it drawing, soft sculpture or textile art. Mel has seen her work exhibited around the world since, including one of her macro images projected onto a wall in New Zealand. Mel has been named Artist of the day at iPhoneArt and voted as Artist for the month of March.
We caught up with Mel in between shoots and asked her what her top five photo apps are, this is what she said…
Copyright Image – Mel Harrison ‘Don’t look at me I am hideous’
‘This image above, “Don’t look at me I am hideous” is an example of an image that used some of the apps below (and more) to create. It is a multi-layered image with many hours of work involved. Without each of these apps this image could not exist’.
Number 1 – 6×6
‘I have found my style works best in square format and 6×6 is my shooting app of choice. It’s simple and user friendly but the results are crisp and clear. It works really well on my macro work’.
Number 2 – Snapseed
‘I would be lost without Snapseed. It really is the one app I would never give up. It’s user-friendly interface and fantastic results have trumped any other similar app I have tried. When the updated the black and white settings a little while ago it really became my all encompassing editing app. I rarely step outside Snapseed for basic editing now days’.
Number 3 – Juxtaposer
Juxtaposer is essential to my artist pieces. Being able to mask off an image and save it as a stamp to use over and over again is the most appealing aspect of Juxtaposer. Being able to save a session and come back to it later is fantastic for busy people too because some masking can be very fiddly and that takes time to get right.
Number 4 – Image Blender
‘I would say Image Blender is used on 99.9% of my artwork. I guess I use it more as an opacity slider for effects from other apps. Apps such as perculator or shock my pic etc that do not have any control over intensity will get a run through Image Blender to tone it down a little, or a lot depending on the work. Some of my pieces will have 5 or 6 runs through Image Blender between apps to get it just right. I do use the blending modes occasionally when needed but a lot of the work I do in Image blender is simple normal mode blending with masking’.
Number 5 – Paint FX: Photo Effects Editor
‘If I could only chose one effects app then PaintFX would be it. For the very simple reason that is allows you to paint on the effects exactly where you want them to be. I use it a lot for highlights and brightness. The lift that can be given to an image by just brightening, even slightly, where the natural light falls can be the difference between a nice image and a WOW! Image. I also use PaintFX for backgrounds, painting over an image with a texture to create a blank canvas to import into Juxtaposer or Image Blender’.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
2 Comments
David
Great list of apps! And I love Mel’s image…wonderful!!
Robert Lancaster
Great list of apps and amazing artwork produced by Mel!