Mobile Photography & Art – My Top Five Apps by Maria Cecilia de São Thiago from São Paulo, Brazil
We are revitalising our Top Five Apps section to our Photo App Lounge column. This a section within TheAppWhisperer where we ask highly accomplished mobile photographers and artists to list their top five apps and to explain why they have selected them.
Kicking us off today is highly accomplished mobile artist Maria Cecilia de São Thiago from São Paulo, Brazil enjoy! (foreword by Joanne Carter).
To read others from this series, please go here.
All photos ©Maria Cecilia de São Thiago
“As an assumed iPhoneography junkie, with more than 950 applications downloaded on my iPhone 7plus, and the vast majority of it for image editing, it’s pretty much impossible for me to list only 5 apps I use the most.
Even because my work comes down to a very own editing form, where I transfer the first editing result of an application to another application, in an endless sequence that often results in more than 50 images until it is finished.
Editing an image in an application, saving it, and then opening it in another application, in a way that results in a kind of unique identity, is my way of working.
There for my recommendation is that you should not be afraid to test all the applications and techniques, that’s how I act.
I am sure you’ll surely find the one App that fits to you! No better way to find out what to like best, then to just go right in and have fun !!
Today I’ll NOT talk about:
Snapseed – for the basic edition
Photoshop Express – for reducing noise
DistressedFX – for the all awesome textures
Slow Shutter Cam – for speed effects that you can typically only get with a DSLR
SKRWT – When you need to correct the perspective of a photo
No… !! 😉 Today I will talk about the applications that I have used the most, and those that will be intensely studied in the new course, which in partnership with Renato Gaiofato @regaiofato, I will give to those interested in everything that can be done nowadays with a smartphone and a tablet, mainly in relation to photography & video.
It will be a very intense exchange of information with several guests giving lectures, and at the end of the course, we’ll have an exhibition in the art gallery @espaco_ophicina of our greatest printer in São Paulo, Brazil Lucrécia Couso @lucreciacouso.
As I always have said, for me is very important to use applications that do not decrease the resolution of the image by generating a pixelised file. Unfortunately, the one downside of various apps are that they doesn’t save your photos at full resolution – so your edited photo will be smaller (fewer pixels) than the original image. This shouldn’t be a problem if you’re only planning to view or share the photos on a screen, but if you try printing the image at a large size, you may see a reduction in image quality.
So I recommend the above mentioned applications, because with them it is possible to save your photos to a beautiful printable file. 😉
To illustrate my answer I share with you some pictures I’m worked with all the first four Apps and one video made with Plotagraph.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did !!
Joanne Carter was a gift of the synchronicity of the stars in my life. I am very grateful not only for what she has done for me, giving space and spreading my work, as for everything she does for artists around the world. Your dedication deserves all my recognition, Joanne. The App Whisperer is my favorite site for learning, sharing and interacting. That’s where I look for answers when I have some doubts, that’s where I get informed about news and where I look for inspirations !!
ArtStudio
One of the most comprehensive sketching, painting and photo editing tools available for the iPhone. ArtStudio features a beautiful user interface and a powerful graphics engine to make creating works of art faster and easier.
Now with iPad Pro And Pencil support. ArtStudio is the most comprehensive, sketching, painting and photo editing tool in the App Store. Completely re-designed from the ground up the new ArtStudio features a beautiful new user interface and a powerful new graphics engine to make creating works of art faster, easier, and more fun! Using advanced drawing algorithms this is the fastest and most precise version of ArtStudio to date.
Superimpose
Just with a few taps, create professional grade superimposed or juxtaposed photos on your iPhone! You don’t need a computers and expensive software to superimpose or blend/mix/combine/cut/copy/paste one photo on top of another any more.
You can also use this tool to do serious photo editing tasks like blending textures or overlaying borders or to do double exposure with adjustable transparency and 18 blending modes.
Masking in the app is the most powerful one available on the app store, just tap on an area of the photo, and the app will mask out all the connected area with similar colours. Or you can use brush, lasso, polygon, global color similarity, rectangle, ellipse, linear, bi-linear, radial gradient, mask from image, mask from text, magic mask and hair refine masking tools. Mask an area with this tool and that area of the foreground image will become transparent and reveal the background. You can even drop a shadow of the foreground onto the background.
Enlight or Enlight Photofox
You will not believe what you can create on the iPhone with the Enlight Photofox photo editor. Whether you’re a novice or experienced artist, you’ll be impressed with all the creative possibilities included in a single photo editing application: from layers to blend modes, through special effects, brushes, fonts, tonal adjustments, scroll, black and White, and dual presets. With this photo editor, you’ll transform your ideas into art from the mobile phone, without the prohibitive prices of computer software. Free trial of Enlight Photofox, the latest Lightricks application and winner of the 2017 Apple Design Award!
Enlight is a powerful iPhone photo editor for enhancing and manipulating your images. From basic exposure adjustments to creative masterpieces, Enlight combines a huge range of editing tools into a single app. In this tutorial you’ll discover how to use Enlight to really push the limits of your iPhone photo editing. You can even follow along with your own iPhone photos in our step-by-step video demonstrations.
Trigraphy
Trigraphy turns ordinary pictures into extraordinary ones with limitless customisations.
Beautiful, easy and remarkably powerful, Trigraphy is the modern artist’s secret weapon. Turn ordinary pictures into extraordinary ones with limitless customisations, incredible art filters and high quality export up to 4096 px.
• All the tools that you may need to create modern piece of art are right here:
• Artistic generative effects
• Blending
• Color filters
• Textures
• Saturation & Contrast
• Mask
• High Resolution Export (up to 4096 x 4096)
And the best part is that you can merge infinite number of layers.
Plotagraph + For videos
Plotagraph+ is a one of a kind image animation app that brings photos to life. Tell your story in a fun and unique way with animated images that can now be shared on most of your favorite social media platforms as a looping video or Animated PNG. This innovative app gives you the tools to easily animate any image in minutes.
• Animation Tracks
• Selection Tool
• Instant Playback
• Real Time Animation Speed Control
• Mask
• Eraser
• Crop Presets
• Anchor Points
• Pinch Zoom
• Apple Pencil Pressure Sensitivity
• Social Sharing Presets
• Save to Camera Roll
The intuitive interface allows in an easy navigation all the animation tools, that bring your images to life in a few simple taps
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