On My Radar Eight Apps for a Desert Island with WiFi by Fleur Schim from California, United States

My iPad Pro is invaluable. I am an image-maker, and it is the most important tool in my image making toolbox. It is also the “mother ship” for my many valuable editing apps. And, it can be used as a camera! So, I have the best of both worlds: camera and editing apps housed on the Ipad. Very apropos!

I am an avid reader, and have many good reads on my Kindle App, which lives on my iPad Pro. Fortunately for me, Wi-Fi is not an issue, nor electricity, so I am able to download as many books, as often as I want. But, if I had to select one important novel, then I would prefer Hemingway’s, “Old Man and the Sea”. It is a story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. This novel is a testament to inner strength and fortitude.

Google is the best app for information. It supplies the best results, quickly. This search engine/browser helps me figure out my creative world. It is also my dictionary. So much to learn!! A gigantic world out there!

Snapseed is an all in one photo-editing app. And, it is free!  It is extremely self-explanatory and easy to use. It has an extensive toolkit that enables users to enhance photos and apply digital filters. Besides the standard editing functions like brightness, crop, and contrast, Snapseed is also loaded with extra cool features like the brush, ambiance and perspective. It is possible to do a complete edit in this app, but why stop there? There are so many other fun opportunities.

All of my images begin in Snapseed. The following images are good examples of some of the features that Snapseed offers, including brush,  in the “tools” section, where I am able to  intensify the color in a specific area of a long hallway. “Looks” offers the option for “morning light” which is has two different color details, as seen in the sand sculpture.

I am a big fan of using textures in my images. Not only do they bring life and interest to an image, they are also very effective in binding together the separate elements of a composite piece. One of my favorite texturing apps is Distressed FX. This is a very fun app that provides a wide library of textures and overlays. Even birds! This app is transformative for even the most mundane photo. Distressed FX is a fabulous app for quickly and easily creating painterly and distressed artwork with your photos and composite images. The new Distressed FX Plus is a special edition of the acclaimed original. You have access to all new effects and features ahead of release on the original app. The following images have started in Snapseed, then edited in Distressed FX.  A few are further embellished in Icolorama, which has unique imaging details.

iColorama is the best app for working with creativity and the imagination when it comes to photos—and artwork. It is essentially a photo-colorising app on steroids. It has a vast array of features, from basic editing like saturation, cropping and editing, to all kinds of color and distortion effects.

This app is a wonderful excuse to get lost down the rabbit hole! It is an imaging app that enhances photos into amazing art. This app is never boring as there are so many artistic options and endless opportunities. Since I am on a deserted island with a lot of time, I may as well enjoy myself. The follow images show not only Icolorama, but blended images created in Diana, that are further edited in Icolorama.

Diana is the fastest double exposure app! Diana can randomly pick two images from your camera roll and slam them together. It can also apply one of the 40 available filters at random, or allow you to choose. I prefer a little more control, so I choose my two images, and hope for the best in 3 seconds! The creative results are random: Love it, or leave it! Unfortunately, Diana does down-res the images. But, there is always Big Photo App to the rescue. Finally, the resulting images are great starting points for another adventure in iColorama! The following images are good examples of both Diana and Icolorama

Big Photo is a superb app that lets you upsize or downsize an image. Some of my favorite apps, like Diana and Prisma, produce low-resolution images. The interface is so simple that you don’t really have to think. Just choose your output size and press resize. The app then automatically saves the new image to your camera roll.

Image Blender is a simplistic and creative app for combining images with masks and different blend modes. This is a single purpose app. Its main goal is blending multiple images together. While the use and basic idea is very simple, there’s almost an endless list of things that you can do with it.

Note: After I have played around with my images, or “apped them to death”, it is often fun to blend versions to see what materializes. I often finish my creative process with Image Blender.

I am grateful to the mobile arts community for their spirit of inclusiveness. I love how excited and passionate mobile artists are about their process, or work flow. We all benefit from these fun, learning activities that Joanne Carter initiates.

With gratitude

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