The life of a mom is always a busy one. There are so many days when it seems like the hours get shorter and shorter. Yesterday seemed like one of those days. We were extraordinarily rushed to get everywhere on time, which has become the norm for our family. I'm not complaining; it's quite nice to worry about fitting in all of the school activities. Until recently, I worked full time and didn't have the leisure of being a SAHM. I'm beyond grateful for the opportunity to be at home with my kiddo and to be able to make dinner every night. I do realize that it sounds staunchly anti-feminist of me, but I truly cherish these times. There are so many moments that I feel like I missed out on when I worked all the time. So, most of our days are filled with crafting and stories and school functions...and it's my favorite.
Last night, we found ourselves running late for the school's annual Winter Carnival (we were waiting on Dad to get home from work). In a mad dash to get out the door, I completely forgot my camera. Rather than turn around and make us even later, I made peace with taking pictures from my iPhone. So, needless to say, I ended up with a camera full of grainy, partly blurry pictures. Normally I would just download them to my computer and mess with it later in Elements, but thanks to my obsession with iPhonography apps I was actually able to repair some of them and make them usable.
Now, bear in mind that the photos themselves are quite sub-par; there's no way I could take those and make them crisp and perfect. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the school does not a good photo make. Alongside that, there were about 10,000 different colors, running children, and people stepping in front of me...and the occasional toddler bouncing off the back of my knees. So, you can imagine the kinds of photos I ended up taking. But I was able to improve them so that my child was at least discernible in the frames (well most of the frames anyway).
I put this post together to show you the apps I used (all on my iPhone) to improve the quality of the sub-optimal pictures.
My go-to app for basic edits on all of my photos is Snapseed (FREE). I absolutely love this app. It is very user friendly. Here is a before and after photo that I altered with Snapseed.
Before
After
What I did: This was all done with Snapseed. I changed the color to black and white from the menu at the bottom of the screen. Although it doesn't fix the muddled subjects, it does help to eliminate those awful colors. Then I added a vertical tilt shift to draw the eye to the subject (better anyway). The tilt shift feature allows you to selectively sharpen areas of the photo and blur the other areas. You can choose from linear or elliptical alignment to apply the tilt shift. So, even thought this isn't a very good photo, it is quite an improvement from the original.
Before
After
What I did: This one was also exclusively Snapseed edits. The lighting was particularly bad in this one as we were in the gym. I used the "Tune Image" tab at the bottom to adjust the brightness and increase the contrast. Then, I used the "Center Focus" tab to slightly blur the edges, but only slightly. Finally, I changed the colors to black and white using the "Black and White" bottom tab.
Before
After
What I did: I loved this horrible, horrible picture. There is SO MUCH wrong with it, but it has the potential to be so adorable. Again, I used the same technique as in the above photo on Snapseed -----BUT THEN------- I got to use my favorite feature of this app. At the bottom of the screen, there is a tab called "Drama". After I'd tweaked the brightness, contrast, color, and tilt shift, I clicked over to the Drama tab and used the second setting to achieve this dimension. Drama basically selectively adds gradient to specific areas of the photo that would normally yield shadows.
Before
After
What I did: This is the only photo where I used an additional app along with Snapseed. First, though, I adjusted the brightness and contrast in Snapseed. I also attempted to sharpen the image from the bottom tab, although the image was (sadly) a little beyond blur repair. Then I saved my edited photo (in color) to the Camera Roll on my phone. I opened that in an app called ColorSplash ($0.99). In this app, you can either select "Color" or "Gray" from the bottom menu and use your finger to selectively add or subtract color from a photo. It works somewhat like MS Paint (except with your finger!).
Here are a couple of tutorials to help you get the hang of these useful apps:
Snapseed - tutorial
ColorSplash - tutorial2
Conclusion: As you can obviously see, the photos are still not great, but they are vastly better than ones I snapped with the internal camera on my phone. So, in a pinch, this will do. I seriously doubt that Jonah is going to care about the graininess of the photos in 10 years, I just hope he is happy that mom took pictures. Even if I'm not perfect, I want my babies to know that I care and that I do try my best. Oh, and the other little boy in the picture is Jonah's best friend K. His mother just so happens to be my best friend; we think it is pretty swell.
If you have any additional iPhonography tips that you'd like to share, please leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail. Feedback is always appreciated.
xo, Karee
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