With my iPhone, I find that I often adjust the shadow level to brighten dark areas of a picture, along with some other adjustments as mentioned in the original post.
Tim
Tim
Taking airgun photos with your phone
- Thread starter MDriskill
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I have an older Samsung Note 8 phone that takes beautiful pictures, but they are not done until you edit them! Some good tips so far. I have discovered a very powerful photo editor for Android. It's called simply 'Photo Editor' by dev.macGyver
Look for this entry in the Google Play store. I don't think it's available for iPhone though.
This is my go-to photo editing app on my Android tablet and phone. I rarely go to the computer to fire up Photoshop anymore except for more extensive editing projects.
All of the typical photo editing needs are available. The ones that I use the most are things like saturation, color temperature, straightening, cropping, resizing, JPEG compression level, levels adjustment g sharpening. They have a global levels adjustment but then if you click the effects button you can select something called gamma, among many other effects, and then tap the all button to change it to brush where you can apply the effect with a stylus or your finger only to the portion of the picture you want to work on. This is great for sharpening only certain details, blurring only the background, for instance, and using gamma for an adjustable lightning effect for dark areas to bring out details. Just an amazing app.
The sharpening effect is given a strange name called unsharp mask, held over from terminology from Photoshop. You can adjust the amount of sharpening, the radius of effect, and the threshold. Yes somewhat of a steep learning curve. Just to get you started, set the amount to around 150, which is the strength of the effect. Set the threshold to around 15, which tells it essentially to ignore areas with smooth color tones to avoid creating extra grain, and then set the radius to the level that just sharpens the detail you want without creating ghosting. If you want to apply spot sharpening to just one area and not the whole image, tap the rectangle that says all until it changes to brush, then you can select a brush size and hardness level for the brush and do spot corrections as desire. You can use this method for most of the items in the effects sub menu.
I'd better stop here because this will end up turning into a tutorial. Let me just say it's worth your time to check this one out.
Here's a photo showing use of the stylus on my Samsung tablet to blur the background in one of my photos. Once you set the application button to brush, there's lots of sub options for brush size, hardness and opacity, etc. You can see the little circle of application where my stylus tip is touching the screen.
There's not a lot of formal documentation. Only a few videos on YouTube, but if you're willing to experiment a little bit the rewards are well worth it. Even if you just want to do some basic editing without exploring all the features I still recommend this app.
Enjoy,
Feinwerk
Look for this entry in the Google Play store. I don't think it's available for iPhone though.
This is my go-to photo editing app on my Android tablet and phone. I rarely go to the computer to fire up Photoshop anymore except for more extensive editing projects.
All of the typical photo editing needs are available. The ones that I use the most are things like saturation, color temperature, straightening, cropping, resizing, JPEG compression level, levels adjustment g sharpening. They have a global levels adjustment but then if you click the effects button you can select something called gamma, among many other effects, and then tap the all button to change it to brush where you can apply the effect with a stylus or your finger only to the portion of the picture you want to work on. This is great for sharpening only certain details, blurring only the background, for instance, and using gamma for an adjustable lightning effect for dark areas to bring out details. Just an amazing app.
The sharpening effect is given a strange name called unsharp mask, held over from terminology from Photoshop. You can adjust the amount of sharpening, the radius of effect, and the threshold. Yes somewhat of a steep learning curve. Just to get you started, set the amount to around 150, which is the strength of the effect. Set the threshold to around 15, which tells it essentially to ignore areas with smooth color tones to avoid creating extra grain, and then set the radius to the level that just sharpens the detail you want without creating ghosting. If you want to apply spot sharpening to just one area and not the whole image, tap the rectangle that says all until it changes to brush, then you can select a brush size and hardness level for the brush and do spot corrections as desire. You can use this method for most of the items in the effects sub menu.
I'd better stop here because this will end up turning into a tutorial. Let me just say it's worth your time to check this one out.
Here's a photo showing use of the stylus on my Samsung tablet to blur the background in one of my photos. Once you set the application button to brush, there's lots of sub options for brush size, hardness and opacity, etc. You can see the little circle of application where my stylus tip is touching the screen.
There's not a lot of formal documentation. Only a few videos on YouTube, but if you're willing to experiment a little bit the rewards are well worth it. Even if you just want to do some basic editing without exploring all the features I still recommend this app.
Enjoy,
Feinwerk
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With an SLR we had to do that (depth of field) with aperture size but that had to be offset by shutter speed. Pretty cool. Eliminates background distractions and draws attention to the subject.
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A lot of good info there Feinwerk. Another hobby in itself.
Before smartphones came out and film cameras were dying, like Kodak, point and shoot digital cameras were the rage. I recall buying a Nikon Coolpix 500 I think it was, with 5mp. It worked pretty good but cost $500. My aunt referred to them as PHD’s, Push Here Dummy, it did most everything for you to get a pretty good photo.
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Thanks Feinwerk, that's awesome! The ability to adjust depth-of-field stuff in particular is a real advance for phone cameras - takes another chink out of the DSLR armor, LOL!
There are quite a few step-up editor apps in the iPhone app store, but how they compare I don't know. I confess I've never tried them out.
There are quite a few step-up editor apps in the iPhone app store, but how they compare I don't know. I confess I've never tried them out.
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@KWK and @MDriskill , Yes that is one limitation of the smartphone cameras. They almost always use a small aperture with the largest possible depth of field unless you use a special effect photo app. Some native camera apps allow you to have a blurry background for portraiture, but I think it is done with built-in post-processing.
I use manual blurring for the background and spot sharpening for the subject to create that separation, especially for wildlife photos, but helpful for technical photography as well. This photo editor has a an adjustable 'blur' effect but it also has a 'denoise' effect on the top level that has a different function and is more useful for removing pixel grain. Toggling the selector button from all to brush unlocks the spot retouching capability that might otherwise go unnoticed so here is a heads up for that. You can click the little circle in the brush menu to adjust the brush size and features of application.
If there's something embarrassing or just completely unnecessary in the background, I may even go so far as to use the clone tool to erase it completely. Sometimes it's not worth it to clear all the clutter on my workbench to grab a quick project photo.
Great post!
I use manual blurring for the background and spot sharpening for the subject to create that separation, especially for wildlife photos, but helpful for technical photography as well. This photo editor has a an adjustable 'blur' effect but it also has a 'denoise' effect on the top level that has a different function and is more useful for removing pixel grain. Toggling the selector button from all to brush unlocks the spot retouching capability that might otherwise go unnoticed so here is a heads up for that. You can click the little circle in the brush menu to adjust the brush size and features of application.
If there's something embarrassing or just completely unnecessary in the background, I may even go so far as to use the clone tool to erase it completely. Sometimes it's not worth it to clear all the clutter on my workbench to grab a quick project photo.
Great post!
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The downside of photo apps is the app provider typically wants full access to your photo album. Before I retired we used our smartphones daily, almost hourly, for taking pictures of what we were working on. The photos were proprietary and distribution totally forbidden. Now that I’m retired, it’s just plain none of their business what’s on my phone.
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Great point! Again, although I find "Auto Adjust's" tweaks are usually good enuff for internet airgun shots, it's fun to look through all the adjustments on the phone and see what they do for ya.
For what it's worth, "Auto Adjust" on the iPhone links 15 individually controllable items: Exposure, Brilliance, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Brightness, Black Point, Saturation, Vibrance, Warmth, Tint, Sharpness, Definition, Noise Reduction, and Vignette. (Whew!)
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for the record, i hate smartphones, particularly the touch interface, that i inevitably inadvertantly hit something i didnt mean to several times that i have to now backtrack and fix for everything im doing lol ... that said, a good writeup .. also i run into several sites that require a smaller filesize and i dont want to edit, so changing resolution can be done on the phone also albeit not very intuitive, least not for me .. the old point and shoot casio digicam is easier and still takes good photos ..i keep it handy and in use, paid like 400 for that thing years ago, and i see them used on ebay for 15 bucks haha .. what a steal ...
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Neither cell phone nor air gun, but product photography featuring firearms is one of my love’s…natural light, never discount natural light!
I don’t have a fancy air gun, just a big box store nitro. But I plan to document my experiences with it same as I do my powder burners.
Some examples of shooting in natural light -
This is a merely a dent in my “Gun pic” stash…love landscapes as well.
Great thread! Many like to display their goodies, but few understand how to show them properly. Thank you for you posting this! If anyone ever wanted a tip on the camera side of house, I promise you I’m no expert, but I’m happy to help!
- Brent
I don’t have a fancy air gun, just a big box store nitro. But I plan to document my experiences with it same as I do my powder burners.
Some examples of shooting in natural light -
This is a merely a dent in my “Gun pic” stash…love landscapes as well.
Great thread! Many like to display their goodies, but few understand how to show them properly. Thank you for you posting this! If anyone ever wanted a tip on the camera side of house, I promise you I’m no expert, but I’m happy to help!
- Brent
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Thank you! I truly appreciate that! Oh about eight years ago I decided I just wanted a camera. Bought a decent budget body (Canon EoS SLR) nothing fancy, and I have a couple different lenses. My little secret is that I shoot most everything using tri-pod and high dynamic range (HDR) shooting. I have no secrets here. Happy to discuss how to get HDR images without high dynamic price!!
- Brent
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OMG. Hopefully you have a portfolio and sell stock prints to magazines and other media. WOW.
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I don’t! But I would LOVE to take photographs of product for company, media, etc. I’ve taken some shots of people’s particular sweethearts. Usually it’s a barter kinda thing though. Monetizing would be great, but the exposure to new product to fall under my lens is more exciting than a big pay day. I have some really pretty shots over the years…
- Brent
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Composition is a serious part of photography I don’t have. Outstanding Brentona and razor62.
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Beautiful shots! You guys have moved way beyond this old cuss and his cell phone at this point...!
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Who needs a pro camera anymore? I always use a lightbox, crank up the exposure, and snap a pic with an iPhone 13. Never fails.
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