Wiley Incredible iPad Apps For Dummies
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1. bears the Photoshop name crop rotate flip exposure saturation tint and color to black and white conversions I don t much care for some of the filters and special effects such as Border and Rainbow but I like almost everything else about the app Wondering why I recommend it Well I really like the way it s integrated with my Photoshop com account I can upload to and download from my online photo library and use the more advanced Photoshop com image editing tools for images that need more help than even Photogene can provide ArtStudio 4 99 I picked this excellent pro quality painting and drawing program because many people think it s every bit as useful for professional illustration as the aforementioned Brushes I m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination but I d have a hard time choosing one over the other In this case they re both excellent But ArtStudio has one more thing Brushes does not Art Lessons Though I m still not an artist I did learn to draw a passable dog and cat Kinda sorta The lessons show you how to create a 3D drawing and how to draw animals faces and humans They re even kind of fun as you trace over every stroke in each lesson The Guardian Eyewitness Free It s brought to you by Canon but they re not all in your face about it a discreet little logo that s not that bad The app showcases the world s most distinctive and provocative photographs It s2. just a fancy photo gallery but the photos are generally superb And the Pro Tips that accompany them such as very fast shutter speed and shallow depth of field are useful if you are the type of photogra pher who likes to know how to do stuff to make your pictures more interesting or dramatic 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 16 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 16 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM Chapter 1 Art and Artistry 17 Even if you hate photography check it out for the pictures which are often spectacular Reel Director 3 99 Reel Director is an amazing app that lets you do great things with video files It s hard to believe but Reel Director lets you combine and rearrange clips add text overlays add really cool opening and closing credits and title cards and my favorite feature includes 28 really sweet transitions which have animated previews and can be applied globally to an entire project Reel Director isn t Final Cut Pro or even iMovie but it does let you do amazing things with video using nothing but your iPad And since it s a hybrid app you can use the same 3 99 app on your iPhone or iPod touch TiltShift Generator for iPad Fake DSLR 2 99 This one s another one trick pony but that trick is pretty slick This app creates dramatic depth of field effects that look almost as good as that amazing depth of field you can only really capture with an expensive Digital SLR
3. selected a picture or map for a panel you can modify it in various ways if you want In the figure on the right below for example I m applying the halftone filter to the picture of Allie and the dog top left You can apply any or all of the other effects grayscale sepia tone invert sketch and so on to any image or map in any panel of your comic But that s just the beginning Now you can add embellishments like cartoon balloons text blocks shapes stickers borders cutouts and more Cartoon balloons do more than just let you put words in some one s mouth They also include arrows stars hearts and ovals Then there are dozens of interesting stickers that let you make your strip even more comic like I used a couple Ka Boom and BAM in the figure on the right I m also pretty impressed with the Cutout feature which lets you store an image or part of image say your logo or other branding and reuse it in any panel or page with one tap Now in addition to all the creative possibilities I ve described so far you also have the option of choosing a different page layout template for any page at any time Better still you can preview your images in a number of different layouts very quickly and easily You can change page layout templates at any time but here s a word to the wise Do it after you add your photos or maps but before you add any text bubbles stamps or other embellishments
4. to your panels And here s why Some or all of the embellishments you place will appear in the wrong location in other page layouts I m just sayin 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 14 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 14 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 15 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry you ll save yourself work if you try different page layouts before you embellish rather than after Finally as you d expect Strip Designer has export and social media options galore making it easy to share your strips with others via e mail at normal or high resolution Facebook Flickr and Twitter It adds up to easy to use tools for creating comic strips that look at least in my humble opinion extremely cool as you can clearly see in the figure on the right Or not But if you think my comic shows even an inkling of promise you ll have a ball with Strip Designer Best features Choices This app is all about choices Its myriad of page templates filters visual effects cartoon balloons stickers and cutouts provide almost infinite creative options Worst features Choosing a different page template can shift elements which can cause extra work for you 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 15 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 15 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 16 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry Adobe Photoshop Express Free Another excellent choice for improving photos Adobe Photoshop Express has all the features you d expect from an app that
5. 1 Art and Artistry Art Authority for iPad 8 99 Having Art Authority is like having the his tory of Western art in pictures and words on your iPad The app includes works by hundreds of artists organized alphabeti cally by artist and also by periods called Rooms within the app that include Early up to the 1400s Baroque Renaissance Romanticism Impressionism Modern Contemporary and American Tap one of these eight Rooms on the main screen and you ll see its subcategories tap a subcategory and you can select a specific artist or an overview of that artist s work The figure on the left below for example shows some of the subcategories in the Modern room as well as the overlay for the Symbolism category If you prefer to see the bigger picture ha tap a Room s name Modern in the figure on the left below instead of tapping a subcate gory and you can view the major works and timelines for that period Regardless of how you choose to explore the art alphabetically or by period you can find a dozen or more works by each artist arranged in a Show Art Authority offers myriad options for viewing Shows You can choose your favorite transition or allow the app to select an appropri ate one You can turn on the Ken Burns effect to provide the illusion of motion You can view thumbnails of all the artwork in a show and tap individual thumbnails to see the pictures You can speed up slow down stop or
6. Luckily there are unlimited undos 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 11 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 11 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 12 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry Photogene for iPad 3 99 Photogene is one of my favorite apps It s the app I use most often when I need to improve a photo I shot with my iPhone It has most if not all the features I need to make a mediocre photo look good or to make a good photo look great Photogene has an exceptional user interface with controls that are easier to understand and use than those of some other photo apps Photogene also has an extensive list of features represented by the icons at the bottom of the screen as shown in the figures Scissors This cropping tool provides several preset aspect ratios including 1 1 square 3 4 and 4 3 standard rectangular photos 9 16 widescreen and 3 2 iPhone screen Arrows This icon has tools for rotating flipping or straightening your photo Stacked pictures This one reveals the macro presets shown in the figure on the left I ve applied the 20 s Vintage preset to the image Funnel at least I think that s what it is This icon reveals tools for sharpening your photo turning it into a pencil sketch shown in the figure on the right and applying effects such as B amp W sepia tone night vision and heat map Color wheel This icon reveals the serious image editing controls you see in the figu
7. camera and a decent lens To give your photo depth of field you tap the spot you want in focus In a few seconds your picture magically appears is if it had been shot with a very shallow depth of field Using a great set of interactive slider controls you can adjust the depth of field effect in near real time Used judiciously this app can turn a pretty good photo shot with a cheap camera or a phone into a stunning shot 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 17 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 17 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM
8. ck out the App Store listing for Color Splash and you ll see a few really stunning examples of the effect done well If you make a mistake double tap anywhere on the screen and the brush will switch from Color to Gray Double tap again and it changes back It s fast easy and one of the most useful shortcuts I ve seen in an app Tapping the little red dot at the top of the screen shows you the areas you ve brushed with the Color brush by displaying them on screen in bright red as shown in the figure on the left below 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 10 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 10 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry The picture on the right shows my finished Color Splash picture As you can see in both images I used the Color brush to reveal the colors in the sky and sunset at the top of the image and the pool and chairs at the bottom Everything else in the picture basically the entire middle section remains black and white The bottom line is that if a talentless clod like me can achieve stun ning in my humble opinion artistic effects with Color Splash just think what you ll be able to do Best features With Color Splash you can create a unique and interesting effect with little effort or talent It s actually kind of fun and the results are often stunning Worst features There is sometimes a little bit of lag when you are painting When it happens it can affect your precision
9. lly quite excellent so I think the best thing about this app is that it has so many high quality image editing tools The intuitive and uncluttered user interface and unlimited undo redo support are not too shabby either Worst features My big complaint is that the shadow effect options for frames are kind of ugly and there s no way to adjust their transparency My minor gripe is that the pencil reflection and frame effects work well and deliver beautiful results on most images but I wish there were more special effects such as crayon oil paint mosaic or watercolor If those effects existed and looked as good as the pencil reflection and most of the frame effects they d be awesome 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 13 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 13 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 14 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry Strip Designer 2 99 This app is fun and easy to use and it provides numerous creative options for turning your photos into comic strips or graphic novels And while I enjoy using it on my iPhone the iPad version provides a much better user experience The first thing you do is select one of the many available page layout templates as shown in the figure on the left below Then you populate the panels by choosing photos from your Photos app library or a map of any location in the world Inserting a map or maps of your cre ation into a comic strip is a brilliant integration of iPad technologies Once you ve
10. mages are pulled from Web sites the app is more or less useless if you don t have Internet access Some pictures load slowly or don t load at all depending upon Web traffic and the origi nating site s status although this shortcoming isn t the fault of Art Authority To be fair when you first view a picture it s cached on your iPad which makes it available at a later date even if you don t have Internet access Chapter 1 Art and Artistry 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 7 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 7 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM Brushes 7 99 Brushes is a drawing and painting app designed exclusively for the iPad With a simple elegant user interface Brushes offers a powerful toolset for drawing and painting Thoughtful touches abound in Brushes Tap once anywhere on the screen to show or hide the toolbar Zoom in as much as 1 600 or out to 70 with the customary iPad pinch and unpinch gestures Pick a color with a single press of your fingertip The app is called Brushes so the obvious place to start exploring is with the brush styles as shown in the figure on the left below The app has more than a dozen types smooth fine bristle rough bristle ragged and many more which are available in any size from 1 to 64 pixels and offer complete control over the opacity of your strokes There s a terrific color picker shown in the figure on the right below To change the hue and saturation of the color y
11. ou want to use for painting drag the knob a little white circle around on the color wheel Below the color wheel are two sliders The top slider deter mines the brightness of the selected color the bottom slider deter mines the color s opacity Many desktop graphics programs have an eyedropper tool to pick up any color in your image and paint with it There s an eyedropper in the Brushes toolbar too but I almost always use the shortcut of pressing my finger in one spot for half a second which causes the eye dropper tool to pop up directly under my fingertip Another cool feature of Brushes is its support for up to six layers I ve seen layers in many desktop graphics programs but Brushes is one of only a few iPad apps that do layers and do them well Each layer can be painted independently without affecting the layers above or below You drag and drop to change the stacking order of the layers which I find both elegant and intuitive You have full control over layer opac ity so you can use a semitransparent layer to tint all or part of the layer s below And you can merge any of the layers with any other s at any time Don t worry if you make a mistake Brushes has at least ten levels of undo and redo so you can undo or redo your last ten or more actions 8 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 8 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 8 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 9 When you re finished
12. photo to black and white and then enabling you to colorize specific parts of it Because a picture is worth a thousand words I could technically tell you to check out the pictures below and move on to the next app Never fear gentle reader I vowed to tell you what you need to know Even though that pair of pix says it all let me tell you how the app works and how easy it is to achieve stunning effects Start with a picture Any picture In the figures below I started with an HDR High Dynamic Range shot I took of an Austin sunset over Lady Bird Lake When you open a picture in Color Splash it s converted to black and white automatically Next it s time to get creative and break out one of the two brushes called Color and Gray The Color brush brushes away the black and white to reveal the colors in the original photo The Gray brush does the opposite it brushes away color you ve revealed with the Color brush which is handy if you make a mistake or want to zoom in to clean up problem areas And tapping the Brush button gives you total control over the size and strength of the paintbrush that is your fingertip Your paintbrushes can be any size from pencil thin to fatter than my thumb You can adjust the brush s opacity from nearly transparent to pretty much opaque In sum the brush controls are designed to make precision finger painting easy And finally you can undo and redo brush strokes to your heart s content Che
13. re on the right below exposure contrast high lights shadows saturation color temperature levels and RGB I love the Photoshop like histogram for adjusting relative bright ness levels as shown in the figure on the right Line chart This one gives you a Photoshop like Levels curve tool for precise color correction Eyeball An easy to use red eye removal tool Star This icon enables you to drag a variety of cartoon balloons and shapes onto your photos with complete control over the outline fill and text colors You also have a choice of five fonts but none look as much like a comic book as the exclusive font used by Comic Touch 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 12 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 12 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM Chapter 1 Art and Artistry 13 Square Tapping this icon shown in the figure on the right dis closes the frames backgrounds and effects options The tape on the corners of the image is one of the preset frame options the blue background is one of the background color options and the reflection below the picture is one of the special effects options I tried a lot of programs with similar features and Photogene delivers the most bang for the buck okay four bucks And unlike most simi lar apps it can edit high resolution RAW files If you use your iPad to retouch photos you should definitely have this app in your arsenal Best features All of Photogene s features are rea
14. reverse the show at any time and you can enlarge shrink or rotate any picture You can turn captions on or off or dis play them briefly when a picture first appears You can add music from your iTunes music library to any show or you can delete any image and never see it again Bob s Top Ten Apps Art Authority for iPad Brushes Color Splash for iPad Photogene for iPad Strip Designer Adobe Photoshop Express ArtStudio The Guardian Eyewitness Reel Director TiltShift Generator for iPad Fake DSLR 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 6 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 6 11 8 10 2 47 PM 11 8 10 2 47 PM COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL 7 That s not all though You can also save any image from the app to your iPad s Photos app or set any image as your wallpaper back ground Another option lets you link from any image to the Web site from which it originated there you can read additional facts and see other images Of course Art Authority also includes detailed informa tion about each artist as shown in the figure on the right For what it s worth the text you see in the figure is merely the first of 31 pages of information about Rembrandt Best features Art Authority is beautiful flexible scholarly and fun If you like to look at art or learn about it you ll find an ample supply of quality artwork and information in Art Authority Worst features Because all the i
15. with your masterpiece you can save it in the Brushes gallery so you can easily work on it some more or show it to your friends with Brushes built in slideshow You can export finished pictures to your iPad s Photos app or use the Brushes built in Web server to view or download your creations over Wi Fi with any Web browser on any Web connected computer If you re a Mac OS X user there s a cool free Brushes Viewer that lets you view or export high resolution versions of your paintings on your Mac Another interesting feature is that the Brushes Viewer can dis play a stroke by stroke animated replay of the making of your painting which you can export as a QuickTime movie Plus the Brushes Viewer can export paintings at higher resolution 1 920 x 2 880 pixels than the iPad screen 1 024 x 768 Best features The best feature of Brushes is its simple but powerful user interface If you re artistically inclined there s no limit to the things you can create with Brushes Worst features The way cool Brushes Viewer isn t available for Windows Chapter 1 Art and Artistry 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 9 04_9780470929797 ch01 indd 9 11 8 10 2 02 PM 11 8 10 2 02 PM 10 Chapter 1 Art and Artistry Color Splash for iPad 1 99 Some photography apps are like a Swiss Army Knife with bells whis tles and features galore Others such as Color Splash focus on doing one thing well In this case that one thing is converting a
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