Playing with Camera+

I took advantage of our first real snow of the season, and headed out to the Schaumburg Prairie Arts Center for some scenic shots. A cute little foot bridge over cold clear water and some texture in the tree to the left should do nicely. I had heard that the iPhone app Camera+ has some nice features, and I wanted to try them out on my iPhone 4s. This is the 'before' image - no special effects or post-capture processing were applied.

---

Retro: cyanotype effect

After capturing the image, I selected the Clarity adjustment. It may be  hard to tell in these thumbnail versions, but it did sharpen things up nicely. Then I tried all of the Retro effects, all of the Color effects, and all of the Special effects. Needless to say, the options were plentiful. In general, the 'grunge' effects were interesting, but for this image I liked the cyanotype and the HDR effects the best. I added a black border to enhance the retro feel. In a future blog entry, I will compare the Camera+ cyanotype with the cyanotype preset out of LightRoom 4 beta, just for kicks.

---

HDR Effect

Having already set the Clarity and the thick black border, it took only seconds and one click of a button to achieve this HDR effect. It felt kind of like 'cheating' but I like the outcome.

---