Photo Editing & Photo Enhancing Using Apps

Photo Editing & Photo Enhancing Using Apps

Starting point was this original photo: New Territories on top of Cloudy Hill, Hong Kong, September 2022.  Taken by myself on an iPhone 13 MaxPro whilst out on a hike.

It a good composition, in terms of diagonal balance and proportions, however I wanted to used the mountain and floral foreground as a starting point for a digital watercolour composition, in a square format.

I used Procreate to edit this photo, bringing the foreground over the background to form a square.

With the completed montage, I know that the edges are rough but I want to use this as a reference image. However, I suddenly thought about how would it look when put through Snapseed a free photo editing tool with some dramatic effects.  Snapseed App Store

 

There are so many effects, and each menu item has many options and adjustments. My favorite to test out on my photos are Grunge, Vintage, Retrolux, Drama, for starters, along with Frame - which is not shown here.

I am also a fan of the following collection of photo editing apps: BeCasso, and its off shoots Waterbrush, Graphite, and ArtCard. These are free to tryout on your photos, and you can download the finished image, except it has a watermark added from the software. There are options to buy printed images at a much higher quality and separately there are also some premium features you can purchase. I do not use it enough to really warrant spending money on it.

Here are some examples using the same these painting editors. I have kept them as screen shots so that you can see the filters I have used and the output, starting with Waterbrush:

Final full size Waterbrush example:

Equipment & Software:

I am not affiliated to any company mentioned here.

Apple iPhone 13  Pro Max

Apple iPad Pro (12.9 inch)(4th Generation) running iPadOS 18.5

Apple Pencil (2nd Generation)

Procreate Version 5.3.15

Snapseed

BeCasso

Waterbrush

Graphite

ArtCard

Canva (to edit the video cast from Procreate into an animated gif)

The software listed above, these are just my go to places, because they are free or mostly free, Procreate as an app does cost a one time payment (cost of two cups of coffee is not much to ask considering how powerful it is)

Historically I started in1984 creating digital art using the Quantel Paint box (at Blackpool & Fylde College (actually the ‘machine’ was so big it was kept in Manchester MMU))

I started to use Photoshop Version 1 in 1991, on an Apple Macintosh computer. I converted to Procreate when Adobe decided that monthly online licencing was their future! Plus I liked using the pen on the screen, rather than using a tablet device.

 June 25