Photo Apps @FolkSchool ... Phun with iPhone Photos

I truly enjoyed Catherine Anderson's Seeing with Quiet Eyes class at the John C. Campbell Folk School last week. I learned a lot and took some great photos. I bought an Easy-Macro iPhone (and other phone cameras) macro lens ... which I used to take this photo of a lily sticking through leaves at UNC's Arboretum.

We spent an afternoon playing with photo apps for the iPhone and iPad. Catherine mentioned 8-10 ... most of which are ad-supported / free with ad-free versions available. The ones I tried are:

Snapseed
A general photo editing program (from Google). There are multiple editing options in Snapseed, and most of them can be made by finger-swiping. Editing is easy for newbies - you don't have to know about healing or contrast or white balance ... just click on an option and swipe.

• Before & After in Snapseed - as easy as clicking the landscape button on the top right of the screen: 

• My final Snapseed image:

Photopath
This lets you put multiple photos on one image. In addition, you can tweak image borders - change from square to rounded, and change the colors.

border and color options in Photopath	Final Photopath image ... of the Folk School

Phonto lets you put text on images -- and offers a great many fonts, layout options, and even symbols.

Repix lets you draw on your photos. It's not something I'd do all that often, but the sparkly effects sure are fun on this lily. I also used Repix' filter options - which you can apply and tweak to increase or decrease the effect.

Catherine also mentioned Waterlogue, which turns images into watercolor paintings. I didn't download it, but the demo in class was very pretty.

For online image editing, Catherine suggests ipiccy.com; I'd already started using PicMonkey (at @samkatben's recommendation) -- so check them both out.

Catherine suggested Costco (Costco Photo Center) as a great option for ordering photos. I just ordered some and am very impressed with the ordering options. These include:

• Turning off their auto-correct - useful if you've spent time correcting color or removing blemishes.
• Customizing text printed on the back of photos (I have set the default to include the date).
• Set the crop for individual photos. Tell them where you want a 8x10 cropped, which is different from where a 4x6 image would be cropped. 
• Inexpensive -- for me, 8x10 photos are $1.49 and 11x14 photos are $2.99. I even printed one at 8x8 (for $1.49).
• Catherine likes ordering larger images from Costco because larger photos don't get rolled.

For more great ideas from Catherine, check out her 2011 book the Creative Photographer.