AMPt Challenges Are Back In 2013!
Be Challenged! Be Creative!

Our challenges begin again this year on EyeEm. The challenge topic will be posted on on our EyeEm account @AMPt.

Starts Friday, 11 January 2013.
Features done on Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Finalists announced Thursday, 17 January 2013
Voting begins … all AMPt Community members are eligible to vote (Come join the community at amptcommunity.com)

The winner will be announced Friday, 18 January 2013

Join us and get featured all over our networks and in our community!

TEACH | LEARN | SHARE | INSPIRE

Top 10 Professional Image Editing Apps for Android (and 10 worthy mentions)
 

If you’ve looked for a list of the top image editing apps for Android lately you’ve probably been disappointed. Fact is, most of these lists are outdated (literally years old) or crowd sourced and feature mediocre apps at best. Well today’s Darkroom Tutorial aims to change that.

DroidEdit member/writer Jacob Dix has compiled a comprehensive list of 10 “must have” Android editing apps as well as 10 “worthy mentions”.

So how is this list different than the rest? Jacob is an active Mobile Photographer who has selected these apps with a focus on their professional editing tools, output resolution and overall quality. This list is compiled from the perspective of a mobile artist…not a blogger.
 

Read the FULL TUTORIAL where Jacob (@jacob606) shares his top 10 MUST HAVE image editing apps for Android.
 

AMPt and DroidEdit will be collaborating on Darkroom Tutorials the entire month of December so check back for both Android and iPhone related articles every Monday & Tuesday @ ampteam.org/darkroom.

Photo submitted by AMPt Member Anna Cox (@annacox)

•sound and light•

I’ve found myself wishing for warm weather and the beach since it has gotten cold so I thought perhaps a beach photo would be a fun revisit. This year the only time I spent at the beach was in the early morning and evening strolling my 4 month old. It was such a sweet serene time for me

Process: opened the image in snapseed and put it through the tune image paces. Adjusting contrast, saturation, etc. The buildings in the background caused me a little trouble. I couldn’t get them dark enough without losing some of the color in the foreground so I darkened the image to get the houses in silhouette and hit save. Then reopened the image and edited the rest of the image to my liking. Hit save again. I then had two images- one with the houses how i liked them and one with the water how i liked it. Then I opened both in juxtaposer and replaced the buildings in the lighter version with the buildings in the darker version. Hit save. Took the whole shebang back over to snapseed to add a touch of old lens in the center focus feature keeping the blur at 5 to smooth some noise at the top of the photo. Hit save and then finished my coffee :)

AMPt Member Graham Preston @grahampreston Title: in the woods, is perpetual youth Description: For me, the main difference between the old world of film photography and the current world of digital, is number of shots I take. I take loads !! I do it when I shoot on the street because time is short and I like to give myself some choices when I go back through my work. But last week I shot with my film camera alongside my iPhone for an afternoon. I shot 1 roll of 24 b&w film exposures against well over 400 digital ones. My point is that does quantity give you quality? After waiting 5 days to get the roll of film processed and it costing nearly a tenner all in, I did get 5 keepers though. This shot above has taken me 3 weeks to select from 798 I took that afternoon. We spent about an hour on a swing we came across in the woods and I used QuickPix to shoot. This camera app allowed me so underexpose and fix it. Then you just stick your finger on the button and off it goes, rapid fire capture of frames and lots of them. I have concluded the iPhone isn’t the ideal platform for selecting shots from hundreds of similar shots, so I had to download to my mac for that - but I copied this shot back for editing. Used Snapseed for warming up the white balance a bit and a little center focus without blur.

Photo submitted by AMPt Member Nei Cruz (@n_cruz) The Hudson River I love to take walks by the Hudson River during sunsets. It’s such a great place to walk in NYC. I took two shots in the same spot. Both taken with the native iPhone 4 camera. Make sure you are very stable when you take the shot. I put my finger on the shutter but only release it when I’m totally stable lifting my finger gently. Both edited with Snapseed. First shot: using the Tune tool, I warned the colors pushing the White Balance to +30, Brightness to -10 and Ambience to -10. Saved. Second shot: using the Tune tool, I cooled the colors pushing the White Balance to -40, Brightness to -10 and Ambience to -10. Saved. Then brought both to Diptic using the horizontal double layout setting. Adjusted the borders to 0 on Effects. Saved. In Camera+ I added a touch of Cross Process at 5%. Saved. Finally, I added the simple text with Phonto.

Photo submitted by AMPt Member Martin Reisch @safesolvent Taken in St. John’s, Newfoundland at Cape Spear in September this shot was unfortunately left out of my “in realtime” posting but i’m glad to have a chance to put it up here finally :) The ultra-distance was achieved with iTimelapse.app setting to an interval of every 60 secondes in order to have enough time to make it that far. This was shot on my iPhone 4S at the time so it’s still part of the Cross-Process style i was using with that device. Overall i have a strong feeling that i was mimic’ing a Boards of Canada shot i remember seeing back in the day especially the cold-tones and being on the east-coast of Canada it looks alot like Ireland

How to Use A Vignette to Highlight Your Subject

The word vignette comes from the French word vigne and historically means a decorative border in a manuscript. Using a vignette, either white, black or any other color, should be determined on a case by case basis. In this tutorial we will discuss the major Dos and Don’ts when deciding when and how to apply a vignette to your photograph.

Read the FULL TUTORIAL where Anna will cover some basic tips to keep in mind when using a vignette.

Check back for new Darkroom mobile photography lessons every Monday @ ampteam.org

Basic Tips for Great Landscape Shots

I live in Kentucky, which is home to millions of  barns so my subject matter was going to be easy, or so I thought. The first time I went out to shoot was a colossal failure- boring to the max. Second and third? A little better. Trying to get shots that were actually worthy of showing you was much harder than expected. Fortunately, I like a challenge so you will be seeing shots from my seventeenth time out. Thankfully, I met a fantastic old farmer yesterday morning that allowed me to wander around on his farm for two hours. 

Read the FULL TUTORIAL where Anna will cover some basic tips to keep in mind when shooting landscapes. As you’ll see, light, focal point and the rule of thirds all play a major role in setting up the best shot.

Check back for new Darkroom mobile photography lessons every Monday @ ampteam.org

Feature 500 photo submitted by Sean O’Connor - @seanoconnor

Title: Love Won Another

Process:
1. Upload image into photoforge 2
2. Straighten and crop to square format
3. Slightly increase vibrance, exposure, and contrast
4. Play with levels giving the picture a blue/green tint
5. Resize image to 5MP, save to camera roll
6. Import saved image into lenslight to add artificial lighting to enhance/slightly exaggerate natural lighting, render flare, save to camera roll
7. Open saved photo in picfx, add creek filter on 50% opacity, add marshmallow filter on 50%, save to camera roll
8. Open phonto, (on white background) make ribbon using letters and shapes, save to camera roll
9. Open edited photo as ribbon shape in blender, set blending mode to darken with 50% opacity, save to camera roll
10. Open saved photo in phonto and add text with negative kerning on words “love” and “won” (typeface- matchbook) and positive kerning on word “another” (typeface- helvetica neue), save to camera roll

Bio:
I first got into mobile photography and editing shortly after I joined instagram. I saw work from some artists that I was following and I was amazed to find out that they were completely done on an iPhone. With the right combination of creativity and apps, professional quality work is more than possible. I am from Southern California but during the school year I am a student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design studying graphic design. Lately, I’ve been super into logos as branding (simplistic and vintage-like to be exact). In the next few years I am going to be starting a company combining my love for design and snowboarding with my growing passion of helping people find God; those poor both physically/financially and spiritually. Anything is possible with the right mindset! Thanks for taking the time to read this guys. Check out my work and keep an eye out for my company which should hopefully be dropping soon.

Photo by AMPt member Rebecca Cornwell (@repinsk)

Title: the dreaming dead

Description/story : for as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with old photos. I would spend hours in antique and junk stores looking for faces that spoke to me. Usually it’s something in the eyes, a knowing look, a connection that allows me to interpret something about them. Several months ago I found an image of a young couple. He is sitting and she stands behind him. I was in the midst of a devastating breakup. Something in the woman’s eyes spoke understanding. I’ve photographed her in many ways since, always focused on her eyes.

Edit process: I took a photo of a vintage photo with hipstamatic using the John S lens and Claunch 72 monochrome film focusing on the woman’s eyes.
In Superimpose I added a masked image of a butterfly giving it a red tint with the color filter. In Superimpose again I added a masked image of the delicate branch.
I ran the image through scratchcam adding a layer of texture.
In Decim8 I ran the image through the BLITBOMB fx several times saving each and then layering together in Superimpose with the original.
Finally I put the image in Satromizer adding the color and shift. #ampteam #amptmember #digitalart #iphoneart #iphoneart #iphoneography