Macro images collage... alternative to Picnik?

By now, I'm guessing anyone who uses Picnik to make collages of their images is wondering, as I am, what to do when Picnik disappears. I personally am in a bit of a panic because I really don't want to have to reinvent the process I've been using to assemble collages for my vacation blog as well as for this one.

In the process of searching for an alternative, I came across an app for the iPhone and iPad called Diptic... this collage was made with that app which, of course, required me to transfer images from my computer to my iPad (Transfer app) so I could assemble the collage. Since there is an app called Web Albums (for both iPad and iPhone) that allows one to transfer images to Picasa (where I store my photos that I will use for blogs), I was then able to transfer the collage for insertion below. (NOTE that all the images in the collage were captured with a Nikon D90 fitted with a 105mm Nikon macro lens. I only used the iPad to assemble the collage with Diptic.) Posted to Macro Monday over at Lisa's Chaos... come on over and join the fun!

Colorado iPhone Image - The answer to how it was done...

I don't pretend to be an expert at using iPhone apps for photo enhancement. But I do have one image that seems to be quite popular and can actually recall every step I did to get the end result. I'll explain the entire process in this post. At the end, two alternative results of post processing are shown as well as an image taken with Hipstamatic and presented 'as is' with no post processing. This post is especially for those who've inquired about the process involved in processing this image. (Oh, and this is my first post for Skywatch Friday and Weekly Top Shot.)

Two images captured in BracketMode on the iPhone; I chased clouds for miles in an attempt to find scenery worthy of the sky... the red barn and rolling fields did it for me!

On the left is the HDR image obtained from merging the two BracketMode images using the Pro HDR app; on the right is the retouched image shown after removing the telephone pole and overhead wires with the Touch/Retouch app. (The two images shown at the end were those achieved by continuing with subsequent processing from starting with the left image OR the right image. Regardless of which image was the starting point, the steps shown from here forward were the same.

The image on the left shows the top right image in the previous set of images after it has been processed through AutoPainter with the Benson effect applied. The image on the right is the previous two images blended in Iris with the retouched original HDR image set as the base layer and the Benson effect image blended at 50%. Setting the original as the base layer allows one to keep the high resolution of the original image in the resultant image. No masking was used.

The image on the left shows the previous image slightly desaturated and the one on the right is cropped to achieve a more pleasing composition, to my eye anyway!

On the left, is the same image as the previous without removing the telephone pole and overhead wires; on the right is an un-retouched image shot with Kodot film and the John S lens of the Hipstamatic app.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Browsing around Flickr and Facebook today, I noticed people posting about Valentine's Day which I had tried to ignore this year since I'm newly single (by choice). So it occurred to me that even though I'm not "in a relationship" with a significant other, I am rich in friends and have a lot of love in my life.

So I decided to try to put together a photo that spoke a bit about love anyway. For years, I've collected tiny boxes of various shapes and sizes. Quite a few of them are heart shaped... so I put together a still life with a few of them and some solid tiny glass hearts, a few tiny silver hearts, and a few foreign coins strewn on a velveteen cloth.

This photo was taken using BracketMode on my iPhone. For those unfamiliar with iPhone photography, BracketMode takes two exposures, one exposed correctly for the bright areas in the scene, and one exposed correctly for the dark areas. Pro HDR was used to merge the two exposures into a single image which was then processed through Painteresque to create a painterly feel. Iris was used to blend the painted image (at 65% opacity) with the merged single image. I then continued to process the image in Iris by adding the Normal Grunge effect and the Grunge frame (in the Dust 'n Scratches effect). The text and the heart surrounding "love" was added using A+ Signature which is a mind boggling app for adding text and simple images.