iGoiPhone – Page 12 – …Reviews, Tips and How To

You sharing with Oink on the iPhone yet?

There is this guy named Kevin… he used to be on TechTV, and he started Digg.com… then he went on to get some folks together to start a company called Milk. Well, Milk just released their first app, Oink!.

Oink is the iPhone app to connect folks sharing things they enjoy. While Instagram is for sharing photos and FoodSpotting is for sharing food dishes, Oink is for sharing ‘everything’. Their ‘gamification’ reward is a ‘Cred’ ranking as your the specialist on a subject.

You choose the areas you feel you know something about, then start reviewing those items with images and comments.

When you download Oink, you have to create a login which ‘requests’ access. The system will send you an email when it’s ready for you to join the fun. With most ‘social’ system, unless you have friends using it, your talking to yourself. To start, usually only big names are the ones showing up in the list of reviews, and they really have no interest in follow you (that is if your the person on the street). As the app and service gains your friends, family and people of interest, it will become more and more useful.

To get things more usable day 1, Oink does show you what is near you and reviews posted by others you don’t know so building your list of people with Cred in the areas of your interest can grow faster. Who knows, you may share a passion with someone just around the corner that will be equally interested in your reviews too. Go in to have fun, and let it grow from there!

Free “Perfect Photo” for the iPhone… this weekend only

This weekend, in celebration of International iPhoneography this weekend, the folks at MacPhun LLC is offering their Perfect Photo app at no charge. The app has gotten pretty good coverage in the past for the many automated editing options available.

When you choose a photo to edit. Perfect Photo starts off with a work space that is simple but has all the enhancement available through the top icons. The butterfly is for going back to choosing the photos, the up arrow is for saving and sharing, the arrows are undo/redo, the Pallet is for the Tools and the top had it the Filters.

Choosing the ‘Pallet’ icon to bring up the folder of 28 “Tools”. Most, when chosen, have sliders that you can use to fine tune the application of the enhancement.

“Effects” you might recognize as ‘Filters’. Choose one to apply and adjust. Perfect Photo is pretty quick at applying filters and the undo/redo works well if you don’t choose the right effect the first time.

Continue reading “Free “Perfect Photo” for the iPhone… this weekend only”

Easier photo editing across multiple iPhone apps

Most of my photo editing on the iPhone is done across multiple apps. I am either just cropping, or I’m cropping, filtering, highlighting, adding… and the list goes on. As most of your know, I like to play a lot with my images to see how I can take one image and tell two different stories.

What this means is that I end up with a iPhone Photo Library with many copies of the same image. I open an image in an app, edit it, save it to the Library, then open that image in another app, edit it, and save it…

ColorSplash noted in their most recent update that they were supporting the cross app movement of edited images. You may know ColorSplash as the app that allows you to convert areas of an image either to black and white or to limit the area of color.

With the new feature, instead of saving to the iPhone Library, you can now share the image creation directly to another photo enhancement app. Through the normal save area, choose the ‘Send to app’ option.

Not all photo apps on the iPhone support having a photo sent to it directly without having to save off to the iPhone Library. On my device, ColorSplash shows me which apps I have loaded that I can send the photo directly to. Just choose one and the app launches with the image loaded and ready to edit. Over time we should see more and more of the iPhone Photo apps adding the feature so we can work quickly and produce less digital waste.

Captions, Clarity, Borders, Filters oh my, Camera+ on the iPhone

I have mentioned using Camera+’s Clarity filter on iPhone photos before. It’s a great way to get the dark areas to lighten and the overall picture sharper. The Clarity filter is just one small touch in a group of lighting enhancements and then another full group of iPhone photo filters. Even with all those features getting used all the time, a couple basics get passed by since they are a layer down and get forgotten.

The next time you are going to take a picture with your iPhone, consider using Camera+ as the actual shutter action. The app has several enhancements to the process of taking a image that can be used to get the image closer to what you want from the start.

An area that I forget about is the ‘Borders’. Interesting that I use them in other apps but forget to remove the extra step and apply them right in Camera+ when I’m tuning the image.

When a Camera+ Border is chosen, you may miss it but there is a new button for “Captions”. A tap of the button will allow you enter a bit of text onto your image.

Adding a caption with Camera+ is only the start. You can also date and time stamp the photo with the provided buttons. Making the feature handy for work and memory books.

Now a picture can be worth a thousand words plus a few you added –

Augmented Reality gaming on the iPhone just went Halloween

I have mentioned playing the augmented reality game ARDefender on my iPhone before. If you have yet to do anything ‘Augmented Reality’ on the iPhone… it’s a whole 3D world where nothing is. You look through the screen of your iPhone to see what you would normally see through the iPhone camera with an added world to do things in. In the case of ARDefender, it’s a tower that has weapons on to use against a large variety of attackers.

A new version of ARDefender has been released that is Universal so you can also play the game with your iPad. And, the update changed the world to a Halloween world. The attackers are many of the evils that go bump in the night… flying bats and pumpkin headed exploding walkers.

In case you didn’t know… if you move further way from the ARDefender play zone surface you will see a bigger play zone. Which means you can see those pumpkin headed guys further off for a better chance to stopping them from destroying your tower.