Archive for vintage

OSXcellence – NIR Color

White trees and black skies – enter the world of warped color, known as infra-red photography. In recent years, the rise of affordable DSLRs has enabled photographers to put “last year’s model” aside for conversion to infra-red, and, as a result, infra-red has seen somewhat of a renaissance, particularly with landscape photographers looking for a way to make their pictures different. As with other forms of in-camera stylistics, infra-red is a look which a number of app publishers have tried to copy, but most have found that a realistic infra-red look is almost impossible to achieve. Can NIR Color, by JixiPix, provide a better experience?

The first thing I must say before looking at NIR in any depth is this – IR imaging is not truly replicable with a computer. Software can guess how colors would have appeared if taken in infra-red, but a true reflection of a scene as pictured in infra-red is impossible.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that NIR’s color-shifting filters don’t make an image look like it was taken in IR. But then again, JixiPix haven’t really attempted to make an IR emulator. The clue is in the name – it is called NIR Color, not IR Color.

Read More→

ScratchCam for iPhone: Random Film Effects

It has gone from being a weakness to a disease. I’m addicted to iPhone apps that provide cool, vintage effects for my photos. And the developer of ScratchCam, Steve Arnold, is feeding my addiction with a genuinely cool iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad app.

The simplicity is beautiful, and so are the images. So all you do is open the app, and either take a photo or select one from your camera roll. You then click on the refresh button until you find an effect you like. If you see one you like, you can click on the heart icon, which saves it as a favorite. When your image is ready to share with the world, you simply press the Share button to share it via Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, or email. You may also opt to save it to your camera roll for future use, which I recommend that you do even if you share it via one of the social networking sites.

This little jewel normally sells for $1.99 in the App Store. However, at the time of writing this review, it was on sale for 99 cents. You can try the lite version, which I downloaded for the review, for free. Read More→