photoshop mobile came out a few days ago at the iphone app store and although there was anticipation for a mobile app from adobe, this one doesn’t really satisfy. the paltry set of effects is actually quite disappointing, considering the amazing breadth of photoshop. my own personal bummer was that there were no layers - imagine something as cool as a single type layer where you can type a name (or phrase) and position it on a photo wherever you want.
the app allows you to open or take a photo via the camera. then gives you the choice of the crop/flip/rotate tool or 3 main sets of effects you can run. the choices are a little more than canned color overlays and a couple of blur effects - the blurs which I actually like a bit. I just wish that I could layer something over the blurry images. and c’mon adobe, do we really need the ’sketch’ effect? it doesn’t even look good. just for that alone i can’t really give it more than 2 out of 5 stars.
for now though, i think i’ll still use some of the other graphics apps - like doodle buddy - that i like (and my kid loves!) and then bring those images into ps mobile. but really, i’m already ready for the update. of course this is probably just adobe signaling the beginning of their cloud apps along with their online service at photoshop.com, but more on that later…
a while back i wrote a post about tilt shift photography and how easy it was to create the tilt shift look in photoshop by simply using a couple of filters and masks. of course you can go out and buy a tilt shift lens and every photo can have that look, but they are kind of expensive. since a few friends asked me to show them, i’ll outline the technique right here.
step 1: choose the right photograph even though you can do this to every photo, not all photographs work the same way. find a photo that you can isolate a specific object in the foreground or middle ground. this will greatly accentuate the effect. i chose a shot i took in athens of the temple of hephaestus from the areopagus.
temple of hephaestus
step 2: duplicate the background: self explanatory
Fire (Jimmy Edgar Remix) from Erik West on Vimeo.
I’m fully embracing my (relatively new) obsession with both tilt shift photography and music videos, and I’ve just stumbled across a really delightful combination of the two (via BoingBoing): Here’s a lovely tilt-shift music video for the band Codebreaker, featuring vocalist Kathy Diamond. The piece was shot, directed, and edited by Erik West, who says, “None of the snow in this piece is simulated. I went out and show on the snowiest days of winter. The last scenes in the video were shot during a blizzard. This was shot on a Canon Powershot SD630 Point & Shoot. Additional footage was shot on a Sony EX1 by Jeff Thomas. Posted using Final Cut, Photoshop, Motion and Color.” (via Aaron Wahle via Matt Kirsch)
