Smartphone Snap: The Cottage

Image Copyright: Andrew Mclachlan

I am currently hanging out at the cottage with a bad back and the Cartoon Camera Pro app for android phones. The back flared up a couples of days ago and is just now starting to feel a little better. While I was resting the back I was playing around with the Colored Edges preset in Cartoon Camera Pro with a few cottage scenes. Above is the front door of the cottage and below is a scene from the living room.

Image Copyright: Andrew McLachlan

And below is a scene from looking out from the dock. The Colored Edges preset had a very interesting effect on the clouds.

Image Copyright: Andrew McLachlan

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The Squirrel and the Dahlia

Red Squirrel, Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario

What do these two photos have to do with each other? Absolutley nothing 🙂 I just wanted to share these two recently processed images with folks before departing for a week of photography at the cottage on Horseshoe Lake in Ontario’s Parry Sound region. I will try to keep in touch with all of you via my ‘SmartPhone Snap’ feature, pending the strength of the cell signal in the area, which seems to drift in and out on a regular basis. Below is the gorgeous dahlia blossom that I used to create the fracted dahlia in my previous Fractastic post.

Do click on the images to see the larger, sharper versions of each.

Hope you all have a great week…chat soon!

Dahlia Blossom

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Restyle Fun

Topaz Labs Restyle – Grass Swing Preset

I have been working on few black and white conversions of some recently captured images and was about to prepare a blog post for them, but then I was notified of a cool new photoshop plug-in available from Topaz Labs called Restyle. By entering the coupon code “restyleit” you will only pay $29.99 and this code will be good until the end of August. I downloaded the software this morning and began playing around with it. I select three images that I had converted to black and white and then began to explore various options by scrolling through the vast number of presets. Above you will see a black and white image of a cluster of ferns that was tweaked by selecting the preset ‘Grass Swing.’ As I explore this new plug-in in my creative tool-kit a little more I will do a more in-depth blog post to discuss its pros and cons.

In the images below, which are both from along the Rosseau River in Ontario Canada’s popular Muskoka Region – a killer destination for autumn color. I have indicated in the image captions which preset was used on these black and white conversions to achieve the desired effect. To find out more about this cool new plug-in and to download your own copy please click here.

Do remember to click on the images to see the larger, sharper versions and let me know your thoughts and favorite image with the Restyle effect applied 🙂

Topaz Labs Restyle – Dark Dreams

 

Topaz Labs Restyle – Blue Black Ice

 

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Fractastic

“HIGH VOLTAGE” Woodland Interior at Killbear Provincial Park, Ontario

In the newly published and popular eGuide “Fractastic: A Creative User Guide for the Redfield Fractalius Filter” Denise Ippolito and yours truly share many of our favorite, custom presets that we use regularly to create artistic renderings of our favorite photos. Whether you use our presets or develop your own set of custom presets doing so will save you a ton of time. The three fractalius renderings in this blog post were each created by selecting the presets found within the guide. In fact,the presets chosen worked so well for these images that I made virtually no further adjustments to the slider settings in the Fractalius interface. I simply loaded the images into Fractalius, selected my preferred custom preset and then hit the green check mark to apply the settings to the image. For the fish-eye lens woodland interior above I chose my ‘High Voltage‘ preset and set the left asterisk to black and the asterisk on the right to white – done.

“ELECTRIFY” Dahlia Blossom

By loading this stunning dahlia blossom into Fractalius and selecting my ‘Electrify‘ preset the above rendering was born.

“LINES-FROGS” Rusted Old Wreck (Gimme a Bullet)

What do frogs and a rusted old Mercury truck with bullet holes have in common? My ‘Line-Frogs’ preset. To create this rendering I simply scrolled through my bank of custom presets until I found the one that seemed to work best for this photograph. It just so happened to be one of my newer presets that I created for my frog fracting.

Do note that I will often load my fractalius renderings into Nik / Google’s Viveza 2 and add a little extra punch with the Structure slider.

To order your copy of this eGuide please click here.

Please remember to click on each of the images to view the larger, sharper versions.

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Smartphone Snap: Rosseau River

Image Copyright: Andrew McLachlan

I’ve slacked off on my smartphone snaps lately due to busy schedule and from having too much fun with the images captured while using the Sigma 15mm f2.8 EX DG Fisheye Lens.

Here are a couple of older smartphone images taken along a scenic section of the Rosseau River in Ontario’s Muskoka Region.

Image Copyright: Andrew McLachlan

Both images have completely processed on my Samsung S2X using the Nik Software app Snapseed, as has this edition of the Smartphone Snap, which has been prepared and posted from the WordPress app for android devices.

Yikes, I hope it turns out okay. New technology can challenging for some folks; including yours truly.

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