Filters and Borders and Word Art...Oh My!

This week Tracey and I are sharing more photo recipes.  We are going to explore what you can do with the RookieCam app and the Rhonna Designs apps.

I must confess that I resisted relying on my phone for photos for a long time.  I was convinced that it just couldn't possible do justice to the images that I wanted.  As is often the case, over time I have been proven wrong.  The images are often just as good; and the truth is, I almost always have my phone with me so I "get" the shots that I would have missed if I relied solely on my DSLR.

And here is another confession, sometimes it is more fun to play with editing apps on my phone that it is to edit in Lightroom or Photoshop.  Again, the editing can happen anywhere.  I don't have to wait until I get home to my computer, which often is late at night.  I guess what I am saying is that sometimes I am lazy when it comes to editing.  Lol!  Both RookieCam and the Rhonna Designs trio of apps make editing quick and easy!

Here is the original shot, a leaf on my lantana.  I think that I took the shot trying to catch a butterfly or a dragon fly that I obviously missed.  I was about to delete the photo, but I really monochromatic shots so it caught my attention.  As I looked more carefully, there was something about this leaf that drew me in.  Maybe I'm just easily amused. :-)

I came to the conclusion that what I liked about it was all the curves...the curved edges of the leaf itself, the curves of the veins, the tiny curves of the scalloped edges, and the way the leaf curves around itself in the upper right.  As I thought about if and how to edit this shot, I decided that I wanted to use something that would make all of those curves more pronounced.

This is the edit using the Timber filter from RookieCam.  It adds some "harshness" to the photo, but to me it also brings out all of the curves as well as some more of the smaller details of the leaf.  I then bumped both the shadows and the highlights a tiny bit.

This particular filter added some graininess that I don't usually care for, but I can tolerate it here I think because it adds a little more texture to the monochromatic image.  I am not a big fan of adding textures to my photos.  RookieCam has some included, but I have never used them.

Once I bumped the Highlights and shadows in RookieCam, I realized that there was more light play in this than I had first noticed.  Because Tracey and I are looking at the Rhonna Design appas as well, I challenged myself to create a different edit focusing more on the light rather than details of the leaf itself.

Here is the same original image with the the Dreamy filter from Rhonna Magic applied.

Though I like this, I wanted to see if I could make the light in this image a bit more dramatic.  Rhonna Magic has some light leaks that can be added, but none of them gave me what I was looking for.

I then took the above image first edited with Rhonna Magic back into RookieCam.  I used RookieCam lightleak 20 with the screen blending mode.  The subtle bokeh adds some texture to the shot, but, in my opinion, it also changes the mood.   It makes it seem happy, joyful, lighter, in an emotional way.  Though I started with the same photo, this edit creates a completely different feeling than did the first.  There is no judgment as to which is better.  I am simply making an observation. This does, however, illustrate just how much control photographers have over the impact of our photographs on the viewer.  What is it that we see in our images?  And, what is it that we want our viewers to see?

Because I have a thing for adding text to my photos, and because the Rhonna Designs app has some fantastic word art, I went back and added a bit of text.

I could have continued to play with different combinations of filters, and borders, and little tweaks here and there, but at some point you just have to stop and say, "I'm done."


by Tracey G

I like to challenge myself occasionally and just use my phone's camera and apps for my photos. I like to see if I can capture things just as I can with my big camera. For example, this month my CY365 is all phone photos, except for one I believe, but that was because it was a photo that did double-duty: blog and photo-of-the-day. In doing so, though, I do tend to lean toward and on my favorite apps to help me out. This week, as Kris said, we're working with the Rhonna Farrer suite of apps and RookieCam. I love the fact that with the Rhonna apps, they all can work together. If you edit partially in RD Magic app, you can open the photo in the Rhonna Designs app right from there and keep on trucking in your edits.

I chose to use the RookieCam app as a stand-alone, even though I don't normally, I thought it would be good for this. I usually flip back and forth between Rhonna's apps and RookieCam for different things. I love the frames and textures in RookieCam, so I use those quite a bit. And in Rhonna's I love the fonts and word art. I usually have a hard time with the adding of text in the RookieCam app, once it's set, it seems to be set - you can't come back and reposition etc. And color picking isn't easy to get consistent results with each word. I like to do my wording as individual items so I can arrange them as I want to, and it's not that easy in RookieCam, for me, I should add. There's probably a super simple way to do all these things, I just haven't figured it out, so I'm not faulting the app at all - I'm sure it's operator error, lol. 

I'll start with my original photo, that I took with my Camera+ app:

First up, is my edit in RookieCam:

I chose the 'Maple' filter under the "Ordinary Moment" category of filters. I processed it at 50%. I then added a pin-line border and changed the color to pink. I added the text, and since I couldn't get the two words in the exact same shade, lol, I opted for the artistic look of making the word "Pink" actually pink as a visual representation of the color as well.

Next is the edit with the Rhonna collection. I started in the RD Magic app, and then migrated the photo (via the RD app "Open In" option) into the Rhonna Designs for finishing.

 In the RD Magic app, I bumped up the contrast and warmed up the image a little bit. I then added some "Edges". I LOVE the edges in the RD Magic app by the way, they add some nice texture. I combined two for this image. The first one I applied, was #EG18 and adjusted to 50%. Then, I added #EG11 and adjusted to 85%. I then opened it in the Rhonna Designs app. Once there, I added the "Fade" filter (a personal favorite of mine and I use it a LOT) and left it at 100%. Lastly I added the word art and pronounced it done. Otherwise, as Kris said, I could have kept on going and going - sometimes you just have to make yourself stop, lol.

I do hope that our experimenting with apps helps out a little bit, showing you what you can do with even just a few editing apps!