Create Great iPhone Photos: Apps, Tips, Tricks, and Effects [Paperback]

Allan Hoffman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2011

You own the world's most versatile, customizable camera: your iPhone. Out of the box, your iPhone camera is no-frills, but you can transform it into a digital darkroom, photo editing suite, and photoblogging tool all rolled into one . . . if you know how to use it.

Create Great iPhone Photos shows you how to take great iPhone photographs—and even turn your not-so-hot photos into thrillingly inventive, atmospheric images. Author and iPhone photographer Allan Hoffman shows you how to harness the full potential of your iPhone's camera and turn it into a wildly fun tool for photographic creativity. You'll learn tips and tricks for generating effects, applying filters, and manipulating your images with wonderfully innovative apps—all right on your iPhone. And you'll be inspired by interviews with today's top iPhone photographers and galleries of their impressive work.

You'll also learn how to:

• Produce stunning panoramas, vintage-style photobooth strips, and super-saturated Polaroid® photos with a hip, 1970s look
• Unlock the secret power of your iPhone's camera with burst mode, high dynamic range (HDR) effects, exposure and focus controls, and more
• Find and install the best iPhone apps for cropping images, adjusting contrast and exposure, and editing your photos to achieve eye-popping results
• Publish and share images right from your iPhone, without the hassle of memory cards, cables, or complex desktop photo editing tools

You have Photoshop® (and a lot, lot more) right in your pocket. Do amazing things with your photos with Create Great iPhone Photos.

Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Allan Hoffman, Author of Create Great iPhone Photos

Dear Amazon Readers,

I’ve owned lots of cameras, but I’ve never owned one as fun and versatile as my iPhone camera.

Is the iPhone the world’s greatest camera? I think so, and I’m not alone in this. A growing number of professional photographers, including several with photos in my book, have come to view the iPhone camera as a brilliant tool for photographic creativity and experimentation.

As one professional photographer told me recently (in an email from Afghanistan, where he is embedded with the Marines): “As cameras go, it might be the best piece of gear I’ve ever used.”

What’s the source of the excitement? The breathtakingly diverse variety of apps, for everything from creating photo booth strips to adding a self-timer to your iPhone camera. There are thousands of photography apps available at the App Store, and it can be a challenge to know how to choose the best of them. That’s where my book comes in. Create Great iPhone Photos tells you about the best photography apps, explains how to use them, and provides a source of inspiration with brilliant color photographs.

Here’s just a brief selection of images in the book and the apps used to create them.

SwankoLab

Lo-Mob

Iris Photo Suite

Hipstamatic

Diptic

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

For the past fifteen years, Allan Hoffman has been the technology columnist for The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, where he writes about Internet culture and trends, the iPhone, and digital photography. His work has appeared in Newsday, the New York Times, Wired.com, and many other magazines and newspapers. He maintains a photoblog at whatiseenow.com and spent much of his teenage years in his high school's darkroom.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (February 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593272855
• ISBN-13: 978-1593272852
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #431,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allan Hoffman is a writer whose work has appeared in Newsday, P.O.V., Rutgers Magazine, Wired News, Worth, Yahoo Internet Life, and many other newspapers, magazines, and literary publications. He is the author of CREATE GREAT IPHONE PHOTOS (No Starch Press, 2011), a book about iPhone photography, and runs an iPhoneography blog at http://www.whatiseenow.com. Over the past 25+ years, Allan has written about everything from skateboarding to Frank Sinatra to dotcom startups. He received an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for a story on the Chinese concept of guanxi and a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for fiction writing. He is the author of 50 FUN WAYS TO INTERNET (Career Press, 1995 and 1998), one of the earliest consumer-oriented books about the web, and the personal technology columnist for The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper. He has been interviewed about technology topics on various television and radio programs, including NBC's "Early Today," C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," CNNfn, and NPR's "All Things Considered."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars I found it lacking March 2, 2011

By Mary Jane

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

It may be great for the photography and iphoneography beginner. This book discusses the best/most loved camera and filters apps. So it is a good guide on what apps to get. But it doesn't discuss in-depth the effects each filter app gives.

The basics on manipulating contrast, saturation, levels, histogram etc are there, but no mention that adjusting the histogram/levels will also increase contrast and create a color shift, so you may want to adjust those as well. No mention of the many things Iris Photo Suite does other than ColorSense and Layers (it does cropping, aligning, color balance, has a basic histogram etc). And even layers are not explained fully (that Multiply darkens, Screen lightens, etc). I understand that the Photo Fx app was only touched briefly, because going into all its effects would require a book on it's own.

The camera apps are explained well. From the filters (or effects) apps however, only Iris, PhotoForge, PhotoGene, Perfect Photo, and Photo Fx are discussed in any depth. The rest are mentioned briefly, and more in the style of which buttons to press to load and save a picture. It's more like a manual for the user interface of each app. For example, Hipstamatic and Swankolab deserved a lot more explanation on what each filter/lens does.

I already have most of the apps mentioned, and know the basics of what they can do, because they are easy to understand. I wanted to learn what each app excels at, like "Hipstamatic's Helga Viking lens accentuates blues and reds, and applies strong contrast and medium grain to the pictures", "Cross Process' Basic setting gives photos a toned down, earthy look". This way, if I was looking for a particular effect, I would know which apps to turn to. This book doesn't do it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for iPhone picture takers! April 10, 2011

By Bibliophile By the Sea TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I never thought my iPhone would take the place of my Sony Digital camera...but it has. My iPhone is always with me, and as a result I am constantly snapping pictures of the pets, friends, nature shots....you name it. The quality with the original iPhone was not that great, but with the iPhone 4 it is so much better. I knew there had to still be someway to improve the quality of the pictures taken with the iPhone 4 and this book made ALL the difference.

Create Great iPhone Photos: Apps, Tips, Tricks and Effects, gives the basics about taking pictures with your phone, but in addition, it gave me so much info that I was not aware of about photography APPS (many free too) that can make your pictures looks very professional. I tried Adobe Photoshop Express already and love what I was able to do with this free APP. Color Splash and Photo gene are a few other APPS that look great and I hope to try.

I loved the fact that this book covered so many areas from taking pictures, applying filter, publishing and sharing right from your phone. This is a tell all, well written reference book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars easy to read and comprehensive coverage of iPhone photography September 14, 2011

By Katie C. Nelson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This book covers a lot of basic information about using the iPhone camera, but it goes way beyond that. I was a little embarrassed to realize that I didn't know about touching the screen to change the area of camera focus! My favorite part of the book is all the enabling for apps, especially tips for self-timer and burst mode apps. I was also pleased to see links to blogs and websites for creative inspiration.

This book covers a wide range of topics related to iPhone photography:
-Basic information (user manual type of detailing)
-How to customize your iPhone camera with apps and seettings
-Photo editing
-Special effects, filters, creative techniques
-Sharing and storing photos
-Blogging your photos
-Sources for inspiration

Close to 200 pages of good information!