The Constant Scrapper

If I'm not scrapbooking I'm thinking about scrapbooking!

Reviews

Scrapper on the edge: Part 1

By 13 Comments

I like to color correct and crop my photos before I print, so I often just print a few at a time on my home printer as I need them for projects. But recently my beloved Canon Pixma iP8500 started acting up. All my troubleshooting efforts led me to finally call Canon support, where the very nice technician told me that I had attempted every test and fix that he would have walked me through. So he gave me the name and number of a local authorized repair shop and sent me on my way.

After calling the recommended repair place and finding out the price tag of a diagnosis, I decided it was time to replace my four-year-old machine. So long, loyal friend…come to mamma, Epson R1900.

But my new machine is on back order, and you all know that a real scrapbooker does not rest on her laurels just because she’s down a printer. No way! I color corrected, cropped and uploaded some photos to my nearby Walgreens and headed over an hour later to pick them up.

What the what?! These were not the photos I had uploaded. I mean, yes, they were technically the photos I had uploaded. But there was one upsetting difference: all the edges were cut off!

I said something (nicely, of course) to the unsuspecting clerk, whose eyes widened noticeably as she realized that at that moment she was looking into the eyes of the most anal-retentive person she had ever met. She weakly replied that she had never had anyone else mention this issue.

Oh, well, that makes it all right then.

You may expect that I roundly abused her for trying to make me feel that I am alone in a world of people who don’t care about having important details snipped out of their precious photos by complete strangers and their machinery. But I did not. I quietly paid for my useless photos and went home with a plan brewing in my persnickety noggin.

I believe in a world where you get back from the photo center exactly what you uploaded. 😉 But I can’t make that happen overnight, so instead I am launching a campaign. I want to make sure that those of you who share my vision are armed with the information you need to get more of what you want when you send your photos out to be printed. I know there must be at least one other scrapper out there who cares about this issue! I mean why would God invent Photoshop Elements if we aren’t supposed to use it?

I have created a few test files to upload to various printers, and if you will come back to read more tomorrow I will report on my results (as well as give you a relevant FREEBIE). See you then!

Read Part 2 and download my FREEBIE.

Great Android photo apps for scrapbookers

By 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I read a post on Kristina Werner’s blog where she reviewed a few of her favorite iPhone photo apps. I thought it was great, but I have an Android (which I love). If you have an Android too and would like to have some hip camera apps to use on it, I’ve pulled together my thoughts on a few of the better ones I’ve used (listed in the order of my preference).

I have chosen to include only the free versions of each of these apps, for comparison’s sake. I will point out if there’s a more feature-rich for-pay version, where applicable.

In order to show the differences in the types of photos you’ll get out of each app I have taken the same shot with my HTC Evo’s default camera and then with each app (and several of its filters). In all cases I have left the photos unaltered except for resizing so you can see the images exactly as they came off my phone. This is the original image, taken with the phone’s basic camera app.

birdOriginal

The photo as taken with the basic camera app on my HTC Evo

Retro Camera

I really like Retro Camera by Urbian. It takes great old-school pics and has five cameras (the Bärbl, the Little Orange Box, Xolaroid 2000, the Pinhole Camera and FudgeCan) inspired by the Lomo, Holga, Polaroid, Diana, the toy cameras and Hipstamatic. It’s interface is simple and intuitive, and most of the cameras have a black-and-white choice in addition to color. I list it as my first choice here because if you look at the effects each camera produces, there’s a nice variety of choice right here within this one app. I also think Urbian did a nice job on the frames for each. Lastly, notice that this sample Xolaroid 2000 looks much more like a traditional Polaroid photo than the output of the FXCamera later in this article.

RetroCameraSampler

A sampling of Retro Camera's effects

Vignette

(full version is $4.06)
Vignette by neilandtheresa is my other favorite camera app in this review. With 68 effects & 56 frames, it creates a ton of retro/vintage styles (LOMO/Diana/Holga toy/Polaroid/cross-process/tilt-shift/photobooth/double exposure and more). There are more choices to make within each effect than in Retro Camera, which makes it a little more complex to learn but richer in features. If I want to have more control I pull up this app.

VignetteSampler

A sampling of some of Vignette's effects

ActionSnap

ActionSnap by Oursky Ltd. is an app that captures action and then samples it into four frames. The frames can be arranged as 1×4, 2×2 or 3×3, and the time intervals can be set from 0.1s – 5s. Of course, my shot wasn’t ideal for showing off this one, but you can see how the “movement” works. I think this app is a nice addition to your regular camera because of how it handles fast-moving kids and pets. In addition to the LOMO filter, this app also features a sepia filter.

ActionSnapSampler

A sampling of ActionSnap's effects

FxCamera

FxCamera by YMST offers some fun effects: ToyCam, Polandroid, Fisheye, SymmetriCam, Warhol as well as Normal. I don’t consider these effects to be as useful as Retro Camera’s, but I suppose that’s personal preference. The resolution of the resulting photos is also lower, which could pose a problem for traditional paper scrappers because we would have to print them at rather small sizes.

FxCameraSampler

A sampling of FXCamera's effects

So if you still use just your Android’s default camera, perhaps it’s time to try one (or more) of these apps to bring some good filtered fun to your next scrapbook layout. If you find other photo apps for Android that you think scrappers would enjoy, please let me know in the comments.