Editing pictures on a smartphone

**We've been sick at the house so I've not been posting much.  Hopefully next week we can get back into the swing of things and post WWWW and some birthday and photography blogs!  But here is a blog I started up a couple weeks ago and never got around to posting.


So I was out at lunch and I walked by this beautiful tree with these beautiful magenta flowers on it (Yes magenta because I'm a girl and I name colors specifically!) against a beautiful blue sky wtih the most perfect clouds behind it.  I loved how it looked and I took a picture.  Because I'm addicted to not only taking pictures, but posting pictures.  :)  So, I was gonna "instagram" it but noticed the tree was a little too dark, so I decided to edit it in my phone.  After all was said and done I thought  that this would be the perfect opportunity to do the "editing in smartphones" blog post I've been wanting to do!  So here I share my secrets (not really) to editing your pictures in your smartphone.  I have an iPhone so that's what you're going to see.  I don't know how to use an Android or any other smartphone, but I imagine the apps can't be much more different (if they're available). 

Because I am a photographer I am usually pretty picky about a picture I post, even if its on Instagram or Facebook.  Especially for Instagram because once you start adding filters it messes with your picture even more. I like for my picture to be as clear as possible and bright as possible.  That's hard to do with a iPhone because 1) the flash is limited in how far it goes (I try not to use it at all) and 2) its a phone, not a DSLR camera or even a point & shoot camera. 

Enter: Apps for editing pictures!  My 2 favorite and the ones I use for everything are Snapsneed and Afterlight.  Each pretty much do the same thing. They both have your general features like brightness, contrast, saturation, etc, but Snapsneed has one feature that I like especially.  Sometimes I use both, sometimes I just use one.

So here you see my original picture... The tree is darker of course because of the bright sky behind it. 

I did it first in Snapsneed because it has a more specific feature that I needed for this picture "selective adjust".  This means that you can mess with a selected area of the picture.  Where as if you were to mess with general brightness, it would brighten the whole picture.  But this selective adjust lets you pic that area that is dark and brighten just that area.  So you're in there, you hit the + sign that pops up and a circle appears.  You can place that circle whereever you need.  Then if you pinch or expand your 2 fingers (just like when you zoom on a picture) it will enlarge or shrink the circle.  But what I like is that it highlights in red the part that will be affected so you can see what your specifically fixing.  So this comes in handy a lot because you don't always have the perfect lightsource.  Also, sometimes your kids face is darker than the rest of the picture and you can specifically brighten it.  I love that!

So you have your area selected and if you swipe up and down you have the option to enhance brightness, contrast, and saturation of that selected area.  If you swipe side to side you increase or decrease your chosen enhancement.  It sounds and looks kinda complicated at first and I'll admit at first I was intimidated by the options, but once you learn it, its super easy.  So that's one of my favorite features of Snapsneed. Another thing I like is that it has tilt-shift feature and center focus feature.  Those add that blurriness to your pictures where you want it to be out of focus.  Other than that it has your generic stuff.  But I love how by brightening it and messing with focus, you can take your ordinary iPhone pic to the next level and it can look like out of a real camera.

So here you see my before and after using Snapsneed:

After adjusting the dark tree, I went ahead and went into Tune Image where I can adjust the general brightness, contrast, saturation, and temperature of the picture.  You didn't know a little picture had so much potential did you??  :)

And here is my picture in AfterLight after making the same adjustments (except selective adjust, since it doesn't have that feature).

Its almost the same, except you can tell that the one edited in SnapSneed has a bit more detail to the tree because of the selective adjust.  I added contrast specifically to that tree because when I brightened up the general brightness of the picture, it made it kinda dull looking.  

Anyway, I hope this made sense and you can go and download those apps and turn your simple iPhone pics into better ones!  

Birthday invite & 1 year pictures

So I've debating on whether or not to post this because I wanted to wait until these were handed out…  But I love how these invitations turned out so here it is!  Also I wanted to show you guys how easy it was.

First off, a BIG thank you to Alanna from Toronto Mama for this blog: Easy DIY Invitations Using PicMonkey.  I already used PicMonkey to make collages and stuff.  I love it!  Its super user friendly and free!  So when she posted that blog on how to make your own invite using the site, well challenge accepted!  ;)  And here is what I came up with a couple hours later (because I am no expert graphic artist!).  Basically I looked up some invites and gathered some ideas and made it my own.

My husband usually makes our invites because he IS an expert graphic artist, but doesn't always have the time.  Believe me when I say, if I can do it, you can do it!!  He was super proud of me and I was like a peacock fluffing out my tail feathers when he told me it looks great!  As you can guess, we are doing Sock Monkey theme!  I'll definitely be posting the pictures of the birthday party!  But for now, here are a few of the pictures I took for the invite and also just cause he is turning 1.  I can't believe how big our little monkey is…

Also, if you're tight on a budget or just too lazy to go to the store like me (also possibly because I'm cheap)… that number 1 he's holding I made while he was napping.  I took some cardboard, drew a 1, cut it out and painted it white.  Voila!  No money spent and super easy!  I mean it does the job.  If you prefer a fancier, thicker 1 any craft store has them.

Our 4th of July

Our fourth of July started out awesome!  We got to sleep in and the sun was shining.  And just like every year, we go to my parents house and eat some delicious food!  This year we had grilled chicken, italian sausage, arroz con gandules, potato salad, and guacamole.  A little bit of everything!  All made courtesy of my amazing and talented mother!!  Then after the food has settled a bit we have some watermelon and melon.  Its just not 4th of July without watermelon!  Later on we head out to Winter Springs Central Winds Park for their fireworks show.  The City of Winter Springs puts on a great event.  There are lots of vendors with good food!  They have live music and stuff for the kids to do too.  Well true to Florida weather it started raining at about 6 pm.  Fireworks were scheduled for 9, but it looked like we weren't going to get to go.  But then at about 8 pm I noticed the rain had stopped.  So we quickly gathered everything and everyone up and headed out!  After parking and schlepping chairs, strollers, and kids we made it with like 10 minutes to spare.  We got ourselves a great spot and enjoyed a great fireworks show!  One of the things I love about that show is they play music along with the fireworks.  I always get teary-eyed when they play "I'm Proud to be an American" and "America the Beautiful" by Ray Charles.  It touches my patriotic side!  This was also Liam's first 4th so I was excited to see his reaction.  He actually didn't do too bad.  He was scared and clingy at first, but after a few minutes he got used to it and relaxed and was enjoying the lights.  By the end he was clapping.  :)  All in all it was a good day!  Oh wait… lets not talk about the hour that we sat around in the car waiting to exit the parking lot… yeah… lets not talk about that.  ;)

Our 4th of July pictures.

Shoe lover...

If you know me, then you know I love shoes.  Like LOVE.  Its bordering on a sickness, but its not that bad.  I can quit anytime, ok?!  Anyway…  So one of the blogs that I love, love, love Kendi Everyday, had a give away, like she does often on Wednesdays.  This particular give away was for ShoeMint.  I think it was like a $50 credit. Alas, I did not win.  Such is my life (I truly am one of those people who never win anything.  Not just saying that!) But in order to enter the giveaway I had to sign up with them.  No big deal.  Well I start receiving their emails and I kinda start to get annoyed cause its like 3 a day.  I love shoes, but please don't bombard me with emails.  So yesterday I receive this one email sent to me from the shoe gods themselves…  "Big Mintsider Sale!  50% off of sale items!"  They were speaking my language…  I went in and fell in love with a lot of stuff.  Long story not so short, I scored 3 amazing pairs of shoes for $51.  That's free shipping y'all after $50.  The total before discount was $103!!!  And who knows before that cause these shoes were already on sale.  So I just want to say thank you thank you thank you to Kendi and Shoemint!  You guys made my day!!  Also I say all this to share the love with you guys!  Go, sign up, and don't forget to use the code: CELEBRATE.  Just don't get the same shoes as me.  Just kidding.  Maybe.

Here are my beautiful scores…

It is truly a happy 4th of July!!!  

WWWW

Hey guys!  Another week, another WWWW!  I've been horrible with keeping up with blog posts, except for this one.  I'm trying to get some DIY posts together, so that's coming soon!  I've also started planning Liam's 1st birthday party, which is gonna be Sock Monkey theme.  I'm excited!  I'll post a blog FULL of pictures once that over and done with.  That's not till August though.  But anyway, without further ado, our WWWW post.  I tried to go with a red, white, and blue color scheme since its 4th of July week.

My top is from one of my favorite stores, Francesca's Collections.  If I could buy everything in there, I would!  They know me so well!  Check them out, but be warned, you'll be smitten!  The shirt is white with blue stripes.  I don't think that comes across, so just saying.  The denim skirt is from H&M.  And lastly my shoes are from Target.  I got those like 4 years ago and I love them!  They're holding up for as much as I use them.

Next up, Christian.  (Don't you just love his pose?  lol!  I said let me take your picture and that's what he gave me.)  His shirt is from Target.  That was his Easter outfit shirt from last year.  And the red pants are from JCPenney.  I love skinny jeans on this boy!  He's got the perfect body for them.   Shoes from Old Navy.

And lastly my little Liam is wearing a hand me down romper and I have no idea the brand.  I don't think its a known brand.  Let me just say, Liam has like 101 rompers, so that's pretty much what he lives in.  I'm gonna try and change it up next week, haha!  And his shoes are my favorite type of shoes for my pre-walking boy, soft-soled Ministar from Target.

Can you tell I used my real camera?  :-D  I've been itching to take real pictures and just do a photoshoot.  I love a good crisp picture.  And with that I give a shameless plug…  Call me if you want to do a photoshoot!!  Check out my photography Facebook page: JVPhotography

(Don't forget to head on over to Toronto Mama and A Life From Scratch to check out their little families styles!)