Welcome to the Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z 2023 Theme Reveal!

This is the 13th or 14th year of the challenge, I can’t rightly remember which, and I’ve been a participant since 2014.  Every year I choose a theme, and every year I blog it on the fly.  Like last year, I am starting to write my posts today, the day of the letter A, on the same day I am revealing to you, my precious reader, my theme.  No plan this year, aside from last night, loosely deciding what I might post about.

Before I reveal my 2022 theme, here are themes from challenges past:

• 2014:  I blogged about our house, and the befores and afters of the renos we did and changes we made after buying it.
• 2015: I blogged about interesting places in Victoria (all close to home).
• 2016: I blogged about learning to use my DSLR
• 2017: I blogged about my ‘hood in Welcome to James Bay!
• 2018: I blogged about the wonderful world of wabi-sabi in photographs.
• 2019:  I blogged about A picture-story a day (in the life, so to speak)
• 2020: I blogged about female photographers
• 2021 I blogged Photos and Stories
• 2022 I blogged Photo editing apps!

This year, it’s the exciting theme of: My life in first drafts!  I am in a memoir writing phase.  And don’t worry, there will be photos too…

So, I will see you on later today for my first post!

This post approved by Elliot.

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, Z is for Glaze.

I’m gonna keep this short for today as it’s Saturday, I am writing this of course at the last minute, and it’s the last letter of the A to Z challenge….We made it!

So Glaze, like TangledFX, is one of my go-to apps, one of the first apps I discovered on this journey to appdom of photo editing.  According to the iPhone Photography School “a photo to painting app that converts your pictures into textured paintings.”  And it is indeed.  There are 12 sets of glazes each with five styles, and using the “workshop” you can mix and match your glazes. I confess I haven’t quite got the hang of this but I tried and some of those tries are below.  There is also a masking tool, but as we all know I still haven’t learned how to use these yet…a summer vacation goal!

Websites

• Poem about Glaze

• GLAZE is still a standout ‘photo to painting’ app

Examples

Original Image

Glaze from set 1

Glaze from set 5

Glaze from set 12

Mix of 1 and 5 above

Mix of 1, 5, and 12 above

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter Z. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter Z, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, Y is for Skylab.

Skylab is an app for changing, basically replacing, skies.  I am curious to see someday what it can do to photos with no skies, but it is a little trick to figure out since I believe masking is a key component of the manipulation and, well, masking still eludes me.   The interface is very similar to AlienSky and Reflect.  The only site I really found was it’s creator’s site:  Skylab

Here’s what I found myself:

• There are several sky types with specific types in each Clear, Cloudy, Sunset, Stormy (my fav), Vortex, Vortex 2, Night, Moonlight, Pastel Skies, Heavy Skies, Rainbow Skies, Unstack Cities, Unstack Sunsets, Unstack Auroras
• There are masking tools which I have yet to learn
• You can add Elements like moons, trees, and people
• You can work with layers for your Elements
• There is a set of filters

Examples

Original Image

One of the Stormy Skies

One of the Vortex 2 with an Element

One of the Moonlights with a filter

One of the Unstack Sunsets with an Element

One of the Unstack Auroras with an Element

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter Y. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter Y, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, W is for Wagterlogue.

Waterlogue is a VERY simple app.  It takes your photos and turns them into watercolours.  You import an image, then select from any of 14 filters.They are: Vibrant, Natural, Bold, Luminous, “It’s Technical”, Streamlined, Travelogue, Rainy, Illustration, Soaked, Shallow, Color Bloom, Fashionable, and Blotted.

For each filter you can change the size of the brushstrokes (small, medium, large, giant) and you can adjust the brightness (dark, darker, normal, light, lighter) of your images to add more variety.  And you can add a border…and that’s it!

Websites

• The Waterlogue App is Awesome – Here’s What It Does

• Easy Watercolor Paintings with the Waterlogue App {Turn a Picture into a Painting}

Examples

Original image

Bold, Large brushstrokes, auto light

Rainy, Jumbo brushstrokes, Medium light

Fashionable, Small brushstrokes, darkest light

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter W. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter W, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, V is for VSCO.

VSCO, like Snapseed, is a really robust photo editing application.  Unlike Snapseed, however, it is not entirely free (you need to pay a subscription for full functionality) and it is a little harder (in my opinion) to navigate.  VSCO is not, however, just an editing platform.  It is also a social media platform allowing you to share images and comment on others’ images.  You can also follow your favs.  I have too many SM platforms, so I do not avail myself of this option.

Once you have imported a photo and opened the image editor, you have a lot of options.

First is an endless list of filter presets (Featured, Essential, Popular, Favourites, Recent, For this Photo, Warm, Cool, Vibrant, B&W, Portrait, Nature, and Urban.)  You can either choose a preset filter to begin with or keep your original image and click the Edit function.

Under Edit you have Dodge&Burn, Blur, Text, Adjust (crop), Exposure, Contrast, Remove, Sharpen, Clarity, Saturation, Tone, White Balance, Skin Tone, Vignette, Grain, Fade, Split Tone, Borders, HSL.  Under FX you have Essential, Distressed, Frames, Light, Texture.  Finally, you can create a “recipe” from your edits.

Finally, I know there is a lot more you can do with this app, so I will need to explore further (or invite you to do so and let us know how it goes!)

Websites

• VSCO at Wikipedia
• VSCO online
• How To Use VSCO App To Shoot & Edit Beautiful iPhone Photos

Examples

Original Image

No filter, basic edits, FX Distressed (Expired 3)+Frame (8mm5)

Nature Q5 filter, some edits, FX Texture (Scratch 3)

Processed with VSCO with p8 preset

Reopened image #1 and applied a Cool filter (G5)

Processed with VSCO with g5 preset

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter V. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter V, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, U is for Union.

Union is another app that allows you to blend photos.  In this case, one photo as the background and one as the foreground (you can’t add multiple foregrounds…it’s more like a double exposure app.)

Basically the background image is static, but you can manipulate the foreground using some good masking features that allow you to blend your photos in some pretty amazing ways, which I have yet to figure out.  In a nutshell:

1. Load a background image, solid color, or transparent layer
2. Load a foreground image, solid color, or shape
3. Efficiently erase areas of the foreground image using Union’s palette of intuitive, user-friendly tools
4. Adjust the position and size of the foreground image to reach desired composition
5. Make color adjustments on the background and foreground so they blend seamlessly (https://www.tapsmart.com/apps/union-photo-blending-combination-editor-goes-free-app-store/)

Websites

• Union
• Union: Combine and Edit Photos
• Union app review: image-blending at its finest 2021
• Union Quick Advice

Examples

2 of the Original images

Some random fun (showing that I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing….)

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter U. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter U, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, T is for Tintype.

Tintype is a very simple app.  Coming from Hipstamatic, Tintype’s one job is to make your photos look old.  There are four “colour” options:  BW, two kinds of sepia (Tintype does not give them names), and colour.  You can crop to square from rectangle (but you can’t decide how it crops), you can adjust the plate grain and add a frame (type decided for you), can emphasize eyes when working with portraits, and adjust the depth of field.  That’s it.  No sliders or anything else to do.

Here are some websites to check out

• Tintype App Brings the Magic and History of Tintype Photography to iOS

• How To Use TinType App To Create Beautiful Vintage iPhone Photos

• TinType Review

And here are some examples:

Original image

B&W with frame

Sepia 1 in square with frame

Colour +increased grain and frame

Sepia 2 + lowered grain no frame

Sepia 2 + high grain no frame

BW with low grain and narrow depth of field and frame

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter T. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter T, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, S is for Snapseed.

I’m gonna keep this short because most people who work in mobile phone photography know about Snapseed, and I can’t possibly do it justice in a short post.  I also have “used” Snapseed for awhile, but only knew some of its features until last night when we learned WAY more about it in my iPhone Artography class.  I’m looking forward to trying more!

Snapseed has an amazing suite of editing tools, presets (that you can add to), curves, filters, brushes, healing, cropping/rotating/perspective, and masking (which is cleverly hidden, but cool cause you can walk through all your edits and delete them, revise them, or use masking to apply them to only specific parts of the photo.)  And the best part of all?  It’s FREE!!!

Anyway, here are some sites that can talk to you more about it.

• Snapseed online
• Snapseed at Wikipedia
• Complete Guide To Using Snapseed To Edit Your iPhone Photos
• NavEdits YouTube Channel for Snapseed – amazing tutorials!

And here are some recent creations I made, all created in Snapseed:

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter S. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter S, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, R is for Reflect.

This is a simple little app, with a very similar design to Alien Skies, likely because they have the same developer.  You add reflective surfaces to the lower half of an image.  There are also a few enhancement options like textures and elements you can play with, and you can add a layer of fog on the top of the added surface.  I have to admit, it is one of my favourite apps right now, and I have been adding water to images like crazy.  Another one of those fads that will go out of style at some point, but between the menacing moon and the flood waters, I have some pretty good dystopian images right now (not sure what that is saying….)

Reflect app tutorial

Reflect app review

Here are some examples:

Original Image, and the enhanced original I used in Reflect

Water Presets: Mirror Lake 3, and Mirror Lake with added lightening effect

Ocean Presets: Ocean 4 (with fog)

Ice Presets: Smooth Ice, and Fractured Ice 2

Floor Surfaces Presets:  Steel, and Wood Floor 2

Sci-Fi Presets: Matrix Grid

Beaches Presets: Beach 3, and Rocky Shore 3

Tiles Surfaces Presets: Checkered

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter R. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter R, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Welcome to my April 2022 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Today, Q is for Quaint Quirky Alien Sky.

Ok, ok, ok.  I am definitely cheating today, but only because the one app I could find with a Q in it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk doing that free three days then be charged an arm and a leg per month if I forget to stop the subscription.  It looked kind of cool, but not in a way that was different from other apps I have and like.  So, today is a fun one called Alien Sky.

Alien Sky adds elements to images, like planets and moons and lightening and comets.  To the sky, get it?  Alien sky.  It also has some textures and filters and has layers so you can literally layer one element on top of another.  It has some masking ability, but I haven’t played with it yet because, well, I am enamored with adding large menacing moons to all my images with skies lately.

Honestly, I found this app by looking for something that I could add a moon with.  That’s it.  And now I use it all the time (and probably will until I get tired of big menacing moons…)

Here are some examples, where I’ve layered elements onto the image one at a time:

Original Image

From the Planet category

From the Moon category

From the Sun/Stars category

From the Alien Worlds category

From the Nebula/Galaxies category

From the LensFlares category

All of the above with an added texture

Thanks for visiting my 2022 A to Z Challenge – Letter Q. You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter Q, A to Z 2022 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).