efx
Latest
RollWorld lets you create your own little planet on iOS
You may have seen photos with the 'little' or 'tiny' planet effect. There are quite a few iOS apps that will render this effect for you, but most have a cost associated with them while RollWorld is free and works quite well. Import a photo from your camera roll, or set up your camera to take the photo "live". You can use any of six adjustments to roll the horizon into a tight ball, making it look like a little planet or asteroid. RollWorld works just fine, and the rendering quality looks very good. I found photos that have something sticking up into the sky like a tree or a building give the best effects. The image I warped that is seen at the top of this page was taken at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. With the sliders, you can also do a reverse warp, rolling the horizon into a large ball with a hole in the center that is your sky. Your finished image can be rotated and zoomed to taste. Touch your finished picture and RollWorld reverts to the original photo. The app also lets you shake your phone to get random settings, but I'd rather be in control of the final image. When you are done, you can save the image to your device, email it, or send it to Twitter, Facebook, wechat or Instagram. You're not going to use the RollWorld effect on every photo, but it's a great novelty and will certainly be of interest to your friends or family, especially if they haven't seen the effect before. This is the kind of thing that is very tough to do in Photoshop, yet the iPhone or iPad does it very well with the help of this app. RollWorld is a universal app. It requires iOS 7 or later. It's fun, so at a price of free, it's worth a download.
Review: Picamerge for iOS creates double exposures with filter effects
Picamerge (U.S. $0.99 on sale) is a rather unique photo app for iOS that is designed solely to create double exposures to make some unique looking images. Gee, in the old days when we had double exposures with a film camera, it was usually by accident! Picamerge lets you use photos from your camera roll and albums, or you can take pictures using the apps built-in camera functionality. When you have your double image, a slider bar across the bottom lets you adjust the blend, and filters along the bottom of the screen let you try some preset unique looks. The filters vary the transparency of the images, and can add some color effects if desired. Getting a worthwhile double exposure can take some planning, and it's not the kind of effect you will use very often, but it's great to have when you want it. I can foresee creating some very nice holiday photo cards with a snow effect or candle overlay. Once your image creation is completed, your masterpiece can be saved back to your iOS device or shared via Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Picamerge is just one of those little apps that are worth having when you need them. It is very simple to use, and whether the effect works or not is up to you, and not the app. Picamerge requires iOS 7.0 or greater. It's universal so iPads, iPod touches, and of course iPhones are welcome. The app is optimized for the iPhone 5.
Efexio adds Hollywood style visual effects to your iOS videos
Efexio is a free universal app (with many in-app purchase options) that lets you add professional visual effects to videos you shoot on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. The app comes with free dinosaur and dragon effects, and you can purchase more from within the app. The extra effects are US$1.99 each. Efexio excels with the control of the effects. You can rotate them, change the lighting position, add haze, and even adjust the color cast to smoothly integrate the effects into your videos. The objects cast shadows, which makes them all the more realistic. You can take a video from within the app, or use one you have already taken. Effects are easier to add if the camera is held very steady or on a tripod. Once a video is created, you can share it to YouTube, Facebook or email it. Movies are not rendered at full resolution; you can choose 640 x 360 or 960 x 540. The Pro Version of the various effects, a $9.99 upgrade for each (!), gives you high-resolution output. The effects are from Tippett Studios. Phil Tippett is a special effects legend, and his work includes Jurassic Park, RoboCop and Matrix Revolutions. Using the app was fairly straightforward, although I had to refer to the manual a couple of times. The icons for editing are not always intuitive, but once you use the app, the workflow is pretty easy to follow. Efexio provides video tutorials online. I had a couple of crashes when loading an external video. The crashes didn't happen consistently, but frequently enough to be irritating. The nearest competition to Efexio is Action Movie FX, also a free app with plenty of in-app purchase options. The app has similar features and also high-quality output. Both apps get excellent ratings from users. Efexio also plans to offer an OS X version of the app. Efexio for iOS requires iOS 6.0 or greater, and is optimized for the iPhone 5. %Gallery-195605%
Alien Sky gives your photos an other worldly look
I grew up reading science fiction books and loved the cover illustrations with vistas of alien worlds. I particularly remember the great paintings of Chesley Bonestell, an architect who later in life became a premier illustrator of space scenes. He also worked on some classic sci-fi movies like Destination Moon. This brings me to Alien Sky, a new US$0.99 iPhone app that will easily transform your images into something that can recreate that eerie outer space look on your own photos. The app features illustrations of galaxies, moons and planets. It also includes gradient filters and lens flares. You select an object and drop it on top of an image from your photo library, or take a fresh picture with the iPhone camera. Once the object is layered over your photo, you can change the size or rotate the object to any angle. It can then be saved to your picture roll, or shared via email or Twitter. It can also be directly imported into some photo editors on your iPhone like Photo Splash or Photogene. Of course, once in your camera roll, the image can be opened by any image editor. The results with some western landscapes I had were excellent. Maximum output resolution on my iPhone 4S is 3072x3072. A couple of changes I would like to see include some masking features which would let an object go behind something in the foreground like a rock or a building. For now, you can work around it using some of the objects in the library which have only partial images and move and rotate them near rocks or other things. Also, the app is not universal and it would be great on the iPad at full resolution. I talked with developer James Grote who told me he is working on including masking and there will be an update that makes the app universal. For now it works natively on the iPhone and iPod touch. Alien Sky is a very slick app, and if you have a fondness for science fiction illustration, you'll enjoy playing with your own photos. I've included some images I did while testing the app for this review. They are in the gallery below. %Gallery-159980%
Virgin America showcases pimped out aircraft, lobbies for US flights
If you've never heard of Richard Branson before today, you just might become one of his best friends after checking his aircraft. The billionaire in charge of Virgin Atlantic wants to bring the company's "passion for innovation and technology" to America, and while we've seen glimmers of hope for air travel within the States, it seems that VA's alternatives demolish the current US-based offerings (although there's word that the Panasonic eFx system will be hitting US flights in the future). Utilizing a somewhat cheesy lobbyist website, the airline is attempting to garner public support to allow them to reverse the US DOTs decision to disallow VA from taking flight on American soil. But regardless of politics, the real news here is the plane's interior; first class riders get a plush, leather seating area with a flipout LCD, while "normal" passengers still get a fairly comfy looking chair and a seat-mounted 9-inch touchscreen LCD. Moreover, each passenger gets their own 110-volt power outlet (adapters, be gone!), USB port, and Ethernet jack. The VA-engineered RED in-flight entertainment system only rivals SIA's KrisWorld system, and delivers music, gaming, movies, and even food choices right to your screen. While some may find this tough to believe, you'll even encounter a full QWERTY keyboard, live TV via Dish Network, on-board email / IM / chat, the ability to create playlists and transfer them to connecting flights, and pretty much anything else you'd need to not want to ever reach your destination. So if you're interested in helping Mr. Branson make a few more billion, and would like to fly the friendly skies in complete and total geek heaven, be sure to hit the read link to vouch your opinion, and click on through for a YouTube demonstration of all the aforementioned niceties.[Via NewTeeVee]
