Sunday was a visit to the 23rd Spring Arts and Crafts Faire at Borchard Park in Newbury Park. Besides taking a few pics, I found myself chatting with various artists, especially ones where where doing some of their work in their booths. Enjoy the pics.

Flickr Photo Set.


Carl and Angela Carrubba, above, show off a tie-dye sheet at their Rainbow Tie-Dyes booth. Of course, I had to shoot a couple of happy face t-shirts on the iPhone and use PhotoTropedelic, below.

The first Apple iPad commercial was broadcast last night during the Oscars.

Link at Apple.com

UTube link

Four weeks till launch on April 3rd.

Here are my recent photos of Diet Coke, my favorite drink. Yes I have diet coke in the morning - no coffee.

Left is image of Diet Coke run through the iPhone PhotoTropedelic app. The original photo was converted to grayscale and contrast increased in Photoshop Mobile. Then the pics was opened in PhotoTropedelic and various settings tried.

Below is my Diet Coke can in front of lights at the Cal Trans building in downtown Los Angeles. Topaz adjust was used on this image.

My new happy app is PhotoTropedelic - 60s Pop Art in your pocket.

PhotoTropedelic is just too much fun. I've been cranking out wild 60s era graphics for almost two weeks now. Then last night, after working on this photo of the LA Theater with Happy sign, I was jolted back to the present. I have to write up a column on this $1.99 app.

Ok this is a good 5 star iPhone app. In fact, PhotoTropedelic has a control to add up to 170 stars to a pic. Now which app can beat that?



Photo of Jack in the Box antenna ball with flowers given the star treatment with PhotoTropedelic.

This list of features if very basic:

1-5 Detail Levels

Tropedelic or Image colors

4, 6, 8, 11, 16 or 22 colors

0-170 Stars

On/off controls for: Circles, Rays, Gradient, Color Merge, and Mirror left to right.

But its in the mixture of these controls that leads to either very wild or only slightly wild posterized images.

The workflow is very straightforward. From the main menu, first go into the Change Setting menu and pick the combination of the above features you want to try. Then either take a photo or pick a photo from the camera role.

PhotoTropedelic immediately begins the process of applying the settings to the image. At the end, it automatically saves a jpg version back to the camera role. In addition, PhotoTropedelic saves a PNG and PDF version.

Once saved, you have the options of reviewing the image, changing the settings and run again on same image, or move onto another image.

In no time my camera role was full of different PhotoTropedelic versions of the same photo. I did notice about a ten percent failure rate where the app would lock up and not save the image. But no problem, rerunning the same image with the same settings will output the same results. I tested this, getting the same result several times.

Output size seems to vary either 768 x 1023 pixel or full 900 x 1200 pixel. But this large size is nice when compared to the downsized 300-400 pixel size output done by many iPhone creative photo apps.


Frame grab on my Safari window to download PDF or PNG versions of my images.

Then there is the PDF output.

Unlike most other iPhone photo apps, PhotoTropedelic saves a PNG and PDF version of the images that can be downloaded to your computer through a wireless ftp feature.

Guess what, PDF is a vector based version of the image. It can be opened in a program like Adobe Illustrator and enlarged to any size. Just for laughs, I opened one PDF in Photoshop. After the graphic was rasterized it was 50 megs.

Bottom line. With PhotoTropedelic, I can now make billboard size graphics on a $1.99 iphone app.

Version one of PhotoTropedelic always included a watermark for the product. After many complaints, the version 1.1 release removed the watermark.

About 50% of the 75 reviews on iTunes give this app 5 stars. I suspect this app will continue to be developed onto the iPad. Also the developer, Larry Weinberg has a good web site with examples. There is also a good active flickr and facebook community.

PhotoTropedelic web site.


The PhotoTropedelic PDF version of Tiger, my cat, can be made into a poster or bigger.

Today was fun, but sad. I took the day off to shoot the Newbury Park High School Varsity Boys soccer play in the 2nd round of CIF playoffs. But they lost 0-1 to Esperanza HS. I had two boys go through the NPHS soccer program and after six years of countless matches, I skipped this season. But several friends and parents asked me to shoot. So I relented and did. Maybe if I only promised to shoot the CIF Finals......

Dotphoto link.

Tuesday 2/23 is free Grilled Sandwich day at Jack in the Box - buy a large drink, get a free sandwich. Jack' web site. Me, I couldn't wait. I drove through my Jack in the Box in downtown Los Angeles and bought a grilled sandwich. My bonus is this photo of Jack. Someone found a creative use for two pieces of chewing gum on a exterior poster. Better than underneath the desk. And yes, the Grilled Sandwich is good.

Today I was able to run eighteen images through Topaz Detail 2.

YES ITS MUCH FASTER! And I cheated, I tested it on raw images from a new 15 megapixel camera. In 16 bit, the images opened up as 80 meg files. My previous files were about 45 megs. I am very happy to report that Topaz Detail 2 processed the new images in half the time.



The user interface has been completely redesigned, but is easy to use. In addition, there are new presets.

Topaz Detail is designed to enhance image detail without introducing halos common with the unsharp mask. The photoshop plugin allows separate control over small, medium and large image detail.

My previous complaint about the program was the long processing time. No more.

Topaz Detail 2 sells for for $39.99 at http://www.topazlabs.com/detail/.


This organ is one of 18 images I ran through Topaz Detail 2. The photos were all shot last Sunday during a visit to the Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park. The photos are posted on Flickr.

Today is the 20th birthday of Photoshop and Adobe is throwing a party. Tune in at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time at this National Association of Photoshop Users web page. Of course the NAPP is very involved with Adobe in this party.



This is the splash screen from Photoshop version one. Only four names - the Knoll brothers, Steve Guttman and Preston Brown. A good short history is found at Photoshopnews.com. In addition to the above splash screen, the article has graphics of the original floppy disk and box Photoshop was shipped in.

I first played with Photoshop in early 1990 at a local Apple computer store, but it was not until the 1991 National Press Photographers Association Electronic Times Workshop that I really got into using photoshop. By 1991, Photoshop was swiftly taking the newspaper industry by storm - the key was the use of early $25,000 negative scanners. The scanners only took fifteen minutes to scan in a five meg file. Jpeg had also been introduced, allowing two - three images to be put on one singe floppy disk! Wow!

Turns out, at this NPPA Electronic Times Workshop we were using the beta version for Photoshop 2.0. This version added the Paths tool, which created the world of cut outs. It was version three, with layers, that allowed Photoshop to really take off.

Today Happy BD Photoshop. And the beat goes on - this fall look for version 12/CS5.

FYI, here is an 18 minute recent interview with John Knoll.

While cruising iTunes for photo iPhone apps, up popped RetroCamera's cool logo based on an old 120/220 film camera.

Then I was completely hooked by RetroCamera's screenshot examples and long list of features: 28 types of color or grayscale film, noise controls, contrast sliders, 15 types of textures, 19 types of frames and blur controls.

And all this is in the free version too - except the RetroCamera Logo is put into every image. So for $1.99 I purchased the app.




Then the fun began. I did a couple retro looking images and uploaded to my Flickr account. When I checked Flickr, oops, the final images were only 320x480 pixels - the old size used by many very early digital cameras. Now this was taking retro too far.

Where was my 1200x1600 iPhone photos?

Answer - gone.

NEVER USE THIS APP TO SHOOT ORIGINAL iPhone images. It only saves them at 320x480 pixels.

This app is ONLY for post-processing. Now I understand why it is so stable and never crashes; RetroCamera is only working on a small file. Other apps I am using work with full files and if too many steps, lock up my iPhone.

So I went hog wild. On this image of Victor the Dog, I cropped, rotated, tried many film types, added noise, contrast, added multiple textures, tried several frames, added additional contrast, added more noise and finally saved. I lost count of the number of changes I applied - no crash.

Since Victor the Dog, left, is a very retro image, upsizing really doesn't hurt the image. I posted two versions on my Flickr page.

flickr link

RetroCamera has many mixed reviews. It averages 3 stars in its ratings - same as I am giving it. The tiny output size cost it two stars.

Developer CLBITZ Ubiquitous Communications Inc., only has a single page web site and is based in Japan. The paid version is currently 1.1. The free version is currently 1.2. On the Free Version iTunes page, high resolution is scheduled as a feature in a future version.


January iPhone rainbow photo given 35-mm film look with RetroCarmera.

Let's see, I have used this app for a couple months, how do I like it? Ah - I shoot EVERY IMAGE on my iPhone 3G with this app and never use the original iPhone Camera app.

This free app will live forever on my iPhone 3G for one feature - Tap Anywhere Shutter. When I first opened 321 Photo, I accidently touched the screen and got my first foot shot. Cool, no more searching for that small red shutter button as the moment got away. Now I concentrate on the subject, frame and touch the screen. Makes shooting candids a snap.

Yes, 321 Photo has other features: Continuous Shooting Mode, Steadycam, three second Countdown Times, Autosave, full Rotation Support and Vibration Feedback for silent operation. You can also review images in the Camera Roll from within the app.

The Steadycam feature is unusual. When in use, 321 Photo waits until you hold the iPhone still as possible before firing the shutter. Great feature for low-light situations.

OK, I admit these features are on other iPhone photography apps. But early on I was hooked by this FREE app.



There are two major bummers to this app. First it does not support video or tap to focus on the iPhone 3Gs. Second, location and other meta-data is not saved with images taken with 321 Photo.

Actually there is a third downside. I find myself taking images of my stomach, foot , knee and pocket just by accidently touching the iPhone screen when 321 Photo is on. I have ten times the number of butt photos vs butt calls.

The current version only has five reviews on iTunes. When reviews from previous versions are included - some 279 - only about 25% are giving 321 Photo 4 or 5 stars. If you own a 3Gs model, I would skip this app. If, like me, you have a 3G model, this is your app.

The developer, Room1337 Ventures, has a small but useful web site.

Bottom line: great replacement camera app for 3G model, not for 3Gs.


With 321 Photo I got this pic of Woody before he ducked under the table. He was trying to sneak a snack during the Super Bowl while no one was looking.