Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: are you looking to take your smartphone photography to the next level? Did you know it was possible to take photos like this? This or even this using the camera always in my pocket? Sure, it takes some techniques in practice, but that's why you're here checking out this class, isn't it? It's because you want to make stunning images without breaking the bank. Well, let me tell you, once you finish this class, you'll have the knowledge and confidence to take better photos with your smartphone and you'll be able to share an image you made using your class project in the shooting Tips section. I'll walk you through best practices to keep in mind while shooting, so you have the best possible images to work with. When you start editing and the three part editing section, I'll show you the benefits to using mobile editing APS to your advantage, walking through, editing your lighting colors, removing unwanted objects in your photos and even mawr advanced. Edits If you want to go wild. The best part about all of this is you won't have to buy a single thing to come away from this class with results. Just your smartphone knowing what to look for when shooting and a couple of free APS to help polish your imagery is all you're going to need. Are you in? Then let's do this.
2. 3 Crucial Shooting Tips!: Welcome to the class. Before we get into editing, I'd like to share three useful quick tips for shooting your photos so that when you get into the edit, it's a lot easier. First of all, I think of your composition. When you're taking photos with your smartphone, try out different angles not just eye level, but above your subject below your subject or even switching the way you hold your camera from portrait toe landscape. All of these things will get your creative juices flowing that you don't get a typical image that anyone could take, but you get a phenomenal image. Sometimes all it takes to set your photography apart is just thinking outside the box and taking an extra few seconds to focus on things others might not. My second point especially applies to outdoor photography. Consider the time of day that you're shooting generally a really great time of day when shooting nature shots or landscape shots is Golden hour, which is either an hour before, during or after sunrise or sunset. You get really great golden light, and it can Adam extra dimension to your image. Finally, 1/3 thing to keep in mind is If there's any distractions in your image, try to move around them before you shoot the photo. While you can adjust some things after the fact while editing, it's far easier to just simply get it right the first time.
3. Lens Distortions - Create the Perfect Feel!: so I'd like to add some sort of solar flare to this image and lends distortions is a great app to do so you can see the sun is on the right side of this image, but it's not really peeking through the trees, and I kind of wanted it to a wanted a bit of a flare. We can add that with lens distortions. Let's go ahead and open that app up. If we open up lens distortions here, it's gonna take us to our camera roll. If you go up here, you can change whatever folder in at the top left if you wanted to you. But here's my image on the bottom. Go ahead and open it and you've got all types of things you can add to the image, like fog light hits, which will probably be using rain snow to give you an idea of what the's do, let's go ahead and open snow just as an example, and you can adjust the size. You can adjust the softness. You can adjust the opacity. So if you wanted just some faint little effect in your image, this is a really great way to do so. but I want to add a light hit. So let's go to light hits and I really like this one on the right side. I think it's gonna work really well. She can see how absolutely bright this is, but that's kind of what I was going for. So I'm gonna do is drag it over here to the right side, and I'm just going to place it almost out of frame. But where it's peeking through that tree, I want to add some contrast just to make it a deeper orange. I'm gonna de saturated just a little bit and drop the opacity just a tad so it's not overwhelming. Might rotate it a little bit, too. And you can see it's just adding that hint of orange, as if there really was this son blaring into my photo to begin with. Let's go ahead and save this by hitting the logo on the top right hitting save image. So here's our before image in our after before and after really drastic change. But depending on what edits you want to do for your images, this is a great way to do it.
4. TouchRetouch - Remove Distractions & Blemishes Easily!: in this lesson, I'd like to show you an app called touch retouch. If you search for touch retouch in the APP store, you should be able to find it. This app is especially helpful for removing things in your image that you don't want there . I'll show you a couple of examples. So if we tap on albums here on the left side, it will bring up all of our photos ID like to show you how to edit this image here in the middle. I chose this image as an example because there's a few things in it I just don't like, and this app is perfect for removing them. So what we're gonna remove is here on the bottom. In the middle, there's a green dot here. There's also a couple cracks in the road. You'll see one on the right and also one here on the left. And then there's also these little poles here, and I want to get rid of those. It doesn't make a big difference, but it's a great example to show what this app is capable of. So there's a few different options in this app that you can use to remove things on the bottom. You'll see your menu. You have object removal, quick repair line removal and clone stamp. If you want to do something really quick and easy and you don't want to take a lot of time , just hit quick repair. And then you can use a brush or a blemish remover. Now airbrush you're going to use to paint over the blemish, and it will remove what it thinks you want to remove. As you can see, you did a really good job just removing that green dye. But I also noticed there's some grey spots on this road. Let's say those were blemishes in the image had the blemish remover, and all you're gonna do here is just tap on the area that you feel like there's a blemish and it will do its best job to remove it. So I'm just gonna make all of these little taps here, and it's gonna remove to the best of its ability what it sees. There are some options you can change with the blemish remover. Go here to the right side on settings, and now you can drag your size up and down for the blemish remover. So go ahead and just start tapping around. You can see that the size of the circle is now bigger, but again, this is only so powerful. Sometimes you want to be more selective. So let's hit this air on the bottom left to go back to our other settings. Object removal here on the bottom left. This is a way you could be way more precise with selecting what you want to get rid of. Let's use the lasso instead and just drag a shape around the things we want to get rid of. And now it go. And as you can see, it did a pretty great job trying to blend that area with the things around it. And it's gonna try and make the best selection it can to fill in the blank. So I think it did a pretty good job. Let's go and hit the arrow again on the bottom left to go back to our other settings. Next, I want to focus on these cracks in the road, and we're going to use the line removal tool. You can see there's a couple different options. You have line remover and second segment remover line remover is. If you want to remove the whole line, that's connecting. Segment remover is only removing a part of the line. Since we want to get rid of the whole line. Let's just stick with line remover. Let's draw a line above this line that we want to get rid of. And, as you can see, it did a really great job getting rid of it. Let's try and get rid of this one here on the right side, too. I think it did a pretty good job getting rid of that line. Let's go over here to this other side and do the same thing on this line. And again, I think it did a pretty good job. Let's try that over here with this steak. Did a great job there, too. So, as you can see, it's gonna do its best. It may not be perfect, but this is a great app to just get rid of those simple little issues. Say this. This little dot in this cloud was a blemish, which you know it's not. But if you go too quick, repair blemish remover just tap on it. It's just that simple to get rid of those little dots, and sometimes that makes all the difference. These little tiny edits can change how whole image looks, especially if you're posting it somewhere trying to share it. It just makes your images look more professional because you got rid of all of the issues. Let's say we want to get rid of all of these gray areas on the road. I'm gonna go to object removal, and I can paint over it with the brush tool as well. Go. And as you can see, it got rid of all of those grey dots. I really like using this app because it's simple. It's quick, and you don't have to use photo shop at the top, right? Hit the export icon. That's the box with the arrow pointing upward we can hit, save as copy, modify the original image or share with other options. I'm just going to save as copy and just one more thing. If we hit back on the top left, you can see your before and after using this sort of grade outbox icon in the top, right? So if you tap on that and hold it, you can see your before let go for your after so before and after. You can do some really great things with this app, so I look forward to seeing what you use it for.
5. VSCO - Editing Colors & the Overall Feel!: So in this lesson, I'm gonna show you some of the things you can get out of the Visco Cam app. Here's just a before and after of this shot. I just wanted to show you a few examples of the things I've been able to pull off through this app just through the editing. But before and after, before and after what you're gonna learn, this lesson is how to change your exposure, your colors, your contrast, making simple edits that really drastically change the overall all look and mood and feel of your images. It is possible to get great images out of a smartphone, and this is one of the best APS to do so. So let's go ahead and get started. All right, so now it's time to move into the VSC or Visco Cam app. This app is great for editing color and just the overall look and feel of your images. So once we open it, we can go to the top right here, hit the plus sign. It's going to the Visco folder I made here. These are all the photos that I'd like to show you. The potential we can bring from this app. So just tap toe, highlight each image you want and had imported the bottom that were imported into the Visco Gallery here for you to use. And let's go ahead and start with this mountain photos. A double tap on the photo you'd like to edit and on the bottom left. Hit the sliders and that's your edit icon. So I'm not gonna go into every single option this program offers because it's very in depth and it has all types options that you can use. But I'll show you the basics. And basically, once you first open at these air filters. So if you just tap on these filters, you can see the overall look feel of your images based on the color. Uh, the profile, the saturation. All of that is kind of edited for you. So this is like the quick edit tab, I'd say, but these filters are good starting point. I wouldn't say Just pick one and your edit is done, but it's a good place to start, so let's go ahead and start with one of my favorites, which is I n f down here. Uh, if you double tap on the filter. You could change the intensity of the filter as you can see more saturated, less saturated based on which way you slide it. Now we're getting going to you the edit tab, and we can change things like the exposure up and down. We can change the contrast. It looks pretty good. We can even adjust, like cropping by dragging or using some of the pre crop options. Or we can rotate. But I think mine's pretty good for now. You can use the clarity, which it makes a difference with your sharpening, but it tends to dark in the overall image as well. So be careful using clarity. I like to use just a little bit, and then we can change things like the white balance. Say you want it to be a cooler image, a warmer image like the warmer a little bit. So you want to bring out more greens or pinks. You can do that here as well. If you double tap on any of these sliders, they'll go back to zero. You can change things like the skin tone. You can also add green fade or split tone. I'm kind of liking the way this image looks already, but I'd like to add a vignette. So let's just go ahead and hit. And yet just highlight the middle of the image just a little bit. And if you touch the image, you can see the before in the after and in just a couple of minutes I was able to show you , Ah, few easy edits to do. If we go over to the H s tone, that's your highlights and shadows. We're gonna take our highlights down a bit because we can see that the mountains blowing out just a bit just to retain a little bit of detail. Bring up the exposure just a tad. Okay, so before and after and you can see how fast and easy that was. Let's go appear to save What's it? The menu icon on the top, right? Hit, save to camera. Roll actual size, and that's going to save you a new copy of your image. Another great thing to do. Batch edits. Say you did a lot of say. You took a lot of photos in the same area at one time. You can copy your edits from one photo by tapping the photo hitting the menu. Icon Copy edits top on a different image menu icon Paste edits, and it'll paste all the edits that you made to the previous photo. Obviously, I don't like that on this. So let's just edit this one from scratch. You can see that there's multiple black and whites, different moods you can use for your photo. I like a five for this one. I'm gonna bring the exposure up just a little bit to brighten up the grass. The contrast is going to make the yellows punchier. Gonna move over here to highlights. Drag those down just a tad. But the shadows Let's bring those up just a little bit noticing the exposure needs to drop . Just had I also would like to change saturation and bring out the yellows and in addition, will go over here to vignette. And then yet and here's a before and then after getting before and then after I'm noticing that the filter is adding just a little too much blue. So I'm gonna go into the filter, drag it down just a tad now, the before and the after you can see the kind of look and feel of this whole image has changed. And if we used our other app like touch retouch, we could even remove these posts if we wanted Teoh. Let's just go ahead and save this one. I really do. Like the way that looks saved a camera roll. Let me just show you two more. So I've got this one of my wife here and a national park. Let's just see if we can bring up the colors. So I really like the greens and the blues of this image, but I also want to give it just a little bit of a pop. So if we go over toe, i n f kind of like this filter today, let's just bring up the exposure. Since I shot this on my iPhone and he was not the best lighting, it was pretty much high noon. You can see that, Um, the highlights over here pretty blown out already anyway, So I don't think I'm gonna be able to save those, So I'm just gonna bring up the exposure and try to I try to balance out the image. She's a little bit of contrast. Just a tidbit. Gonna go over here to my highlights. Drag him down as much as I can have to be careful dragging down too much because, as you can see, it will bring in some grain to your image. So just be careful of that. Let's just drag it down just a little bit. I'm gonna move up the saturation just tad to make those greens pop. And I think I'm pretty happy with this. I'll bring up the clarity just to Tad because they like the mental here, and I'm gonna try and bring out the detail in it on the rocks. But other than that, the before and the after I think I'm pretty pleased with this. This will probably just go on social media, so I'm going to stick with that one. Let's go ahead and save it. Here we go. We'll move on to one final image, which is this city image Here. I took this. This is the image straight out of my phone, so it looks pretty good already. But I noticed that the crop is a little bit weird. I think it needs to be straightened just a tad with the horizon that's looking pretty good . Okay, let's see what filters we've got here, so I can either give It's kind of like a fall Look, with this faded blue, which I kind of do like that. Look, I can go more real for more moody. But personally, I think I'm just gonna go with something like HB one here. Now it's cranking up the blues a lot, So I'm gonna trouble down a little bit, and I want a little more details. I'm gonna bring up the exposure, go over here and try to bring up the shadows so we don't lose all the detail in our trees There in the background, gonna bring up the contrast just a tad. And I noticed that the sky is getting blown out. So let's go ahead and bring down the highlights. Little. I really like to make these colors pop. So let's do saturation. Drag it up just a tad and maybe a little bit of clarity as well to bring out the detail in the buildings. On second thought, I don't know if this is the filter I really want for this image. As you can see, you could go really moody, but I don't know if that's what I'm really looking for. I kind of do like this, though. It's all really up to personal preference. Just kind of play around and see what you enjoy, and sometimes you even have to use a filter. You can do all of these edits without any filter and still get some great results on your own. It really just comes down to playing with your colors and just giving things a shot and not being afraid to you try different things. I think I'm satisfied of this. Here's the before Here's the after springing up a little bit of color to save, and let's go ahead and say that to our camera roll. So already you can see that this is a powerful application and you can use it for many different things, editing many different subjects. And I think it's something that's useful for anyone who wants to take up there smartphone photography and kind of step it up to the next level. So try and play around this app and see what you can get out of it. For example, if we go to this image here, the original colors didn't pop like this is the original image, but you can see. I got a totally different mood from editing just a little bit. And it's things like this that you could really bring out of your photos if you just have that I for the potential in your image. Not necessarily what? The images showing you right there. I got this moody shot as well. Just buy editing. That was the original. And here's the after, and you can see with just some some different contrast and things like that clarity and also just an eye for what you see in your head that this picture can be, you can really make some interesting shots.
6. Wrap Up & Class Project!: I'd like to thank you so much for watching this class. Thank you for tuning in and hopefully following along with the tips in the class project. I'd love to see you use one or all three of the apse we mentioned to create a great image. Because, really, the possibilities are endless. Once again. Thank you for watching this class, and I'll see you in the next one.
Storm, Photographer, Videographer, Teacher
