EyeEm brings new editing and learning tools to its app

It's been a week of updates to our image-sharing programmes on social media. First Facebook introduced an auto-enhance feature, which will apply the filters that its algorithms calculate are most appropriate for your photos. Then Instagram unveiled five new filters, its first in two years. Now it's the turn of EyeEm, which brings a gaggle of new filters, fine-grained control over their application, and a new feature called Open Edit. The theory behind Open Edit is that it lays bare the post-processing path that a photographer followed to create an image, from the original to the final version. Each crop, tweak, and nudge is set out in a timeline that's made visible to the rest of the EyeEm community. If you see something that you like, you can apply the same edits to your own photos with one tap.

Right now, only certain photographers have the ability to open up their edits to the community, but it's something that will be rolled out to all members in time. The EyeEm team hopes that this open deconstruction of people's photos will lead to a more collaboratively minded community and one that can learn from each other and share their skills.

Can I see what EyeEm is trying to accomplish with Open Edit? Yes, definitely. Sometimes I do look at a photo and wonder precisely what sort of magic the photographer wove in order to create that particular effect. But at the same time, I'm not completely sold on it. The mystery and the secret behind someone else's photos are part of their appeal. Having the edits revealed to you can feel a little like the illusion of a magic trick being shattered when you know how it works. My curiosity means that I want to know, but the romantic in me appreciates the mystique.

From a teaching and learning perspective; I love EyeEm's enthusiasm to allow its users to share their knowledge. But I think that by going one step further, they could make this a much more valuable learning tool. How much people will actually learn from being able to see and apply other people's edits to their own photos will depend hugely on how much they're prepared to engage with the editing process and observe the kinds of impact each adjustment makes. Experimentation is such a valuable part of learning that just being able to apply someone else's workflow to your photos feels as if there's an important step in the process that's being skipped. It's not just about the what that you do to your photos, it's also about the why.

Bring a bit more dialogue to the experience—underpin the action with some explanation—and I think it could really work. Still, lots of people seem to be very excited by EyeEm 5.0, so perhaps I'm the one who's missing the trick here.

Let me know what you think.

You can download EyeEm 5.0 here.

Adobe has acquired Aviary. Good or bad?

When I saw last night that image editing start-up Aviary had been acquired by image editing behemoth Adobe my initial reaction was 'Hmm. Great for the Aviary team; but I'm not sure it's so great for consumers.' Fifteen or so hours on from that, and my opinion hasn't changed considerably. I'd probably augment it with 'Smart move by Adobe.' Using the term 'start-up' to describe Aviary might not be entirely accurate, but it's a question of interpretation, I suppose. It has been around since 2007 and its code has been used to edit over 10 billion photos. Even if you don't use its smartphone app to adjust your images, you might well have come across its editing tools that have been built into platforms such as Flickr and Mailchimp using its software development kit.

Great for Aviary

If part of the definition of 'start-up' is the intention to see your company acquired by another one, then Aviary at least meets that criterion. Judging by Aviary CEO Tobias Peggs' effusive blog post announcing the acquisition, this is all their Christmases, Chanukahs, and Eids rolled into one. And that's even without the agreed fee being disclosed.

The Aviary offices are close to those of Behance, which was acquired by Adobe in 2013. Their proximity meant the Aviary people talked a lot with Scott Belsky, Behance's co-founder who now serves as Adobe's VP of Products and Community, and 'it became obvious that we shared a strong vision for mobile creativity. It became even more obvious that we should join forces, accelerate combined efforts and better serve even more app developers and even more people wanting to be creative on mobile.' Aviary is all about allowing people to be creative, through its own apps and through its SDK. It thinks it can better do this by partnering with Adobe.

Smart move by Adobe

Apart from Aviary's app being a peach and Adobe being keen to expand its mobile prowess, Aviary's SDK is well established. Adobe's isn't: it launched as a beta in June. According to Scott Belsky: 'We have high hopes for the Creative SDK and are thrilled that Aviary will infuse wisdom, technology, and reach to new developers.' Provided that the likes of Flickr, Mailchimp, and Shopify don't run screaming, Adobe has made a calculated acquisition to expand itself into a market where it didn't have a strong foothold. For anyone familiar with the English Premier League, it feels a little like accusations of Manchester City buying its way to football titles rather than building its own team. If you can't beat the opposition, buy it.

Not so great for consumers?

We know that I'm cynical; it says so in my Twitter bio. Thus from my cynical consumer standpoint, I wonder how beneficial this is for Aviary's users. The Aviary and Adobe teams are enthusiastic for what they can build together, but in trying to merge two company's visions into one coherent strategy how much creativity will be sacrificed and how much will consumer choice suffer? To what degree might smaller company 'Let's do this!' mentality be eclipsed by corporate hierarchy? Might Aviary become less accessible as it is absorbed into Adobe's Creative Cloud?

My visceral reaction is that while there are potential benefits to be harnessed from the acquisition, there are plenty of pitfalls, too. I'd like to be proved wrong. I hate the see a good thing fail and I really like Aviary.

However, whether Aviary was 'right' to sell or not isn't within my purview, not really. It's a company, it's not the NHS. It acts in its best interests, not mine. I wish them all the best.

Spruced up! wants to make your pictures perfect

Editing, post-processing, whatever you want to call it: some people love it, some people hate it, some people are fortunate enough to work with professional retouchers, and some people just don't know where to start. There are a few businesses out there who are seeking to unite those people who feel frustrated or flummoxed by the editing process with people who can work post-processing magic, and the newest one is Spruced up! Spruced up! was founded by Rob Willingham, who used to work with photographer Rankin, and the Spruced up! team seem to be an experienced bunch, having worked on campaigns for the likes of Christian Dior and Calvin Klein and been let near photos of the Queen and Kate Moss. They're looking to provide a complete editing package for users, from simple enhancements to total overhauls.

Each image incurs a £2.49 handling fee, with simple changes—for example exposure tweaks, black and white conversions, and sharpening or softening—priced at 49p a go, rising to 99p for cosmetic changes (tooth whitening, nail colour alterations, for example), £1.99 for removals, and ending at £12.99 for a full make-over. You check out the menu and price list here.

This isn't the first time that we've looked at editing out-sourcing options. Our conclusion now isn't that much different from our conclusion then: it's not for us. It doesn't really matter if the resulting photos are good, bad, or indifferent, but that but that processing our images ourselves is important to us. It ensures that we realise our own creative visions and intentions, rather than placing them into the hands of others.

Sure, post-processing can be tricky and tiresome, but at £2.98 for a black-and-white conversion or an exposure fix, I'd be inclined to suggest that learning a few key adjustments in a free editing package such as Pixlr or Aviary (which is built in to Flickr) would be a relatively pain-free and definitely cheaper alternative. But a bit of Stalinesque airbrushing at £4.48 a time isn't too bad. If you're not in regular need of re-writing history, and don't therefore have the processing package or prowess, it makes sense to send your photos to someone who's more talented and less frustrated by the procedure, to do it for you. And that's where Spruced up! comes in.

If you've a digital copy of a vintage print that you'd like tidied up, that can be done, too.

Spruced up! is available as an iPhone and iPad app, or via the Spruced up! website.

Buying and selling mobile imagery - where to go

There have been at least two pieces of news this week featuring companies that sell stock images created on mobile devices: first, EyeEm announced that it has redesigned its Android app and has partnered with Uber to offer new users a free ride to let them go places to take photos; second, Fotolia has also released a new Android app—Fotolia Instant—to complement its iOS version, which allows photographers to upload and sell their mobile images via the stock site. This got me thinking: how many stock agencies are mobile photo-friendly? Or where can you buy images made on mobile devices if that's what you want or need? I did a little digging and a little thinking and put together this list. I've tried to limit it to agencies or sites that are mobile-specific, have dedicated mobile collections, or easy means of uploading mobile images. There are sites such as Picfair that readily accept mobile images, but that's just part of its library.

Mobile-oriented sites

EyeEm

EyeEm is a mobile photography sharing app and community that launched Market, a platform for its members to sell their photos, earlier this year. Invitations are still being issued to join Market, but it's simple enough to request one.

EyeEm Market EyeEm apps: Android; iOS

Foap

Images can only be uploaded to Foap via its app. As well as adding images to the Foap library, image-makers can participate in missions set by brands and agencies searching for more specific content. Foap's terms of use are quite broad, which is worthy of consideration before deciding to sell images there.

Foap website Foap apps: Android, iOS

Scoopshot

Scoopshot expands on Foap's model, with buyers setting tasks for photographers in order to acquire the images they want. If someone sees a news image that they think is vaulable, it can be sent to the news task. Scoopshot doesn't go in for manipulated or filtered images; they prefer fresh and newsworthy content that meets task criteria.

Scoopshot website Scoopshot apps: Android, iOS

Twenty20

We took a look at Twenty20 last year and while we thought its simple pricing structure for selling mobile image files was great, the sales mechanism required some refinement. It's still in the beta stage, but it is there!

Twenty20 website Twenty20 app (iOS only)

Mobile-friendly agencies

Alamy

The more traditional Alamy stock agency has embraced mobile photography and its photographers can use the Stockimo app to upload their mobile images for sale amongst the Alamy library. Buyers can look for mobile images in the dedicated Stockimo collection.

Alamy website Alamy Stockimo collection Alamy Stockimo app (iOS-only)

Depositphotos

Depositphotos is a microstock agency that sells images under royalty free licences. It has a dedicated mobile photography app and collection: Clashot.

Depositphotos Clashot Clashot apps: Android, iOS

Fotolia

Fotolia is home to over 20 million images and it's prepared to add mobile photos into that mix. You can find all its mobile images in its Fotolia Instant collection.

Fotolia website Fotolia Instant collection Fotolia Instant apps: Android, iOS

Getty, including iStock by Getty

When people think of stock agencies, they think of Getty. If they don't think specifically of Getty, they might well think of a Getty subsidiary. Getty photographers are being invited to join Moment, along with the old Flickr collection, while new photographers should be able to join in due course. Whether or not you want to get involved with the Getty licensing machine is another matter.

Getty Images Getty Moment app (iOS-only)

Any other suggestions? Leave them in the comments section!

Like the Google+ Stories idea but not keen on Google+? There are options

On Tuesday, tech and photo sites were awash with the Google+ Stories story. Rather than having to sift through your own images and organise them into virtual albums to chart your travels, document your days out, and record your parties, Google+ can auto-algorithmically-awesomely collate them into Stories or Movies by simple virtue of uploading them there. You can then edit them if necessary, add captions when appropriate, share them if you want to, and generally enjoy. Stories and Movies capabilities are already working on the web and Android platforms and will be making their way to iOS shortly. If you're like me and you auto-upload your iPhone images to Google+, open the web interface and you'll find there are some stories ready and waiting for you.

But what if you don't want to upload your photos to Google+, for whatever reason, yet still rather like this idea of hands-free image curation? With the vast number of image storage and organisation apps and services out there, someone, somewhere, must be offering an alternative. There are plenty of apps that can organise your images and videos into a timeline, for example Dropbox's Carousel and Picturelife, but not that many which create narrative albums based on time, date, and location that are ready to go. There are, it seems, two apps that manage something along the line of Stories.

Flayvr

Flayvr is an Android- and iOS-compatible app that organises your images and videos into editable and shareable 'Flayvrs', or albums. That's pretty much what the Google+ Stories feature does. But unlike Google+, which collates all your photos and videos stored there, this works by collating the photos and videos stored on your device's camera roll, making it much more mobile-centric. If you're using Google+ to store all of your images, regardless of the device used to capture them, its capable of giving you a more complete story.

Still, it's swish and stylish, free to download, and I've had fun using it to collate some 'Flayvrs'.

Keepsake

I've not been able to download Keepsake for a trial spin because it seems to be a US-only iOS app at the moment. However, it does look to be slick and easy to use. It automatically sorts images into stories that you can edit them using the pinch-and-drag mechanism. When you have a complete story, you can share it with your contacts via text message.

It's also worth remembering that Google+ acts as a storage mechanism for your photos as well as organising them into sharable (or not) albums. Flayvr explicitly states that it isn't a data storage service. That's going to be a plus for some and a minus for others.

There aren't many options, but there are some, and I'm sure that Google's move will herald the insertion of automatically curated albums from other sites before long.

So near yet so far for Fotor

When I was conducting my recent app spring clean, one of the apps that wasn't sent packing was Fotor, an editing package that I was asked to review by its makers. I've been trying it out for a few days, but the images I've edited specifically for this review I shot today, in glorious sunshine with the help of an Easy Macro band. As an editing package, Fotor offers a lot, but I think it falls short of replacing one of my current favourites. Fotor gives you the option to import photos from your camera roll or take a photo in-app. If you opt for in-app, you get a choice of three subject placement overlays: grid, golden spiral, golden triangle. Or none at all, if you prefer. Whether you take a photo in-app, import it for editing, or save it after editing, it will be stored in Fotor's photo folder, according to date.

When it comes to editing functions, features, and filters, Fotor is well endowed. You can adjust contrast and brightness and saturation and white balance and shadows and highlights, add text and stickers, apply a tilt-shift effect or a vignette, and compile a collage. There's a gamut of free filters—nine folders, ranging from 'Lomo' to 'Scratch', each with nine options—as well as some paid-for additions and 12 paid-for scenes.

Fotor includes some neat touches. Being able to assign your favourite filters to a specific folder, making them easier and faster to apply, for example. Having each photo's details (time and date, exposure, and geo-location) at a tap is great. And I appreciate having plenty of sharing options, too.

However, there are some frustrating oversights. The omission of a straighten function being top of my list. And not being able to crop a vertical image using a 4:3 aspect ratio without first rotating it to a horizontal aspect, and indeed various other aspect ratios, is a bit... odd.

I didn't find the slider that is used to control the intensity of the adjustments especially accurate: if I tried to set it to 12 points, it would easily wind up at seven or 16. Without a reset button, returning the slider to 0 was sometimes tricky. And I have to confess that I'm fond of being able to compare my adjustments with the original image, which I can't do with Fotor.

Fotor, I'm afraid, won't be making its way to the 'Photography A' folder on my phone. It doesn't offer me enough of what I need and there's too much of what I don't. But that isn't to say it won't be for you. It's free to download and available for Android and iOS, so worth a look.

Spring cleaning my photography apps

I acquire a huge number of photography-related apps on my phone. Some of them I'm requested to review, some of them I choose to download so that I can compare them against similar apps, some of them I download for a specific purpose and never use again, a few of them I even use on a regular basis. I'm not too bad at sifting through them perodically to delete those which aren't serving any purpose and doing nothing more than consuming memory on my phone, but when I realised that I had four folders of photography apps, I concluded that it was time for a spring clean. Thus began the great app cull of Spring 2014. It was a fairly simple process based on the question 'Do I use this app?' If I did, I kept it; if I didn't, it was sent to the great spare app repository in the cloud. Admittedly, I did make a few exceptions, but all will be revealed.

Adobe Photoshop Express? I don't remember the last time that I used it. I prefer Snapseed or Aviary. Gone!

Camera+? Plenty of people rave about it, but I've never got on with it. Gone!

Camera 360 Ultimate? I downloaded it when I was writing the Surreal book; it's served its purpose. Gone!

Loom? Now integrated with Dropbox making the app defunct. Gone!

Luminance? Again, lots of people love it, but I've never been drawn to it in the same way. Gone!

Marksta? An excellent app if you choose to watermark your mobile images, but I don't. I downloaded it when I was writing the Social book, but seeing as I no longer need it, it's... Gone!

Plastic Bullet? In the unusual event that I want to add filters and washes and heaven-knows-what to my photos, Pixlr-o-matic and FX PhotoStudio get the first looks-in.

Water My Photo? Not used it in almost two years. Does it still work? Gone!

And this list doesn't even skim the surface of those that have already enjoyed their five minutes of screen space and been moved on to pastures new. These include DXP Free (I prefer Juxtaposer); NoCrop, Squaready, and Squaregram (out-flanked by Instacrop and Instasize); and blasts from the past Photogram and Flex Photo Lab.

So what's left? Well, with three folders' worth, still quite a lot. I could probably condense it to two folders if I tried hard enough and made a choice between long exposure apps, plumped for either Instacrop or Instasize, and when I've finished off a few things I'm working on that require apps here and there. But I've still plenty of editing options with Snapseed, Aviary, and ColorTime, not to mention the tools that come with EyeEm, Flickr, and Instagram. There's touchReTouch for heavier duty removals, Touchnote for sending postcards, and Flipagram for flipbook-type-videos. Finally for triggering there's Triggertrap (obviously) and Gorillacam.

And there are a few apps that I've kept despite not having used them very much. I'm hoping that by making them more visible amongst my photo app arsenal, I might feel more inclined to tap them. I'm sure that I was suffering from a case of app-blindness with so many unused ones camouflaging ones that I might otherwise be useful. It's certainly been a liberating experience for my phone's memory; I'm hoping it might be an enlightening one for my mobile photography now.

Less is more, I think.

All the love for Litely?

There's been quite a bit of love for Litely over the past few days, following its release as an iOS app earlier this month. Developed by Cole Rise, one of the engineers behind Instagram filters Amaro, Hudson, Sierra, Sutro, Mayfair, Willow, and Rise, it's a photo editing app that offers a range of subtle filters and simple tools. When Sarah Perez of TechCrunch declared that Litely is the best new photo-filtering application for iOS, I decided that I needed to commandeer my parents' iPad, download it, and give it a whirl. The best new photo-filtering app for iOS is high praise and with my expectations set to stratospheric, I was anticipating something revolutionary. To give Litely its dues, it does have a lovely interface, the filters are subtle, and being able to adjust their intensity is much appreciated. But I think that it requires a little more fine-tuning before it can justify the unmitigated praise that's being heaped upon it.

My most fervent criticism concerns the crop function. Given my dislike for the Flickr app's crop utility, I must be a stickler for them. I don't mind only having the choice between the original and a square aspect ratio, but I'd quite like to be able to actually crop an image and get closer to my subject. Litely lets you do this on-screen using the pinch function, but it doesn't seem to apply the crop after you've selected the 'Tick' icon. Please don't tempt me and then deny me. It's cruel. And if I can't crop, at least let me straighten.

The editing functions comprise exposure, sharpen, vibrancy, and vignette. All of these are useful and easy to apply, but I'd still appreciate a white balance correction (even if I am meant to be adding a filter), a contrast slider, and maybe a tilt-shift option too. Does this make me greedy? Maybe, but I think this is Litely's biggest stumbling block.

Having started out as a collection of pre-sets for Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture, and Camera Raw, Litely wasn't about actual editing. Those programmes offered all of that functionality with spades. In its transference to an iOS app, it has lost that purity. It's neither a one-stop-editing-shop nor an app devoted to filtering, and neither is there an inherent photo-sharing community, like Instagram or EyeEm.

By offering a few editing tools and nine filters for free, with a further 36 filters available at a price, it is falling between two stools. If it gave me all of the editing tools I want and need, it could possibly tempt me to augment the filters and stick with it. But I'm just not that bothered by a half-baked editing app with a few filters on the side. Equally, would I care to download just a bunch of filters? I'm not likely to, but I know people who are. Without a community to keep me coming back, it doesn't do enough to justify my interest, however delightful the interface or subtle the filters.

In conclusion, I've not fallen in love with Litely the same way that others have, but I do feel that it has potential. Now it must decide what it wants to be.

Litely is available to download for free from the App Store (nine filters plus basic editing fnctions), with three further sets of filters available for $1.99 each.

The Ilex Press brings you the Photographer's Eye video app

Should you be the kind of learner who thrives using video, there's a brand new modular photography course available from the Ilex Press based around Michael Freeman's hugely successful book The Photographer's Eye. The course comprises six masterclasses covering camera and lens, framing and composition, exposure and light, light and colour, locations, and storytelling in pictures, broken down into 36 episodes, for example shooting into the sun, or coverting to black and white, and including over three hours of video and 150 images. As each episode is individually downloadable, you can build a learning experience to suit you and your needs.

The idea is that it's both creative and practical: giving you the resources to create images that are not only technically perfect, but also creative, and visually stimulating. There's a taster video to give you an idea of what's on offer.

The first episode is free and each one costs 69p after that.

It's ready to rock and roll on your iPad right now, and will be coming to Android devices very soon.

Lensbaby adds an Android option to its Kickstarter campaign

When manufacturers and purveyors of not-quite-toe-curlingly-expensive optically fun lenses Lensbaby launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring a Sweet Spot selective focus lens and companion app to mobile photographers, a few eyebrows were raised. First, because a well-established company was looking for Kickstarter funding for a project that felt nailed-on to succeed and second, because the Sweet Spot lens and app was iPhone-only. At least, I don't use an Android phone but I felt indignant on behalf of Andoid phone owners.

It sounds as if Android users have made their demand for an equivalent sufficiently for Lensbaby to take note. It has just announced a $50 pledge for an Android-compatible Sweet Spot lens and app, that will ship and be availble for download in October this year.

You can go lay down your money on Kickstarter now.

Loom's next step in image management: joining with Dropbox

Last week was a big week for Dropbox, with the unveiling of its 'Home for Life' project, the introduction of Carousel, and the appointment of new board members. This week, its expansion continues as it adds photo storage and systematisation app Loom to its family of purchases. Loom is an app that we've featured a few times here on Photocritic. It's a stylish interface that allows you to keep track of photos taken on different devices in one place. I've used it as a repository for my mobile photos because of its easy auto-upload feature. Now, unless I request a zip file of my data, they're all going to be switched to Dropbox.

What impact will this have on Loom customers, or potential customers?

• No more new enrollments are being accepted. If you were thinking of signing up but hadn't done so yet, sorry, you're too late
• Existing users will be able to use Loom until 16 May 2014
• There should follow a seamless transfer of data from Loom to Dropbox, with further instructions coming by email
• Customers who wish to switch to Carousel will receive the same amount of free space that they had on Loom on Dropbox, forever. Paid users will receive the same quota on Carousel/Dropbox for free, for an entire year
• For those Loom users who don't want to make the switch to Dropbox, a zip file of their entire libraries, including albums, can be requested.

If you were someone who was using Dropbox and Loom in tandem to store and organise images (one as your primary source and the other as a back-up, for example) it's a bit of a bugger, really.

In an email to Loom users, the team stated that: 'We know this is a big deal. This decision was made with great care. We have worked hard on our product and feel that our vision aligns perfectly with Dropbox’s vision for Carousel.' Maybe it was a case of converging ideals, or perhaps it was a case of a graceful surrender rather than a bloody fight to the death, but the merger is indicative of what an interesting and brutal battleground the cloud space is right now. The Big Guys are taking image hosting, storage, and sharing seriously with Google+, Flickr, and Amazon Cloud Drive offering increasingly desirable packages. The Little Guys are having to find ways to differentiate themselves and preserve their markets before they go the way of Everpix.

Flickr 3.0 for iOS and Android is unveiled

At the end of March I noticed that Flickr 3.0 for iOS and Android seemed to be in the works. Today, it has been unleashed on the world. Well, I say 'unleashed on the world' but it's more like a steady trickle out to users. I've not an update for my phone yet. The updated app offers 14 live preview filters, so that you see what a photo will look like under their influence before you take it, and record 30 seconds of HD video using one of them, too. There's also a suite of editing tools that ranges from click-to-select filters, vignettes, and auto-enhance to more sophisticated tools like colour balance, levels, and exposure.

Auto-sync, which automatically backed-up photos from iOS phones to Flickr, is now available across the board, letting you make easier use of that 1TB of storage space and keep images safe.

There's also meant to be a new and improved search function that lets you sift through images faster and easier that can define images based on when and where they were taken and what features in them and an enhanced information screen that lets you find out more about where a photo was taken as well as which camera and lens were used to create it.

Finally, sharing photos to other networks such as Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook just got easier.

Colour me intrigued to know what it'll look like.

Update: You'll need to be running iOS 7 for the update to reach your iPhone.

Jumping on and off of Dropbox's Carousel

Yesterday, the cloud storage company Dropbox announced its 'Home for Life' initiative, making Dropbox a service that can 'take pain away from technology so you can do more with your life.' Part of that package is Carousel, a photo and video gallery that combines your Dropboxed images with those on your phone in one accessible, beautiful place. When you have downloaded the app, it backs up your mobile photos, and automatically backs up new ones, before sorting them—and those previously stored in Dropbox—into a chronological gallery. There's also the option to share hundreds of images quickly and simply via 'private conversations'.

The 'Home for Life' idea is about simplicity, and for Dropbox that means taking care of your photos in a fuss-free way as possible: 'And unlike other mobile galleries, the size of your Carousel isn’t constrained by the space on your phone, which means you can finally have your entire life’s memories in one place.' No, it's just constrained by the size of your Dropbox account. And with Dropbox being one of the more pricey cloud storage options out there, this could become expensive quite quickly. It's fuss-free, but at a price.

I love Dropbox. I use it every day. But not for photo storage. Its cost is prohibitive and despite the convenience and good looks of Carousel, it makes more sense for me to use Google+ to back-up my mobile images and Dropbox to store and share documents. When I'm able to auto-upload an unlimited number of standard-sized images (so that's 2048 pixels along the longest edge) from my phone to Google+, or full-sized ones at Google's much cheaper storage rates, it just doesn't make sense to use up my valuable Dropbox space.

If you're uncertain of entrusting your photos to Google, Flickr has an auto-upload feature in iOS 7 and it'll take you quite some time to burn through its terabyte of storage. Or there's Microsoft's OneDrive, which has an auto-back-up feature, too.

Dropbox has made a valiant attempt with Carousel to create a service that sets it apart from its competitors, with a swish interface and direct sharing options, but I'm not convinced that they offer me enough to justify the outlay. I won't be downloading right now. But I'm not you, and if you think it's what you're after, pay a visit to the Carousel website.

Unpicking Snapseed's Ambiance slider

If you use Snapseed to edit your smartphone photos, you might have noticed the 'Ambiance' slider under the 'Tune Image' settings. Ambiance? Isn't that the mood or feeling you get at a party, not a photographic term? Yes, exactly, and that's why I avoided it for quite a while. I just couldn't figure out how to apply it effectively to my photos. And Google, which owns Snapseed, was hardly helpful. The Google help page ambiance explanation reads:

The Ambiance control is a special type of contrast that controls the balance of light in a photo. It can be used to balance backlit photos or to accentuate contrasts throughout your photo. Swipe right for photos where the subject is darker than the background. Swipe left to increase the contrast of dark objects and create a slight glow around darker objects. This is especially helpful in photos that are slightly flat.

I wasn't aware that there was a 'special type of contrast' available to photographers, just the plain old difference between light and dark, so that was surprising. And it's all very well telling us to 'swipe right for photos where the subject is darker than the background,' but what effect will it have?

As with just about everything associated with photography, the best way to understand it is to use it. So that's how I've come to write this and present you with some compare-and-contrast examples where I have swept the slider both left and right on a series of photos and analysed its impact.

In order to create examples that are clear enough for illustrative purposes, all of the ambiance settings, whether positive or negative, have been exaggerated. Subtlety and demonstration aren't natural bedfellows; that's for the real thing.

Dried berries

Let's start with this image of some dried berries. I've adjusted the white balance to correct for a light temperature that was out by several thousand Kelvin and cropped it marginally, but that's all. It's a good base.

By increasing the ambiance setting by 60 points, you can see that the image has taken on a more reddish tone. The background has also been lightened, but the highlights—say those on the bottom right of the centre berry—haven't become overwhelming, as you might otherwise expect from an increase in contrast. The definition of the berries has improved, but not at expense of the highlights.

When I swiped the slider to the left and dropped the ambiance by 60 points, you can see that the background became darker, the red tone has diminished, and the berries have become softer looking and less defined. A negative ambiance setting has given the photo a softer, more muted look.

Eva

This is my niece, Eva. She's three. She's being spun (by me) on an upright-spinny-device in the park. I've adjusted the original image to correct the white balance, but that's it.

When I increased the ambiance, pushing it to +60 made Eva look as if she's been on a sunbed every day of her life since birth. It was awful. So I went for +30 instead. She still looks comically rosy-cheeked, but not horrifically so. Her coat is an unattractively bright shade of pink, her wellies are deeply saturated, but the grass looks good.

Decreasing the ambiance to -30 had a rather pleasing effect, though. Her skin became more milky and the darker background helped her to gain even prominance in the image. I reckon that decreasing it even further could make for an even better look.

Me

Having tried increasing ambiance in Eva's portrait to unpleasant effect, I didn't even bother trying it with my self-portrait. Decreasing the ambiance, this time to -100, was effective, though. I'm not sure if I prefer the original (again, slightly cropped and heavily adjusted for white balance) image or the edited one, but it's a good demonstration of the tool and shows how it gives a more muted feel to your photos.

Having a swipe and swish with the ambiance slider is definitely something to be considered when you're fiddling with your smartphone photos. The general rule seems to be that left is great for portraits and go right a bit for still lifes. But every photo's different. And maybe 'ambiance' isn't such a terrible descriptor, either. One way is more lively and bouncy and the other more muted and moody. Just like the atmosphere can be at a party.

A speedier Android Instagram experience

Instagram has pushed out an update to the Android version of its app, making it smoother, sleeker, and speedier, whatever Android device you're using. From giant sized handsets to more compact and slightly less well specced devices, Instagram should load faster and be responsive. The profile screen should load twice as fast and with an app that's been halved in size, overall performance should be faster, too.

As well as functioning more speedily, it should look sleeker, with simplified visuals that make better use of screen space on smaller handsets and keep navigation easy with a rearranged layout. Instead of just being nice to use for people with the latest handsets, Instagram looks to be pushing its global appeal.

Vine knows it when it sees it and chooses to ban porn

Porn: some people love it; some people are digusted by it, but we all know it when we see it, right? It's this 'we know it when we see it' approach that Vine is adopting with its new policy covering sexually explicit content on its social netowrk. Vine reckons that explicit sexual content isn't a 'good fit' for its community so its users will no longer be able to post looping six-and-half second videos of it. Vine doesn't, however, want to be seen as too prudish. Unlike Facebook and its draconian 'no nipples' policy, there's no banishment of bare breasts, and content showing nursing mothers, Femen protestors, and nude models will remain welcome on Vine. In fact, Vine estimates that in excess of 99% of its users won't be directly affected by the policy change. For anyone who violates it, however, the punishment is account suspension until the offending material is removed. Persistent posting of forbidden content will result in permanent account suspension. The changes are laid out in a blog post and a specific sexual content FAQ.

Vine maintains that it doesn't have anything against sexually explicit content, just that it would prefer not to be the source of it. Doubtless the App Store and its policies prefer that it wouldn't be the source of it, too.

MWC review, with a photographic bent

All the big announcements have been made, now it's a case of rounding up and winding down from the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona this year. There have been a few new smartphone announcements and some interesting apps have come to the fore that might interest photographers. Here's a swift review.

Samsung Galaxy S5

The big news is that this one is waterproof. No more worrying about whipping it out to take a photo in the rain. The S4 had a decent 13 megapixel rear-facing camera, which has been bumped up to 16 megapixels in the S5. The front-facing camera still sits at 2 megapixels. It can shoot 4K video at 30 frames-per-second and comes equipped with HDR and selective focus functionality.

Post-shot focusing means that the camera takes two photos every time you release the shutter and you can choose from a background that's in or out of focus. Samsung reckons that the S5's auto-focusing speed is super-fast, at 0.3 seconds.

It also comes equipped with a reflector-integrated flash LED. What's that mean exactly? Supposedly it will ensure a wider field of view better, allow for better photos, whether day or night, and should mean that everyone in a photo, not just those in the centre of the frame, are illuminated by the flash.

The S5 is due to go on sale in April this year and will cost in the region of £550.

Sony Xperia Z2

This one is also waterproof. It also has a higher resolution count than the Samsung Galaxy S5, with a 20.7 megapixel, 1/2.3-type Exmor RS for mobile CMOS image sensor, and is capable of recording 4K video and enjoys SteadyShot image stabilisation, too.

The Z2 comes pre-loaded with a bundle of camera apps, including timeshift video (a slow-motion effect); creative effect; background defocus; AR effect (augmented reality effects); and Vine4. There's also a dedicated camera button to help when you're shooting underwater.

The Xperia Z2 should be available in March 2014.

The Nokia X-series

Nokia announced its X-series of phones, which run Android rather than Windows. The X, X+, and XL are budget phones and they appear to have cameras to match. There's nothing as exciting as the Lumia or PureView technology going on in these.

Lenovo's DOit apps

As well as a new tablet, Lenovo unvelied five new apps that aim to make your digital life easier by simplifying data management. Called the DOit apps, they break down to: SHAREit, SECUREit, SYNCit, SNAPit and SEEit. SHAREit, SNAPit, and SEEit (the proliferation of caps is getting tiresome now) are those of interest to photographers, with SHAREit there to transfer data, including images between devices easily.

SHAREit comes preloaded on all new Lenovo Android tablets and smartphones and can be downloaded for free from Google Play. Come February, it will also be available for download from the Apple App Store for iPhone/iPad, as well as for Windows PCs.

SNAPit and SEEit are intended to work in tandem: SNAPit being a camera app and SEEit the gallery app. The camera app gives you a selection of functions including panorama and burst mode; the gallery app lets you categorise photos with the help of facial recognition software and has the now-to-be-expected gamut of filters and effects. These, however, are Lenovo-only.

Most Innovative Mobile App: CamMe by PointGrab

CamMe is a gesture-controlled remote shutter release app for use with iOS devices. From a distance of upto 16 feet from the phone, you can raise you hand, make a fist, and trigger a three-second timer. You can also use CamMe to take photo booth-style selfies, with three shots arranged in a film-strip.

It's free to download from the App Store.

UK's most innovative mobile technology company: Seene

Seene allows you to capture, view, and share 3D images from your iPhone. Why might you want to do that, you ask? Well the Seene team see it as great tool to help with 3D printing, or as a superior means for people to view products online.

Seene is free to download from the App Store.

Who wants to conform? Choosing an app for rectangular Instagram images

Instagram images are distinctive because of their filters and their square crops. They're the first two elements on the Instagram Spotter's Guide. But who wants to be forced to conform and always have to slice off the sides of your photos and submit a perfect square? Exactly! An entire industry has grown up around the Instagram phenomenon, encompassing everything from postcards to marshmallows, and it includes a goodly selection of apps that add a border to your rectangular photos that'll ensure they look square when imported to Instagram. (And if you choose a coloured border, it empahsises how the image is, in fact, square.)

I road-tested five of these apps. If I had the choice of a paid or a free version, I always went for the free one, which meant that one of my judging criteria was how intrusive or distracting the ads were. Otherwise, I was looking for an intuitive interface and something that didn't run too slowly. Thus, in order of preference, I present the Oblong Collective.

=1. Instacrop

iOS-only, free

With no frills and a desperately simple interface, Instacrop comes joint top of my list. Tap to select a photo from your camera roll, hit share to select from Instagram or EyeEm, and you're done. If you're so inclined you can select from paid-for border colours. There are banner ads at the bottom of the screen and a pop-up ad before you can share your photo, but I didn't find them too instrusive.

=1. Instasize

Android and iOS, free

As well as allowing you to post rectangular images to Instagram (and Facebook and Twitter), Instasize allows you to create diptychs and triptychs, overlay a filter or text, and choose from a huge variety of borders. I didn't find the ads too distracting and the app didn't run too slowly, either. It shares top spot because if you're looking for a bit more functionality than just rectangular images, it has it.

3. #NoCrop

Android and iOS, free

As with Instacrop, it's a case of tapping to import an image from your camera roll and then tapping to share to Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You can email or save the image, too. #NoCrop gives you the option to adjust your border size using a pinch-to-zoom motion or to reposition your image in the frame. This one is also ad-supported and they pop-up every now and again.

4. Squaready

iOS-only, free; Squaready Pro, £1.49

Squaready gives you lots of options to borderise your images: let it do it for you with an instant adjustment, choose from three different sized borders, or pinch-to-zoom to alter it yourself, and then select a border colour. There're are options to edit your images with Camera+ or three other programmes, too. All of this sounds great, but I didn't find the interface as simple to use as Instasize and it was much slower, too.

5. Squaregram

iOS-only, free (There is a SquareGram for Android, but it's developed by a different company.)

My first encounter with Squaregram did not end well: I closed it in a fit of frustration. Apart from it running very slowly with lots of intrusive ads, the interface wasn't especially intuitive. I couldn't figure out how to remove a text box when I'd been experimenting with adding one, which really bothered me. I did give it another go, and I liked that I was able to choose a border colour and corner curvature, but it ddn't make up for how disappointing it was first time around.

If you've any pet apps for sharing non-square images to Instagram, let us know down there!

What's the situation with the Snapchat hack?

The Snapchat security vulnerability is a story that has quietly grumbled on over the Christmas and New Year period, but is hopefully reaching some kind of resolution, at least for the bugs highlighted on Christmas Eve. To recapitulate, Gibson Security discovered potential exploits in Snapchat's Find Friends feature and informed the app's developers of them in August 2013. One of these bugs allowed someone to upload a list of random telephone numbers and match them to Snapchat users' names. The other allowed the creation of multitudes of dummy accounts. Bring on the spammers and maybe even stalkers, then. Although Snapchat made some moves to address the faults, it didn't close the loopholes entirely. Gibson Security, therefore, took it upon itself to document Snapchat's API on Christmas Eve, making the vulnerability obvious for anyone who wanted to abuse it. The hole was exploited on New Year's Eve, when 4.6 million of Snapchat users' partially redacted names and telephone numbers were published online, albeit for a limited period of time.

With the ante having been upped, Snapchat has been forced to issue an update to its app that patches the vulnerability. It hasn't been released yet, but when it is, it will allow users to opt out of the Find Friends feature after they have verified their telephone number. Snapchat has also stressed that no other information, including images, was accessed during the attack.

Bugs happen and so do security breaches; what matters is how companies and developers respond to them. Perhaps the most disturbing element of this situation isn't that Snapchat users' details could potentially have been exploited, but Snapchat's ostrich approach to security. Rather than addressing the situation thoroughly and immediately when first informed of it, it made a half-baked attempt to implement a patch that could still be exploited. When it was called out, it reacted slowly with a fix that is opt-in rather than opt-out, and it hasn't apologised to its users. Food for thought.

You can read what Snapchat had to say for itself on its blog.

Easy-to-make photo videos with Flipagram

Seeing as half the world and their spouses appear to be producing some variation on 2013 In Review articles, videos, and compilations, I thought I'd go for a variation on the variation of 2013 In Review. I've made a sneak peek Flipagram of some of the photos that will be appearing in my Social Photography book, which is due to be released in spring 2014. It's a prospective retrospective, I suppose.

As for Flipagram, it's a rather nifty app that I discovered when a photographer whom I follow on Instagram compiled her best bits of 2013 into a slick looking video. (Thanks, Natalie Norton!) It allows you to hook up to Instagram to make a digital flipbook of your favourite photos, or if you're not of the Instagram persuasion, to do it from your smartphone's camera roll.

Once you've selected your images you can arrange them in your preferred order, crop them to fit Flipagram's square format, duplicate them for added impact, decide between a 15 second or 30 second video playtime, and choose a soundtrack if you fancy. After that, you hit the button and Flipagram compiles your video for you. Then you can share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube, or you can email it away. There's no option to embed your videos from the Flipagram site, but if you upload them to YouTube, you can embed from there.

I was impressed by how easy it was to compile a little video and finish it the way that I wanted it finished. At the moment you can't return to edit a saved video, but Flipagram has developments in the pipeline, so that might be one of them. And useful it would be, too.

Flipagram is free, nothing to do with Flipboard, available for Android and iOS, and worth a download for a bit of fun.