Getting App-tistic

Well, it's late again. It was a busy day, but I'm later than ever because I was busy getting "app-tistic". Last night I bought FX PhotoStudio HD. It's really cool: you can actually create masks and apply filters to any area of the image you desire. You can rearrange the order of the filters too, I believe, though I haven't tried that yet.

Now it isn't as if I suffered from a dearth of photo editors. In fact, an excess of them is what I really have but I just can't resist! I love playing around with my pictures.

Tonight I have yet another tool in my technology quiver: PicShop (free for the day). And of course I had to try it out. It's different; they all have their unique strengths and weaknesses. This one doesn't have nearly as many filters, but it did have a couple of elegant frames, and special effects like a very intuitive tilt-shift and fish-eye.

Other fantastic apps I have are Snapseed - probably the best all-around editor - PhotoToaster, and 100 Cameras in One. (I love that one just for the effect names alone, although some of the effects themselves are quite good too.)

I'll never be a particularly artistic person, but I do love creating art with my apps. I hardly even use Photoshop any more (or my laptop even). It's good that I know basic design principles and understand things like layers and masks and opacity; it does help. But beyond that, these apps allow you to play to your heart's content ... and create some surprisingly sophisticated images in the process. Here are two of my recent works: the flowers are an artistic rendition of some calla lilies Dan gave me ... and you probably recognise one of my favourite subjects: Miss Paisley! (The first was created with FX; the second with PicShop.) They might not be worthy of any museum except the museum of my mind, but nevertheless, I sure had fun being app-tistic.