Miami Zoo

Another Pretty Simple Page

I did have to do quite a bit of work on the photo of Makayla on the lizard it was totally dark.  I used Photogene, 2 passes to clear it up. Background is also a picture from the zoo.  All photos were taken with my iPhone. Page put together with Photo Montage on my iPad. 

Off on a road trip

Been out for a while on a road trip with my son, Rob.  We drove from Central Florida to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  We were gone 11 days and drove almost 4,000 miles.  What fun.

Roswell, NM was a little disappointing but here is a page I made from our trip.  The aliens in the top left were put through several effects in Photo Wizard. (see effect page for what they were)

St. Augustine

All photos were taken either with my iPad or iPhone.   

Background Photo: Photogene> Black and white filter> high contrast.

Lighthouse Photo: Sunsetter App>orange and blue 

then Lensflare App>Diffraction

Tower and Cannon: Sunsetter App (Tower was masked and merged with original to retain color of tower in Photo Wizard App)

Sailboat and St. Augustine Poster "stamp" from Dover Publications 

Page put together with text added in Montage Magic.

Other photos were used as is or gently improved in Photo Wizard App.

Questions welcomed.

This is a photo taken on the Vegas strip.  I ran it through the updated app called Photo Tropedelic. They not only updated the app to have editing capabilities they added a section where you can run the photo through the app with your own colors.  It's an extra 99 cents, but well worth it.
   The top right corner photo was also run through the percolator app afterwards.  So many apps, so little time.

How to use Lettering Delights on your iPad

I am using an iPad 3, so I have no idea if this will work on a 1 or 2.
But, it works great on a 3 as long as you have the 2 apps mentioned in the instructions.

I have tried the save button several times, I either get nothing or I get a nice photo of the save button.
If you do hit the save button by accident just wait a second or two,  a very large photo of the graphic will come up.  You can hold your finger down on that and the same tab will come up as described on the next panal.

It may open as a png file in other programs, I have only tried a few and Montage Magic is the only one that I know imports png files.  And, it's a pretty good app for scrapbooking.

It's very important that you tap the Masked png file button or all your work will be lost.  Also, don't forget to tap Library AND Export.  (Don't sigh at me saying the obvious, I've done both).

Ok, Now if you want to download your true type Fonts and Dingbats to use in Montage Magic.

All of my true type fonts have shown up at the bottom of the list.  They have a little red circle beside them.

When you go to add some text to your Montage Magic page, there is a button on the text page that allows you to toggle between the programs default fonts, and your own downloaded ones.  If you want to preview what your font or dingbats look like, go into the Saved Collages tab (top left). At the bottom of the page is a My Fonts tab, go there and you can preview your fonts.


Note:  I have not as yet been successful in getting any of the paper pages to download onto iPad. 

Faux Stamp Collage "step by step"

       Larger Photo Below.
iPad Programs needed for this:
              Montage Magic
              Photo Wizard

All panels in this tutorial were put together
with Montage Magic.

All work was done on the iPad.
             

Just a note camera roll is called Library in Wizard.
    ERROR: Program is Montage Magic not Photo Montage.

If you need to have your photo hang off the edge of the stamp a little to fit, it's ok,  if it's on an outside edge as they will be cropped and reapplied, but keep the inside white dotted edges clear. 

Make sure you save stamp to clip board after added every photo or you will lose your last work.  You can only bring in a second photo or element when you are in blend mode.

If you get tired and quit for a while save your work to the clip board and to the the library just in case. 

 For this type of collage the edges don't have to be perfect.  So it's a good project to practice with.

When a masked object is moved into the blend program the mask will completely disappear.  When you move it to the top of the stamp it will come back.  If you open up a saved png file the edges will appear black until they are placed ontop as well.  They also look black saved, but if you open it into any program that supports png files it will be clipped.  

The postal dingbats are easy to find.  Just go any to any internet search engine and search Dead letter office ding bats.

They are free.  When you hit download the iPad will offer to download in Montage Magic, just say yes.  It will be there to use. There is also a couple other postage dings under other names.

Once you are done, save it to library and crop it in any program and it's ready to use.

A "Me" Faux Stamp Collage

Today, I ran across an old page of Faux stamps which I had made with Adobe years ago, and wondered if they could be duplicated on my iPad.  I think I actually like these better.

The stamp bases were made in Photo Wizard (the more I use that program the more I like it) and Montage Magic was used to put the 4 stamps together and to add the finishing touches on them.  It took most of the day to get used to the masking and blending sections in the Photo Wizard program but I learned a lot.  I will start working on a "Play by Play" to making these stamps tomorrow. 

Planet Ocean

I don't do a lot of Collages, and this one just sorta happened.  I was actually making a background page for some dolphin photos I took, and it got away from me.  There was no cheating it was all done on my iPad.
   1. Started with an ocean picture I took in Hawaii. Brought it into Photo Wizard and added FX Light Bokeh #3.  Then ran it through the blueish color preset. I opened FX pattern boarder and put on the boarder 2 to get the foaming effect around the edges.
2.  I copied what I did so far on to the Photo Wizard clipboard and opened up my photo of the dolphin.  I took it into the masking section (still in P.W.) and cleaned away all the background and part of the tail, then softened the edges. I saved my cropped dolphin into my photo stream.
3. Then,  I went into crop section>blend (I know that the crop section is a weird place to have the blend effect but that's where it is) and opened the page back from the clipboard, I exchanged the two photos places (it's a tab right on the tool bar) and arranged and sized the dolphin then saved that page onto the clipboard.  (Saving it makes it possible to bring in more dolphins) so still in blend, I brought in another dolphin over and over until I had 5.
4.  I cloned a little foam to cover up the ends. (Clone tool is also in crop tab, all the way at the bottom).
5. I saved it both to my photo stream (just in case) and to the clip board. I then brought in the shells and starfish, masked them out and added them to the collage.
6. There was a little background shadow that looked like a mermaid so I thought why not? I found a mermaid, brought her in and masked her out, added her to the collage (in blend) and faded her out to almost nothing.
7. Saved the page and took it into Photogene.  I added the inner Gloss in very transparent white and added a boarder.
8.  Typed in the quote and my name.  Added the circles.  Actually, did a tiny bit more cloning of sea form around a few bits and pieces.  All done.   Took about two hours, but I hadn't used the masking tool in Photogene before so some of that time was learning. It got easier.

Using Photogene

Photogene by Mobil Pond LTD is a great program for general photo improvement.

It also has great text properties tho a limited amount of fonts.

Photogene does have a small Q and A section if you tap on the i in the top left corner.

At last look it was $2.99.    (Pages put together with Montage Magic.)

                                                                     Use one finger to enlarge or reduce cut out area.

Clone tool is very easy to use it does take a little practice the first couple of times you almost  pull out your hair, but once you get the hang of it, it's super easy.  Just tap to place control dot.  Then move to where you want to clone.  Keep in mind that the control dot is moving, too.  So if you have only a small spot to clone from, you will need to use your finger to move the control dot, then keep going.

I love all the control you have over the colors, I hope an update will give more fonts.
More shapes would be nice, too.

I like being able to export my pages straight to my facebook and flickr pages. It even has an email option.  Scroll down for even more.   Very handy.

And here we are.  Very fast, very easy program.  Well worth the money spent.  I didn't spend any time talking about the effects, as I seldom use them, but the do have a quite a few of the most used ones and they work very well.

Snack Time!

This picture of my Husband, Bob, feeding the reindeer is one of my favorite pictures. I took it on our trip to Alaska a few years ago.

All Photos were taken by me in Alaska.  All work was done on iPad 3 with apps.
Background:
1)  Photo Wizard.  a) Fairy Lights added in FX section Light Bokeh #3 @ 20%
                                      b) Texture added in FX section Tile Texture #1 @ 22%
Antique top Right photo:
2)  Sketch HD /Photo Artista  by JixiPix
     Sketch style 6, adjusted and paper changed.
     Then slightly adjusted and framed in Photogene.
3) Both other photos were adjusted and framed in Photogene.
4) Page put together in Montage Magic.
5) Fonts and Dingbat (free download) applied in Montage Magic.
6) Flowers downloaded from Lettering Delights.
     Montage Magic will import png files.  So handy.
                                                                             

Photo in Word App

This simple page was made unique with a heading made from a photo of a lei.

Aloha by Lucine

This page was made in Montage Magic.  (Info on this app in post 1)
Photos were first cropped, framed and tweaked using the  Photogene app.
All photos, including the background, were taken by me in Hawaii.
   Aloha word art was made in Photoinword app.

Photo in Word App is just what it says. It puts your photo into your chosen word. At the time of this writing it was $1.99 regular price but on sale for 99 cents.  There is also a free lite version, but I have not tried it. This is a super fast and easy to use app.  Below, is a step by step for using the app.  Step by step posters made entirely in Montage Magic.

Don't hit the top done button until you have chosen your type, once you do you can not edit, you will need to delete and start over if you don't like it.  Something I hope they fix in an update.

Below is a few samples I made up using this app.  Each one took less than a minute to make.

Scrap booking is ART

I will be talking about all the wonderful (and maybe not so wonderful) apps available for iPad/iPhone scrapbooks, collages and photo effects.  I welcome your comments about these apps and recommendations (or warnings) about any others you may have found.

       Montage Magic

     I am going to start my app reviews with Montage Magic as that is what app I used to make my blog header.  This app by Happyadam development is fantastic and at the time of writing this only $0.99. Hard to beat. I love this program. Not only is it easy to use but as far as I've found so far it is the only app that lets you download other fonts off the internet.  I have added about 75 free fonts and dingbats (so fun to use) to the program with no problems. I have even been able to download the paid fonts I bought from Lettering Delights years ago.  The only down side to the font download is you can only use them in this program. The other downside is the limited color choices on fonts and boarders. You only have about 10 colors to choose from (sadly no purple). I'm hoping for an update on that, but until then you can add borders in your photo effects program and import them ready to go.
      The program itself is super easy to use.  You can use a ready made background or import your own photo to use.  You can bring in as may photos as you want.  You can email your page from the app. You can add boarders to the page, pictures or text and you can add shadows to the pictures and fonts.
    A few user tips.
      1) Go to the saved Collages tab (top left) to get and then view all your downloaded fonts.  The font tab at the lower left will bring them up with an optional preview. Swipe to delete.
      2) If you are having trouble moving something on your page, double tap on it to move it back or forward.
     3) Some dingbats show up using little letters and some with capitals (some both) if you get a black box instead of a dingbat, try the other.