I love collage artist Martin O’Neill’s visual storytelling in this portrait of Holocaust survivor & actress Bettine Le Beau
The work was produced via “the Memory Makers project, [which] pairs survivors of genocide with a range of artists, who are responding to their life stories by creating a work of art.”
Snapseed 2.0 is an enormous new release, and along with all the new goodness (non-destructive editing, brushing, healing, masks, new filters, etc.), a few changes have proven controversial. The team is listening (especially via the user forum) and planning improvements.
Among these, we plan to bring back the Grunge filter (not the most widely used tool—hence its removal from v2—but one with a very passionate following). We’ll also offer a way to play nicely with apps (e.g. Lightroom) that don’t yet support iOS 8’s model for non-destructive editing (see previous post). I can’t promise a specific timeframe, but stay tuned.
Thanks for all the feedback to date, and please keep it coming!
Check out the interactive hotness below. Per the Verge:
GoPro just announced that it has purchased Kolor, a French company that specializes in virtual reality software.
Kolor’s software lets users to combine multiple photographs or videos to make 360-degree panoramas and videos, or “spherical content” as the companies call it. The ability to create interactive content is something that GoPro hasn’t been able to directly offer its customers until now, even though many virtual reality content creators are using the company’s cameras.
[YouTube]
The NY Times has posted side-by-side interactive photo spheres & satellite images that show the world before & after this weekend’s terrible earthquake. What a heartbreaking tragedy.
Check out Didú. Designtaxi writes,
Six different masterworks have been reproduced through this technique, and is now being exhibited at the Prado Museum, located in Madrid. This selection is available to touch, with the hope to translate the detail, volume and texture we perceive with our eyes into the tactile language understood by the blind.
[Vimeo]
There are Lego cars, and then there are Lego cars…
When he was a teenager in Romania, Raul Oaida became obsessed with building things: a jet-engine bike, a tiny spaceship, a LEGO car that runs on air. Why? Well, why not?
[YouTube] [Via Uri Ar]
Hasselhoff. Hitler. Power Glove. You’re welcome.
Detail by crapulent detail, this lovingly art directed video channels the eye-gouging best of the 80’s, complete with multiple Countaches & awful lip syncing:
Consider your week started properly.
[YouTube] [Via Alex Powell]
I love seeing photographers start putting this very rich update through its paces. PetaPixel writes,
Photographer Mark Ryan Sallee of Michromatic just posted this video in which he shares the top 5 new features found in Snapseed 2.0. The 14-minute video covers the bigger view, highlights slider, perspective correction, content aware fill, and edit history.
[YouTube]
I can kinda dig this rotoscope-y treatment of some of the past year’s top jams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBXns5WswsY
[YouTube]
““I would argue that the camera industry is healthier than it’s ever been,” says photographer Sven Skafisk, “but the brands we all think of as ‘the camera companies’ aren’t participating.” Check out this pair of charts he showed that first show the sale of traditional digital cameras…
…then show digital camera sales when you factor in smartphones:
[Via]
Colossal writes,
In this new 6-minute film, cave, adventure, and travel photographer Ryan Deboodt takes us on a breathtaking aerial tour of the world’s largest cave, Hang Son Doong, located in central Vietnam. Deboodt brought a drone and an array of cameras to help capture the cave system, the largest chamber of which is 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) long, 200 meters (660 ft) high and 150 meters (490 ft) wide.
[Vimeo]
Tilt Brush, according to its developers, “is a Virtual Reality Tool that paints the Space all around you. Paint thick, three-dimensional brush strokes, smoke, stars. Even light.” Check it out:
I always dreamed of giving Photoshop this kind of expressive painting power; hence my long & ultimately fruitless endeavor to incorporate Flash or HTML/WebGL as a layer type. Ah well. It all reminds me of this great old-ish commercial:
Waveforms you can hold in your hand, yet still listen to? Colossal writes,
[T]he team is creating software that turns any snippet of audio—from rock music to spoken poetry—into curious objects 3d-printed from bronze, plastic, or even coconut husk. Reify is also creating software that allows you to ‘scan’ the sculptures with your phone to interpret them back into audio.
The creators themselves write,
REIFY transforms sound into something we can see, sculpt and hold.
Using 3D digital technologies, we build collaborative tools for creating cross-sensory experiences of sound.
We are collective of visual artists, musicians, designers & technologists who are driven by a shared curiosity in the interplay of form and meaning — a digital synesthesia.
[Vimeo]
The elevators to the observatory atop 1 World Trade Center show an animated time lapse that recreates the development of New York City’s skyline, from the 1500s to today.
[Via Anil Dash]
Hmm—could be interesting:
[YouTube]
The Micronaxx are digging Tinybop’s Robot Factory, a beautiful game that lets them design their own robots:
[Vimeo]
[Update: This issue is addressed by the “Export flat” option added in Snapseed 2.0.2.]
TL;DR: If your file-transfer app of choice doesn’t recognize edits made by Snapseed & other iOS8-compliant apps, please ask its developer to update it.
With iOS8 Apple introduced a great system for non-destructive editing: Apps still write out new images, but instead of having those show up separately in one’s Camera Roll, they now show up sitting atop the original images. Under the hood, your iOS device still retains the original pixels & the new pixels, but it stacks them together with the list of edits that turn the original into the output. That way you can always revert to your original pixels, and the editing app can keep its edits flexible (by re-reading the original pixels + list of edits, letting you get back to where you left off).
Supporting this new system requires updating one’s app to use new APIs introduced with iOS 8. Snapseed has of course done this, as have Google Drive, the new Apple Photos, and many other apps. Some apps haven’t yet been updated, however, so they read only the original pixels on the device. Notably, when you connect your iOS device to a Mac & transfer images via Lightroom or Apple’s Image Capture utility, or when you browse your Camera Roll using Dropbox, you’ll transfer only original pixels. This isn’t unique to Snapseed: try making edits in Camera Plus, Camera+, or other iOS 8-savvy apps & you’ll get the same results.
We know that the problem is very frustrating, and people understandably blame Google, but our options for dealing with it are limited. As other apps get updated, the problem will go away. In the meantime, we could add an “Export flat JPEG” command, or something similar, but that’s hardly ideal. Photographers shouldn’t have to think about this stuff, especially if doing so means choosing between non-destructive editing & being able to transfer your work.
So, we’re considering next steps. What would you find most useful?
What a gloriously weird Kickstarter project from design professor Curtis Canham:
[Via]
Any kid who makes Lego brass knuckles is doing something right.
“[T]his hilariously endearing film follows Seattle’s 7-year-old rap portraitist, Yung Lenox, and his Dad, Skip – an unconventional artistic duo simultaneously navigating the tumultuous worlds of rap and modern-day-parenting.
Check out his giant Lego portraits:
A must-have accessory for all the Cumberbitches in your life:
A three rotor Enigma machine I built. Being inspired after visiting Bletchley Park I decided to learn how the Bombe machine works and code my own version. First though I needed to fully understand Enigma. The best way to understand something is to build it so I made my own Enigma machine and housed it in a wrist watch. This is how it works.
Coming soon to Park Slope, Noe Valley, and Shallow Alto:
[YouTube]
Neat stuff from the founders of After Effects:
Adobe Character Animator tracks your facial movements, lets you record dialogue or a voice performance & enables you to trigger actions with your keyboard that give life to characters created in Illustrator CC or Photoshop CC.
[YouTube]
RC Concepcion from Kelby One has created a series of 28 bite-sized lessons that show you the ins & outs of achieving amazing results with the newly released Snapseed 2.0. The number of vids may sound a little overwhelming, but they’re all small, and breaking them up means that you can easily jump just to the bits that interest you. Enjoy!
If you’re serious about mobile photography, I think you’ll enjoy Nik founder Nils Kokemohr’s in-depth demo and conversation with Scott & RC Concepcion. Nils deep-dives on powerful new features like Tonal Contrast from Color Efex Pro (“the best tonal contrast ever,” says Scott), Stacks, and much more.
[YouTube]
“From subterranean to submarine,” former coal miner Ray Collins asks us to consider waves in a new way:
The coal-mining town of Bulli, south of Sydney, is not regarded as a repository of high art, nor as a vibrant and pulsing beehive of life and color, and yet there was Ray Collins. Seven years ago the idea of his new photography book, Found at Sea, would have seemed ludicrous to him; he was still working a mile down in the mines and hadn’t shot a single frame. Collins crawled out of the mines after blowing out a knee—“No shock absorbers left,” he says—and bought a camera with the payout. In the short years since, Collins has transitioned from subterranean to submarine and become arguably the most inventive water photographer in Australia.
I’m thrilled to announce that Snapseed 2, the next generation of the award-winning mobile photography powerhouse—has arrived and is ready for download on iOS & Android. Key new features:
We’ve also added long-requested features like zooming, undo, highlight adjustment, and more. I think you’ll find that you can work both faster (moving edits among images) and with more precision (using brushing to fine-tune the whole image or even individual filters). We’d love to see what you create & to hear your thoughts, here and in the user-to-user forum.
Here’s an ultra quick tour:
[YouTube]
Super fun robot puppetry courtesy of Opificio Sonico:
Toa Mata Band is known as the World’s first LEGO robotic band controlled by Arduino Uno which is hooked up to a MIDI sequencer. In this video, the third episode, the robots are playing some unconventional drum-percussions made by some food packaging are captured by a contact microphone (piezo) and processed in real time in the D.A.W. Ableton Live. A brand new device appears for the first time, it’s a sliding platform on x-axis, made of Lego bricks, gears and servo motors that allows the tiny synth to move in semitone steps.
[YouTube] [Via Jeff Tranberry]
Last summer I sat down with filmmakers Avery McCarthy & Kara Hayden for their new documentary Brave New Camera:
This project takes stock of how the recent developments of internet connected cameras, coupled with nearly infinite storage and increasing algorithmic power, have shaped our society and our identities over the last ten years.
They recently conducted a panel discussion about the changing nature of cameras in our society. Here’s an excerpt:
Now they’re turning to the photographic community for support to finish the project. Check out their funding page for more info.
Pair a fairly beefy copter with a camera capable of ludicrously large data capture, and this is what you get:
The Phantom Flex 4K weighs 14 pounds without a lens or viewfinder attached, so it’s far too heavy to be carried by most of the popular drones used by casual photographers and filmmakers. By partnering with the drone manufacturer Intuitive Aerial, however, the team was able to put together an Aerigon that was up to the task. It’s a combination that’s a “cinematic game changer,” they write.
[YouTube]
“The best way to survive a crash, is not to crash,” the company writes. “LifePaint is a unique reflective safety spray. Invisible by daylight, it shines brightly in the glare of car headlights. Making the invisible, visible.”
As a cyclist & lover of Volvo flashiness, I’m delighted. Way to think holistically, car guys.
The hilariously inventive creator of Lego NY & more tackles MoMA:
By holding up his drawings between his camera and the painting, he could extend them outside their frame or highlight visual confluences among the artworks and their surroundings, creating a whole new gallery in the process.
Congrats Jorge, Brian, and my other old teammates on making what looks like a great way to author magazine-style stories on the go:
Slate lets you turn anything you want to say – whether it’s a book report, a newsletter or your latest travel adventure – into a beautiful visual story, in minutes. Bring your words and images together, tap on one of the professionally designed, magazine-style themes and beautiful fonts, colors and motion are automatically applied! The good news is, you don’t have to make any complex design decisions. You can just focus on your story.
[YouTube]
Wise words for makers of every stripe.
[Via Peyman Milanfar]
