TAZM PICTURES

Ever want to share a bunch of photos, but couldn’t make up your mind which? Whether you post on Facebook or attach them to an email, it would be great to combine a bunch of related shots into a single image.

The app, “Diptic” (available on Apple devices and Android) lets you do exactly that.  Even cooler, you don’t have to put all the photos you want to combine on the device – you can pull the photos from a number of different places, including all the obvious ones – Flickr, Facebook, or snap a quick photo with the device.  You get nearly 200 layouts to choose from (and more you can download), although honestly I can’t figure out why you’d want to use some of the more ornate ones.  But you get plenty for what you need.

Once you’ve imported your photos, you can rotate, edit, reposition or apply a number of different filters to the photos, as well as different textures to the borders.  Personally, I like using a plain black border best. You can even add text! Once your collage is complete, you can save it, email it, create an electronic postcard, or upload it to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumbler, or other apps you may have on your computer (such as Adobe Revel, for instance).

I think the only thing missing is a good, descriptive name.  But maybe I’ve missed the point on that and someone can explain it to me.

Here’s an example or two of what you can do with the app, illustrating examples of the simple and the fancy layouts:

I’ve been fooling around with the Photoshop Express App for the iPad – mostly because I’m not clever or patient enough to master the REAL Photoshop.  Given the right photo, you can use the (relatively) limited effects available on the app to do some interesting things.  Besides the usual tools like cropping, adjusting saturation, exposure, etc – by sliding your finger back and forth on the iPad screen by the way – there are a handful of color effects that add a mood or a look with the click of a button.

The photo below was originally in normal color.    The first option I used was simply to convert the photo to black and white:

Then, I tried the “warm vintage” look.  To me, this is the kind of effect you see so often in Hollywood these days – everything is bathed in yellow morning light, and life is somehow brighter than it really is.

Lastly, I played around with the “add frame” tool and played around with the sliders to create this “vintage sepia” look.  There are other apps that will do this in one click, but you can experiment with Photoshop Express and get the same thing.

Here’s another attempt at using the iPad 2 and the TimeLapse HD app to create a timelapse video.  This one consists of stills taken every 5 seconds from a rooftop in Windhoek, Namibia.  There is a bit of flicker toward the end as the ipad adjusts to the changing lighting.  I’ll have to see whether there is a way to shut that off.