Apps for creativity
I thought it would be helpful to talk about the software and apps that I use to edit photographs and create graphics and videos. We all want to make imagery of our gardens and flowers that stands out, and it can be a bit overwhelming because of the sheer quantity of software that’s available. I’m not saying these are necessarily the best but they’re what works for me.
I mainly use an iPad Pro which is always my favourite way to work, mostly because I can sit on the sofa and doodle at the same time! I have an Apple Pencil which is great for drawing with and also makes it quicker to use some tools but it’s by no means essential.
There are some tasks, that for a variety of reasons, I have to use our desktop PC for. I must admit I do find this rather annoying, but you’ll often find there is more support for software on a computer so it can be a more efficient way of working. For example, to build this website, while there was access of a sort on the iPad, I couldn’t easily see all the tools and features. Some of the apps I use also have more extensive versions on a computer.
Photo Editing
The Apple Photos app has lots of really good features that I regularly use especially if I just need to crop an image or make it a bit brighter. As well as cropping, it has very easy to use tools to straighten an image in different planes. I sometimes use the Auto feature if I’m in a hurry but it does tend to oversaturate an image I find, so I usually tweak it with the more precise tools. When you take a Live picture on an iPhone you are actually recording a mini video and you can save it as one, as well as have it run on a loop. You can also look at all the individual frames and choose a different one to be your main photo. This is useful if you’ve taken a selfie and have blinked or you’re trying to photograph wildlife.
Lightroom is an Adobe app that has a free version although I pay a monthly subscription to get the full version in a package with some other Adobe software.
This is for when you want to take your photos to the next level. You can change EVERYTHING in this app. You get all the usual tools, but can also do colour grading – this is when you can pick an individual colour and adjust it’s hue and saturation. Perhaps you like a photo except the green looks just a bit too yellow? That’s what you can change. You can use it to make the colours look closer to what you saw with the naked eye, or you can change shades to enhance a mood or just because you don’t like it. You also have tools that quickly remove any problem areas - if you look at the image below of the pansy you can see I’ve taken away the bit of dead leaf on the right.
You might have seen references to Presets. If you made several changes to one photo and wanted to do the same on another, you can save them altogether, give your Preset a name and then, when you want to give another photo the same effect, you can do all the same edits in one step. This is why you see people offering Presets to buy, and if you wanted to purchase them they will work in the free version of Lightroom. If you want to make them yourself you have to get the paid version. Another feature that again you need the paid version for is Masking. With this amazing tool you can select a part of your photo such as the subject or the sky and apply edits to just that part. If your face, or a feature flower is in darkness you can brighten it. You can invert the mask and make the background more blurry or change its colour. I think this tool has made the biggest difference in the quality of my flower portraits.
Video Editing
When I first started making Reels I used InShot, and I still use it now. I would always rather make Reels outside of Instagram because then you’ve got more control plus you own the video. It’s very quick to get the hang of, and it has loads of features which it is always adding to. It’s free if you don’t mind the watermark or there are various pricing options.
You begin by uploading your clips to the timeline and then you can cut them or switch them around. There are lots of filters, effects and transitions (the bit between two clips) you can use and customize. You can also edit stills and make collages and it has a cut-out feature which is really fun, especially if you use it with a green screen effect which lets you put a completely different background in.
I have used CapCut more recently and I would say that this has more features available in its free version. While I haven’t used a lot of them yet, one I really like is that it will automatically make captions from speech in the same way that Instagram stories is able to. This is great when we know that so many of us consume content with the sound down these days.
Because I wanted to do a bit more with my videos, about a year ago I got LumaFusion, an app which I\’d heard good things about and is designed to be used on a tablet (music to my ears!). This is an amazing bit of software but does take a bit longer to get to grips with. For what I think is a bargain one off price of £30, you could make a feature film if you wanted. You can layer up multiple tracks of both video and audio. You can change shot angles, perspective, add graphics and voiceovers and tweak everything to your heart’s content. Whereas in an app like InShot you can do these to some extent, you have much more scope with LumaFusion to be creative and make something individual. In the intro to my cyanotype video (which you can see here: Cyanotype video), I put the text in green screen over another image, this was then ‘keyed out’ and replaced with a video of other images.
There are a lot of resources and tutorials available to help you learn the ropes. Whenever I’m not sure how to do something I look for a YouTube video to show me. I’ve been surprised by how much I enjoy editing as I never thought I would, and I now make most of my video content in LumaFusion.
Graphics
I have used Photoshop for years and always return to it every now and again, although I must admit I was a bit bamboozled by the latest version which came with the Adobe bundle I subscribe to, so I often use my old Photoshop Elements 15 as I know where everything is on there! If you’re just starting, I would recommend trying the free Express version for tablets as it has fewer features and isn’t quite so overwhelming. Photoshop’s key feature is that you work in layers so you can build up elements, like a gradient or text, on top of photos to create your final image.
The app I tend to use more is Procreate. This is again one designed just for a tablet and also just has a one off price of just £10. It is a drawing app but you don’t have to be able to draw to use it as one of the things you can do is import a photo and then trace it. Similarly to Photoshop you work with layers and this means that each element can always be changed later without effecting the whole. You have many different brush styles and fonts to work with and can always import more. Brushes don’t just have to be lines, they can be shapes and patterns – in the image above I imported a stamp brush of the lavender used at the bottom. Nearly every graphic of mine, including all my YouTube thumbnails, will probably have some part of it created in Procreate. You can also make a video of all the steps you make as in this example below.
If you want to be a bit more creative with your imagery I would suggest downloading the free versions of these or other apps and just having a play. The beauty of digital is that any ‘mistakes’ can always be deleted with just a touch of the undo button and you might find a way of creating something you never thought possible.