BrailleTouch App Allows Fast Braille Typing on iPhone

BrailleTouch is a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows users to type using braille. Click here to download the app. BrailleTouch is designed for the blind and visually impaired. The app uses the familiar six key braille and simple swipe gestures to enter text. The app is used in landscape with the devices touch screen facing away from you. Three of the six keys are on the left side and the other three are on the right side. By swyping with one finger you can add a space or delete a letter. BrailleTouch can also speak the characters and/or words as you type. BrailleTouch works well and is the first app of its kind but it cannot be used to replace the default keyboard for any other apps. This means that in order to use the text you typed using BrailleTouch you must copy and paste it into other apps. BrailleTouch is free to download and try but costs $19.99 to unlock the ability to copy and paste the text.

Click read more below to view screenshots of BrailleTouch.

Color Thief~

After my iPhone workshop on Sunday I took a quick spin through the West Wing of The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. There I found another bronze of Degas' Little 14 Year Old Dancer..one of my favorite bronze sculptures, another one resides at The Baltimore Museum of Art. I thought I would try the app Color Thief on the  image I made there of the sculpture.
My thought when I did was.....This app is pretty darn cool!
The opening image is a result of using the color shift app Color Thief. Color Thief launched in Dec 2012 and updated January 2013 to full res, awesome! It handled the color shift pretty well (you can still see remnants of the original color on the right side of the image but that did not bother me or discount the value of this app.) I love it for what it does. It's a one trick pony, robbing the color palette from one image and transferring it to another image.

Below is a screen shot of the open app which will give you an idea. The blue and gold abstract is the image I used to recolor the Little Dancer. 

The app is easy to use; First you find an image you want to use for the color "thievery" and then the image you want to recolor. So simple and cool! Then save your recolored image file. There are no sliders for opacity or blending Color Thief is just a single feature app, robbing colors!

 

And here is what the original file looked before I recolored it and after I had worked it using several apps blending images to create the background.

Apps: ImageBlender: Slow Shutter for background image: Glaze: Snapseed.

After walking through the west wing I went out on to the National Mall and made a few distant shots of the Capitol Building.

So I tried it on an image I had processed using several different apps adding some texture in Etchings and Retrolux in Snapseed, but you can see the color shift is pretty cool.  Join me in Baltimore on March 3 for a morning at The Baltimore Museum creating and processing iPhone images or spend a day learning in my next day long iPhone Processing workshop is March 8 in Gathersburg sponsored by Capital Photography Center. Hope to see you there!

Color Thief Screen shot

Original image tone

 

Creating Abstracts: Apps: Tiny Planet~Tangled FX~Glaze~ImageBlender

Wave

Yesterday I led an iPhone workshop in Washington DC at the National Gallery of Art. It was great working with new iPhone photographers. Along the way I captured a few quick shots. The moving escalators underground are cool with walls of lights so as we were moving I grabbed a couple shots.
The image above was the final result of that shot. I really am having some fun with this style or creating abstracts from pixels getting a painted look with Glaze as part of the recipe.
The sequence of images below will show you how I arrived at the image above I call "Wave"...that's what I think I really enjoy about the apps for the iPhone...I really didn't have an objective for the "final" image....I just started playing with the shot of lights in the tunnel. Once you know your apps you can use the what if game...like I did here...

Original Capture Hipstamatic Tinto with C-Type Plate

Above Image run through Tiny Planet

Tiny Planet Image with an iteration from Glaze

 

 

Above image run through Photo Wizard to distort and colorize

Above image run through Tangled Fx

One more iteration in Glaze

 

Final Image blended the last Glaze iteration with Tangled Fx version and ran one more iteration in Glaze with the blended image. Then a little saturation and contrast applied in Snapseed.

If I could only really paint like this!!