Halide’s new color histogram is pretty great looking all by itself. Photo: Halide
Halide, the best iPhone camera app that isn’t the iPhone’s Camera app, has gotten yet another amazing update. This time it brings a color histogram (which is actually way cooler than it sounds), plus even smarter Smart Raw.
This needs some fine-tuning, but took just seconds to do. Photo: Cult of Mac
There are a bunch of reasons to remove the background from a photo. You might just hate the background — a perfect portrait ruined by crowds, or ugly construction work, or both. You may want to remove the background in order to extract the subject — maybe you’re doing some kind of Photoshop trick, or making a greetings card.
Whatever your reasons, it’s easy to do. Removing the background from an image used to be a nightmare. Now, you just need the right app. And if you’re a regular with our Cult of Mac photo how-tos, you probably have that app already.
Portrait Mode is great, until it’s not. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Portrait Mode in the iPhone XR and XS is hands-down amazing. In the time it take to snap a photo, the camera scans the depth of the image in front of it, and uses that data to blur the background, and make the subject pop out, sharp. But it doesn’t always work. The depth detection gets confused by glass, for example, ruining what could have been an amazing image.
Today we’re going to use and app called Focos to fix these depth glitches. Focos is an all-round focusing powerhouse of an app, recently updated to support the iPad, including the new iPads Pro. The area we’ll focus on today (sorry) is the ability to edit the depth map, and paint back in the glass or hair that the iPhone missed.
In the olden days, this was the only way to edit your photos. Photo: Agirldamednee/Flickr CC
Even if you don’t have much interest in editing RAW and JPG images on your iPad, you might still want to check out Darkroom. The brand-new iPad version of the popular photo app offers a view of your standard iCloud Photo Library that’s better-looking and easier to use than the native Photos app. And that’s just for starters.
Before and after. The Apollo app brings immersive illumination to Portrait mode photos.
Photos: Indice
This post is presented by Indice, maker of the Apollo app.
The photos you take are only as good as the lighting. That’s true no matter whether you’re using a top-of-the-line DSLR or an iPhone. The difference is, with an iPhone, you can change the lighting after you’ve taken the picture. That’s thanks to Apollo, an iOS app that uses the iPhone’s depth data to totally reimagine the lighting conditions in your photos.
This iPhone gimbal does double duty as a charging platform, with a bunch of other cool extras. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Despite the great camera, taking great video with iPhone requires a few extra things. First, you’ll want something to reduce the shakiness of handheld video. Additionally, because the camera is a serious energy drain, you want something to keep your phone charged. So any iPhone videographer can get into this gimbal that does both.
Depth Control can add subtle or wild background blur to your images. Photo: Cult of Mac
The iPhone XS has an amazing camera, and the best part of that camera is the Depth Control feature, which lets you adjust the background blur after you take the photo.
This is a powerful feature, but to get the most out of it, you might want to check out these tips and tricks on using Depth Control on iPhone XS.
The Camera Connection Kit has some surprising tricks. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
This weekend, you’re “enjoying” some extended time with your family. After you’ve fixed their devices, and taught them that the battery of their iPhone lasts way longer if they don’t leave the damn screen on the whole time, you might decide to swap some photos. You may grab the your old childhood snaps off your mother’s iPad, or photos of the family recipe book off your father’s iPhone.
There are a few ways to do this — slow, fast and faster, wired or wireless. Let’s see how to transfer photos between iPhones and iPads.
Importing is dead easy. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
You’ve been able to import photos into an iPad ever since the first iPad launched. You had to buy a Camera Connection Kit to do it, which at the time consisted of two 30-pin Dock connectors, one with a USB-A port for hooking up cameras and CF readers, the other with an SD card slot. Since then, imports have gotten faster, and better. And the biggest difference with the 2018 iPad Pro is that now you can use any old USB-C card reader or hub to do the importing. Let’s see how it works.
The iPhone XS is a serious camera, so give it the attention it deserves. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Were you ever in the middle of trying to get that perfect photo, framing it just-so, and tweaking the exposure and focus for the perfect shot, when your mother called to remind you of your own child’s birthday? It could totally happen. And for pro photographers using the iPhone as their preferred camera (which is a great idea, BTW), the risk of interruptions is even greater.
That’s why noted iPhone photographer Austin Mann came up with a great way to shut up your iPhone while you’re busy shooting. It’s called Shoot Mode, and it’s yet another example of how useful Siri Shortcuts can be — even in tiny doses.