23 Mobile Things #9: Taking & Editing Photos

I do not use my tablet and smartphone for everything, at least not yet. When it comes to photos, I'm more likely to export them to a desktop computer and edit them with Photoshop Elements rather than try to fix a photo that I can barely see on a tiny screen. And since I do edit photos a lot, I decided to try Color Splurge for this Thing's post, just for a change.

Color Splurge makes photos look dramatic, or makes dramatic photos, or something like that. I could see using it to create a library poster or two, highlighting key elements by coloring them. You'd have to use it sparingly though, because it's such a distinctive look. Even two posters in a row featuring this technique would probably give your patrons the impression that you and your staff only had one design idea. I'm not sure how much use there would be for Color Splurge's color change tools, at least not for library posters. I don't know, maybe if you were playing off of "roses are red, violets are blue" and wanted a photo of red violets or blue roses or something—beyond that, my professional imagination fails me. But I can think of reasons to use it personally. For one thing, I often want to knit a sweater in some other color than the one pictured in the pattern. With this, I could recolor the photo and check out how it looks before committing myself to anything.

Color Splurge itself was fairly easy to use. The instructional video saved me a lot of guesswork, but the ads are obnoxious. (Also, the video needs updating. Where was that reset button the narrator referred to?) It was a bit tricky getting the color and the gray to be where I wanted them to be. I have better control of my fingers than trying to "paint" with a mouse or trackball, but my fingertips are less than precise when working at such a small scale. It was certainly easier using this app on a tablet than a smartphone—having said that, I'll add that I did these two pictures on the iPhone. It wasn't all that hard after I remembered I had a stylus and used it. Although Color Splurge may have been overkill for these pictures. The reason I took them in the first place was because they were the only spots of color in otherwise dormant lawns and bushes; all Color Splurge did was change brown to gray.

Leaves!

Really, there are tiny purple flowers in there somewhere.

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

I've always enjoyed the idea of scrapbooking, much as I've enjoyed the idea of journaling. The difference is that I got into the habit of journaling: all it required was a pen and paper. Scrapbooking took too much energy. It made messes. You had to plan out ahead of time what you were going to do because basically it was an ongoing art project. I never got any further than stuffing mementoes in between the pages of a scrapbook and telling myself that really, someday, I'd do something with them.

And now we're in the 21st century and there's this thing called "digital scrapbooking" to go along with all the digital photos we take nowadays. I delayed on this entry for a while, mostly because it was supposed to be about a library event, and we just don't do a lot of events at our library. But yes, finally, we had an open house to honor our retiring State Law Librarian, and I got photos.

I took a peek at Scrapbook Generator (doesn't that sound straightforward?) and was immediately repelled by all the tacky ads on the site. I then looked at Scrapblog. Much nicer. I got the hang of it fairly quickly. So much of it is just click, drag, and drop. You don't need to register to get started, but I see you have to register even to save a work in progress. Not a big deal--I'm getting really used to quickie registrations by Thing 39--but it seemed a bit misleading.

Anyway, here's the fruits of, well, far too much time for the final product. But I bet I'd speed up (or do fancier layouts) with practice:

Thing 37: Photo Tales

Preparing to tackle this Thing, I went off to reread the blog entries of two fellow Thingsters. Both of their embedded slideshows are dead. This isn't inspiring confidence in the Thing 37 toys.

Not quite ready to tackle a slideshow, I started with a mosaic image, using Image Mosaic Generator. Their advice is to stand back from the image about 5 meters to see it at its best. I settled for shrinking it to about 20% of original size. So see Multnomah Falls as made up of dillions of other people's images:


By the way, many of the photos that comprise those yellowish trees on the left are of rubber duckies:



Now ready to put together a slideshow, I started out by trying Animoto through Facebook. I quit after seeing that even though they had 146 reviews, they weren't scoring very high--and it looked like they'd made the reviews disappear. After that, I figured I'd just go for a no frills Flickr slideshow.



Okay, it's not playing music, but I can live with that. Pop music didn't seem to go with all those nature photos anyway.

I wouldn't say the services I tried worked "smoothly." Flickr, which you'd think would be solid and established by now, locked up when I tried to sign in. Animoto was behaving less than trustworthily. Yet I remember ten or fifteen years ago when creating a music video of your photos or video clips was a massive undertaking, done only by the truly dedicated, and now it's a free service that basically just asks for you to do some uploading. I might play around with this more when (if) I have more free time. We did a Flickr tour for our library. I doubt music and fancy transitions would improve it any, but we can always keep the possibility in mind.

Thing 23: Final Thoughts

Oh, where to begin? I gained several favorite new Things through 23 Things. I went from having no idea what Facebook was to using it daily to keep my long-distance social life on track. I didn't understand why people want to blog (why so many people want to blog!) and now I'm tentatively considering starting a personal blog once I sign off on 23 Distractions. And let's not even get into listing the online productivity tools--those are just plain fun (and useful--a win/win situation!). Plus there were the old Things I was already familiar with that I was happy to see during the program: seeing LibraryThing on the list made me feel like I was already being trendy and innovative on my own.

Naturally in a list of multiple options, some will be less attractive than others. The idea of doing much with my photos online just leaves me feeling exhausted, not creative. I keep forgetting I have a Delicious account, much less that I can use it. Second Life may have to wait until I put grad school behind me and get a faster Internet connection. But at least now I know that these Things are out there and I've tried them, rather than just hearing about them and idly meaning to look into them someday.

I liked that I knew people, usually coworkers or fellow students, who were also going through the 23 Things. It was always interesting to read their takes on stuff; often they picked up on aspects of something that I didn't consider important or vice versa. And yes, if you do a "23 More Things" or "Another 23 Things," I'm likely to sign up.

Thing 8: Share Your Creations

I take it PictureTrail's target audience is teenage girls? The default templates for their various Flicks are laden with sparkly stars, butterflies, pink and silver swirls, and so on. But I have slogged through the sugary collection and found a frame that at least doesn't twinkle, and a way of displaying the photos that won't make me seasick. Apparently continually moving pictures are not my forte.

Of course the Internet is a visual medium. But I find myself working through all these photo-oriented Things thinking, Yes, more ways to share photos. Been there, done that. Isn't there anything else one can do with Library 2.0? Not fair, I know: blogging (Thing 1), after all, is primarily verbal, and all those activities on Thing 7 weren't about photo-sharing.

I thought PictureTrail itself was easy enough to navigate, and I'm relieved to see that they'll delete my account if I never upgrade it--one fewer unused account cluttering up the Internet. Boy, they're not subtle about the advertising. I don't see myself using PictureTrail either personally or professionally (sparkly hearts and swirls just say LAW LIBRARY, now don't they?). But I might be able to come up with a use for the shared database or possibly eFolio.

Thing 6: Online Image Generators

I will resist the urge to name this post Flickr III, but playing around with the online image generators was a lot like playing around with the Flickr toys. But this time I'm getting glimmers of ideas of ways that we could use these at work. For example, the State Law Library hosts the occasional series of lunchtime showcases. It may be possible to use some of these images when we advertise these.

As requested, one trading card:



I don't think I'm going to get very far with Toon Doo. I clicked on the link and managed to look at their page for all of about ten seconds before the chaotic layout drove me away. I thought Image Chef was more fun (more navigable, anyway), and came up with these images:

(from our motto First Rung on the Ladder of Justice)

We're a library. These are books. It had to be done.

:)

Thing 5: Flickr (II)

Yes, the Flickr toys were fun to play with. I think I may be able to find a use for Palette Generator (from Big Huge Labs). Palette Generator analyzes a photo and then generates color swatches from that photo. If I could just get an accurate-ish color printout of those swatches, I could hie off to a yarn store and see if I really could make a sweater using the colors of a gorgeous landscape. I can't figure out how to put a sample picture and its swatches into this blog, but I'll toss in a jigsaw puzzle instead (also fun; even fewer ideas for how to use it practically).















But I digress.

I'm not bubbling over with job-related applications for these toys. It's the nature of our library, in part. Most of our patrons don't come to us for entertainment or even casual learning. For those in the Judiciary, their visits are probably work-related; for the general public, I'm guessing a mood of desperation is more likely. We do host the occasional library event; perhaps by the time the next one rolls around, I'll have played more with Flickr and its accessories and may have ideas of how to incorporate something.

Thing 4: Flickr (I)

It is not that I am completely ignorant of the features of Web 2.0. In some cases, I have played around with them and found them not to my taste. Flickr would be one of these cases, hence the delay in tackling Thing 4.

One of the "Things" I play with in the Web 2.0 world is Ravelry, a sort of LibraryThing for knitters and crocheters. Ravelry doesn't have a photos feature of its own; it piggybacks off of Flickr. So that's mainly why I have a Flickr account: it holds the photos themselves, and then I describe and tag and comment on those photos through Ravelry, which is much better suited to that purpose.

I haven't figured out what else I would do with Flickr personally. I suppose I could put vacation photos up (note to self: must take a vacation sometime). This would probably be the socially acceptable way to show vacation photos: interested friends could go look, while the uninterested wouldn't have to tell me to my face that they didn't want to--they could just not look. Hmm. Okay, okay, that has possibilities. But I'm still not convinced I'm a Flickr devotee!

That said, how to use Flickr in a library context? Some time ago, a former coworker of mine had the idea of putting together a tour for our library using Flickr, which we did. For the sake of this exercise, a current coworker who's doing the 23 Things as well had the idea of freshening up that tour. So, a new photo here, a revised comment there, and our refashioned tour is ready for visitors.