Photography

How to get started with Color Splash Studio for iPhone

Bored with Instagram? Tired of Hipstamatic? Then perhaps your iPhone photography hobby should enter its color-splash period. Color splash photography creates arresting images, adding a dash of color to black-and-white photos. There are a number of color-splash apps (such as ColorSplash) for iOS, and MacPhun earlier this month brought its Color Splash Studio app from the Mac to the iPhone. Here's how it works:

Snap better-looking iPhone photos with TrueHDR

HDR, or high dynamic range, can add clarity and depth to your iPhone photos. The iPhone's native camera app has an HDR option (see Sharon's post about it and HDR photography), and it does an admirable job of filling in the highs and lows of a photo. I found that I was able to achieve even better results with TrueHDR, a $1.99 app.

When you launch TrueHDR, you're given four options for creating an HDR image: Auto Capture, Semi-Auto Capture, Manual Capture, and Choose Pictures.

With Auto Capture, you simply tap the camera button and hold more

Lightroom 4.1 arrives; Aperture users, be patient

Adobe Systems released Lightroom 4.1 last night, supporting new cameras and lenses, squashing some bugs, adding a couple of notable features -- and in at least one high-profile case, contributing to the angst of a customer of Apple's rival Aperture software.

Aperture beat Lightroom to market and leapfrogged it with lower pricing in this category for higher-end photo editing and cataloging software. But this market is Adobe's bread and butter, and the company is working hard to turn the crank for improvements as fast as it can. More on that competition and customer angst later, but first, more

How to take your own passport photos

You'll need:

A digital camera (or smartphone)
Computer
A photo printer (or local photo printing center)

Easy enough, right? Now follow the steps to take your passport photos, DIY-style.

Step 1: Set up your shot

Get yourself in front of a white or cream-colored background, like a wall or posterboard. That's the easy part. Now, with the help of a friend, adjust the lighting so that there aren't any shadows or glare on your face or around your head and body. This could mean getting near natural daylight, or turning on/off household lights.

Step 2: Make

When and how to photograph the annular solar eclipse

On Sunday, May 20, at 5:30 p.m. PT, millions of Americans will witness an annular solar eclipse. In this unique event, the moon will cover only 94 percent of the sun, creating a spectacle worth capturing.

Unlike the common solar eclipse, the annular solar eclipse results in a ring of fire you may only catch twice or thrice in your lifetime. The last annular eclipse appeared in 1994, and NASA projects the next to occur in 2023.

Weather permitting, the full extent of the eclipse (including the ring of fire) will be visible in Asia, the Pacific region, more

Get pictures off your iPad

Now that the Apple iPad finally includes a great camera, I suspect that many of you have taken beautiful photographs that you'd like to transfer back to your computer.

In this CNET How To, I'll walk you through Apple's prescribed methods for moving iPad photos over to your computer, including Photo Stream syncing via iCloud and syncing over USB.

If you're looking

Build a ring light for less than $20

A resourceful videographer, Parker Maimbourg, has managed to build a continuous ring light for just $20.

The setup consists of a cheap, circular LED lamp ($10), an AA battery holder ($1.99), and an unused hotshoe salvaged from an old flash unit. A continuous ring light is typically used to provide even illumination for portraits and closeups and usually costs at least a few hundred dollars.

Basically, Maimbourg rewired all the LEDs on the lamp to a separate battery holder, which will be mounted on the camera's hotshoe. Next, he cut a hole through the center of the circular lamp enclosure to fit his lens, spray-painted the whole setup black for that professional feel, and voila!

How to transition your Kodak Gallery account to Shutterfly

On July 2, the Kodak Gallery will be shuttered. The good news is that if you do nothing, your photos will be moved to Shutterfly. Still, there are a few housekeeping items to keep in mind.

For starters, Kodak states the process will involve 5 billion photos and could take several months to complete. Thus, be sure to download any photos (or order a DVD) from your Kodak Gallery prior to July 2 that you might need access to in July, August, and perhaps September and October. And while you can download full-resolution photos from the Kodak Gallery, you can't at Shutterfly, giving you another reason to peruse your Kodak Gallery for potential downloads.

How to use the tilt-shift effect on Instagram for Android

When Instagram finally arrived on Android, it was missing a major photo effect that iOS users had been enjoying for some time: tilt shift. Just over a month after its release, Instagram for Android has been updated to finally include tilt shift. It's a fun little effects tool that can make subjects in your photos appear miniature or to create a shallow depth of field.

Here's how to use tilt shift:

1. After choosing a photo, tap the new teardrop icon in the effects toolbar and choose whether you want a radial or linear tilt shift.

2. By

DIY: The string tripod (aka stringpod)

Three-legged tripods are the go-to accessory for steadying shots. Whether you're trying to achieve a high exposure or need to work with a shaky hand, propping your camera on a tripod is crucial to producing a clear image, especially in low light.

Thing is, tripods are bulky, making it difficult to carry them while you travel. So, how do you get steady shots without a tripod? With the stringpod, of course.

An old photographer's trick, the stringpod isn't exactly a tripod replacement, but it gets pretty close when you need to steady your camera in a pinch. Here's how it works: