Show notes
Alison Pecoul is joining me to talk about a few fun apps we are liking for adding text to photos (iOS and Android) AND she introduced me to a new-to-us app that we are SOOO appcited about! I really do think this app will be a game changer for many of us that want to get our stories and memories documented in a FAST, fun and creative way and it is available on Android and iOS. [spp-transcript] Stephanie Clay: Hey, everyone! Welcome to Modern Photo Solutions. I’m Steph Clay. I’m here today with a very long time listener and, has since become my friend, Allison [Pecoul 00:00:10]. Hi, Allison! Allison : Hi, Steph! Stephanie Clay: Did I say your last name right? Allison : Yep! Stephanie Clay: Oh, good. Good. Allison, you have been a listener of mine probably since the beginning, almost. Allison : Yes. Yes, I’ve listened to The Digi Show. Stephanie Clay: Back- Allison : Are you there? Stephanie Clay: Back in the day. Allison : Way back in the day, and sometimes when I hear your voice I expect Peppermint chime up in the background. Stephanie Clay: Peppermint and Katie, right? Alison: Oh my goodness, yes. And Katie. Steph: Yeah. Good times for sure. Good times, but yeah, thank you for being here, and we started emailing back and forth a long time ago, and it just devolved into a friendship, and you’re kind of my go-to person for Android help whenever I need Android help, so thank you for that. Alison: Sure. Steph: You’ve been a long time Android user. Alison: Yes. Steph: Always, right? Alison: I have … No, not always. As a matter of fact, I used to teach Apple products- Steph: What? Alison: … at an Apple dealership years ago, yeah, back when wheels were square. Yeah. Steph: I did not know that. Alison: Yeah, yeah. I loved it. That’s where I first got introduced to Photoshop. Then we just tried to figure out a way to put it on the PC, so now I have Photoshop on the PC, but as far as phones go, I’ve always had an Android or a Blackberry. My husband has had several Apple phones. Steph: Okay. Wow. I had no idea. There’s this whole side of you that I didn’t even know. So today we are going to talk about some fun, new apps, all kinds of different apps, and you introduced me to one today that you found, and I was so excited about it and I said I wish they had it on iOS, and you were like, “Well, do they?” So then I checked, and sure enough, they do, and so I’m really excited to share this with our listeners. Why don’t you go ahead and introduce. Alison: Well, I was looking for an app where I could put in some journaling text, not just titles, but journaling text, and I found an app that does posters and collages, so I gave it a try. It’s called April, and it is so much fun to play with, and I’ve really, really enjoyed it. Steph: Yeah. It’s really fun to play with. It will automatically make photo collages. Alison: Yes, yes. If you have up to nine photographs, you can pick them, and then select the layout size, do it one by one or four by three, and then it gives you a variety of different layouts to choose from, and that’s really your jumping off point. It puts everything in place and then hands it back to you for more fun. Steph: Yeah, yeah. Super cool. I jumped in there, and we were wondering about resolution and all that kind of stuff, so let’s first talk about the, what is the word, the different sizes that you can choose. Why can’t I think of that word? I’m going to have to go into this other app so that I can remember the name of the word. It starts with an a. Aspect, thank you. The aspect ratio. There’s a one by one. Alison: Right. Steph: What else is there? Alison: There’s a four by three. Then there’s a three by four. Then there’s a 16 by nine, and a nine by 16. Steph: Yeah, and let’s talk about resolution, because I had found an app a little bit similar to this a long time ago that I was excited about, but the resolution was not good. You sent me one that you exported that was a four by three I think, and the four by three size exported is equivalent to a five by seven, 300 DPI. It’s a little bit higher resolution than that. The one by one exported, I just did a one by one and I exported it, and I checked the resolution on it, and the resolution is 3,100 pixels by 3,100 pixels, which is slightly lower than the 300 DPI, but it’s actually higher resolution than the Project Life one by one ratio. The Project Life, if you export a page at 12 by … or a one by one ratio at 12 by 12, it’s 2,760, so 2,760 pixels square. This other app, it’s, like I said, 3,100, so it’s definitely high enough quality to print- Alison: Certainly, yes. Steph: … a high resolution image, which is super exciting. Alison: It is. When you see all the other fun stuff it’ll do as well. Steph: Yeah. Okay, so one of the reasons why I’m really excited about this is because I was able to … I went in and picked six different photos. I quickly made, in under 30 seconds probably, under a minute, I made two different collages. I just went in and picked four photos and two project life cards, and it made a collage for me. Well, it made a whole bunch of collages, so one, two, three … About 10 different options, 10 different layout options is what you have, and then it’s just a swipeable menu at the bottom, and you pick which layout you want. And then when you pull that layout up, you can get really into some fun stuff. Alison: Oh, yeah. To edit it from there, it’s a lot of fun. You can switch pictures, just like we do in Project Life when you select one and you actually adjust the place that it’s at, just switch it out. You can change the dimension of one picture, and it will affect appropriately all the dimensions of the other pictures, so it keeps your layout sound in terms of size, but it adjusts it so that it shows more of one picture and less of maybe the others around it. Steph: Yeah. You can also go in and adjust the grids, so you can make some sections bigger or smaller, if maybe it’s cutting off a little bit of one of your images, and so you want to make it a little bit bigger. You can go in and adjust that as well. The borders. Alison: Oh, yes. And you can even have them without borders. Steph: Yes. Alison: So if you wanted to do a six-picture layout, you can have them without borders all together, or you can add a small border, and you can also add a border to the outside that’s independent of the inside border, if that makes sense. They can be different sizes. Steph: Yeah. You can have a thicker border on the outside of the page than you have on your inside borders. It’s really incredible. Alison: Yeah. Steph: Yeah. Alison: I’m really excited about it. Steph: Yeah because this takes the collage making to a whole new level, and it’s automated, so there’s not tapping and dragging photos. You don’t have to add the photos individually. You just select your photos, it adds them, and then you can adjust the borders as necessary to fit your image. Alison: But another thing that’s really neat about this, at least from my perspective, because I like to add just a little bit of contrast to my pictures, and so I have to preset all my pictures, like go in and I adjust that contrast, and then put them in a separate folder for when I’m going to make my layout. With this particular app I can select one picture and make adjustments, and if I like, I can apply those adjustments to all the photos in the layout. Steph: Yeah, that’s incredible, instead of having to edit each individual photo, because a lot of times those photos are taken in the same place, the same location, under the same lighting circumstances. Alison: Right, right. Steph: And so you are going to add the same filters and effects. Alison: Right. I think it’s going to be a huge time saver. Steph: I do too. I do too. You are limited to the nine photos, but what you could easily do if you wanted to add more photos than that is go in and make a collage that’s a smaller size, the three by four or something that would be a four by six or equivalent to that, a two by three ratio if they have that aspect ratio, I don’t know … Alison: I didn’t see that one. Steph: Okay. Alison: But you can do a three by four or a four by three. Steph: Totally, and then add a bunch of photos to that, and then bring that collage into another collage. Alison: Man, this is going to be so much fun. Steph: I know. I know. The borders you can change colors. There’s tons of different options, and they have patterns in there too. Alison: Yes, yes, and gradients, so if you want a really soft hint of some color, you can select a gradient, and it will automatically default to the gradient that it thinks works best with your photographs. Steph: Yeah, and it does that with the color too. I had a Project Life card that I imported that was orange, and it picked an orange color for my background. Alison: I think that’s pretty neat. Steph: Yeah. Alison: And there’s a few other things. I haven’t gone all the way through them, but that you can select to add interests to your collage, and you can do the weather, and it will bring up just sort of an icon, a white icon on a colored background of the weather. Then if you don’t like that color, you can adjust it. Location, date; it has several others that you can add to your layout as just interest. Steph: Yeah. It’s incredible. I’m not seeing an undo button. Oh, there, okay. So I added a filter to one of my photos. They have some artistic filters in here too that make it look like a cartoon drawing or different art effects, and then I decided I didn’t want that, and so I just went back to none, and applied none, and it went back to normal, so that’s cool. Alison: That is neat. Steph: Yeah. Alison: Now, I will say that this particular app, when I was playing around with it, I was using photos that were in Google Photos or in my camera already. When I went in and selected the camera option, it opened up in Google Photos with another app called Camera 360, and so I didn’t download that app because I didn’t need it, but if you wanted to shoot pictures and then have them automatically come in, you would need to download that app, at least on the Android side. Is it the same on iOS? Steph: Yeah. If you wanted to use that, you would have to download, if you want to use that 360 app. It’s like a different thing. Alison: Yeah. Steph: Okay, so I found this really cool feature, and I got distracted, so I’m sorry, but this is mind blowing. If you go into the menu where it has the borders and the colors and all of that, if you click on that magnet, it looks like a magnet, it looks like a little horseshoe … Alison: Yes. Steph: … magnet, click on that. You can make Project Life cards right there, with the date and the weather and the city that you’re in. It has some cats and dogs and some quotes. And then you can also go in and edit, like that quote, I can go in and edit it and add my own little journaling right there. Alison: That is so neat. Steph: Yes, and I can also add … It’s giving me the option, when I select on one of those, it’s giving me the option to add a shadow if I tap on it again. It opens up more options to add a shadow. Alison: That is so cool. Steph: To that card. Yeah. There’s quotes. There’s a Christmas tree. It’s very simple line art. Very simple, almost like icons. Alison: Right, yes. Steph: But there’s tons here. Holy cow. Alison: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Steph: I really love the idea of being able to add the weather like that. Alison: And I think it would make it much easier if you’re in a location, vacation, to just put everything in there, in your layout, take five or six photos- Steph: Yeah. Alison: … select the layout, add your weather, right while you’re there, and then you can come back and add any journaling that you want later on. Go ahead. Steph: Go ahead. Alison: No, I was just going to say I really like that it defaults to square corners. Steph: Yeah. Alison: But you do have that option to make rounded corners pretty easily. Just in the same place where you can put in the grid, you can change how much of a corner round you want. Steph: That’s cool. Alison: Yeah. Steph: These little icons, they would be super fun because they’ve got some movie ones. They’ve got a film directors chair and the directors board thing, and then a movie camera and stuff, and that would be great to add a QR code to. Alison: Oh, yes. Yeah, I hadn’t even noticed those. Steph: There are so many here. Popcorn, aliens … The cool thing about it is you can apply the icon that you want to have added there and then go through and select all these different colors. Alison: Right, so you’re not really limited based on what they select for you. You can make the adjustment. Steph: Yeah. They need to add the ability to be able to select a color from your page though. Alison: That would be really cool. Steph: Yeah. Alison: I’m sure that’s coming. Steph: I bet. Alison: I’m sure. I’m sure. Steph: Yeah. The shadow, I applied it, and it’s super subtle, very subtle, but it’s great. I’m trying to edit the text though; I’m not having success. Alison: The first time through, I had some difficult with the text, and that was the reason I went looking for the app in the first place. Steph: Right. Alison: I felt good with all the other things that you could do with it, but I do think that you’re going to have to build your journaling pages elsewhere. Steph: Yeah, for sure. I can see that it’s editable on this, but I cannot figure out how to get a keyboard to actually edit it. Alison: It says tap to edit. Steph: I have [inaudible 00:16:37]. Alison: Yeah, I have tapped with that. I think it might be more long press to edit. Steph: Okay, let’s see. Alison: See if that works. Steph: No. Maybe if I press here. No. Press again. Alison: When I tap to edit, there is a menu on the bottom of mine, and then on the lefthand side, there’s an icon for a keyboard, and I just, there, and it opens it up. Steph: I do not have that on iOS. Alison: Do you have the listing of fonts? Steph: Nope. Alison: Yeah. When I tap to edit, it opens that box up at the bottom. If I click on the large A, small A, for a text box, it will bring that up at the same time. Steph: Yeah, I’m not seeing that, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere, because it highlights it like it’s editable, but it’s just not giving me that option. Alison: Yeah. I have to actually use that keyboard. Steph: I don’t have a keyboard button. Alison: Dang. Steph: Yeah. Alison: We’ll have to work on that. Steph: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll have to work on it, but anyway, there are so many cool options in this app. It’s super exciting. Alison: It is well worth playing around with, even if you just want to make cards that you use in Project Life, it’s a free app. You can download it. Steph: And it’s Android and iOS. Alison: Yes, yes. Steph: Yay. Alison: It seems to work fairly well on both platforms. Steph: Yes. Yeah. I’ve tried it on both, and it works very well on both platforms, you’re right. Okay. I gave you the challenge to help me find some text editing apps on Android because that seems to be the biggest challenge and the biggest question that I get from Android users. You have a couple of options for us. Alison: Well, that is the biggest hang up that I have. When I’m using Project Life, if I start working and using a card and putting text into it for journaling, it’s stuck there. It better be right when I put it in, and I don’t really have too many edit options, and I rely far too heavily on Word to make sure that I have spelling correct. So I was having a tough time with it, and like you were talking about, needed to find a text app. I found that what I was doing was actually using Evernote, and I have a widget on my phone, and instead of texting, instead of typing in the text, I would open up Evernote, click to use the microphone, speak into it about the events of that day, and then close it. Then when it was time to do the layout, the journaling was already there. I just needed t…
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