Thing #9: My Library, flowers, and selfies

I really enjoyed this Thing!!  I tried Color Splurge and LINE Camera.

But before I talk about how nifty they are: ads in apps are super irritating when they are done wrong.  I understand that free apps have to be paid for, and they do this by having ads or making you pay for premium or add-on content.  But...oh....my....goodness!  The weird dancing tomato on Color Splurge is like a tiny demon of pure evilness.  (Yeah, demons are probably all evil by definition.  But this tomato thing is PURE EVIL.)  Also frustrating is that the ads all have a slight delay on my phone.  This means that I think I'm navigating within the app, but no!  I'm being taken to some ad/google play store thing.  arrrggghhh!

On the other hand, the people who made LINE Camera have a bunch of super weird cat animations within the app.  When you save there is a "sparkle" noise and a dancing cat appears.  When you go into the beauty section of photo editing, you see a cat with a powder compact.  So weird.  Like, almost off-putting weird.  But not quite.

Anyway.  Enough with my complaints.  The actual functionality of these two apps was very cool.  They were pretty easy to figure out.  The one big complaint for Color Splurge is that I can do color additions (with black and white, or monochrome options) or I can do other stuff, but it doesn't want me to do both.

I can see using these apps for all kinds of images, personally and professionally  I fancied up some images of flowers from my container gardens to show off the flowers to their optimal lighting, color, and backdrop.  I also can see making photos of the library look better for web uses/in-person presentations.  (I did a presentation showing a behind-the-scenes look at our various rooms and storage areas.  All the photos were taken with my phone and all would have been able to look better if I used these apps.)  Also, I don't really have access to any good photo editing software on my work computer, so this would be a low budget way to get some good results.

Finally, I am amazed---truly--at how much you can change a photo of yourself with these free and super-simple tools.  I used to use Photoshop regularly and learned to do things like change hair color, smooth skin, make the tone better, etc.  With these tools, I took some selfies that I thought were kinda OK and made them WAY better.  Subtle shifts and filters work wonders, and some of the more dramatic shifts can be crazy good (or bad).  Being able to make your eyes bigger, for example, is fascinating...and might lead to some people looking like aliens, if done badly.  I know I will never trust another online selfie to be an accurate representation!  On the other hand, I should have many more "OK" selfies from now on.  :)