During the last week I've been doing several images in Photoshop Touch and iPhoto. For me — each has strengths and weaknesses.

First - gotta point out, I love to turn my old images into illustrations. So right out of the box — I mean iTunes app store — iPhoto struck out. It has a good selection of special effects, but two I was interested in, Oil Paint and Watercolor do not have adjustment options. I only realized this after an hour of digging around. iPhoto help files do not state this. Other special effects have some options, but only by searching other web sites was it confirmed: Oil Paint and Watercolor have no options to control their effects.

The photo below was done in iPhoto app. First I lightened used contrast/brightness sliders — good feature — then applied the water color special effect. But with no controls, I could not dial back the effect. I also tried the oil paint effect on this image, but it hardly made any changes.

So out of the iTunes app store, iPhoto had two major negatives. Lack of special effects filter options and poor help files with no tutorials. But other features in iPhoto are good, just takes time to figure them out.

Meanwhile Photoshop Touch has both good layer options and tutorials. After doing a couple tutorials, I was quickly applying effects to images. Above is one example. I simply lightened the image with curves, made a duplicate layer, used graphic pen special effect, set opacity to 75% and used overlay mode. Done.

Now, not all is great with Photoshop Touch. It has a file size limit of 1600 x 1600 which is about a 2.5 megapixel file. My iPhone 4s shoots an 8 megapixel file. Also at times, I find Photoshop Touch is not responsive on the iPad. I have to slow down.

So for my work, I like Photoshop Touch over iPhoto. But both programs I only give three out of five stars. Many other iOS photo apps have many more options at cheaper price. (iPhoto $4.99, Photoshop Touch $9.99)

Both photos taken at the Hays Antique Truck Museum in Woodland, California, in 2011.

This year, I'm really getting into old fashion black and white. I just finishing posting a 55 image flickr gallery on the Oakland Aviation Museum - all in black and white. In Lightroom, I played with black and white presets, going for older snappy look with burned down edges.

The Oakland Aviation Museum has several great aircraft — the center piece is the four engine Short Solent Mark III flying boat featured in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I also had to take shots of the Soviet MIG 15.

I took many images framing a US Navy A-4 Skyhawk jet framed through the old hanger windows, photo above. Of course, I had to shoot some with my iPhone.

My Oakland Aviation Museum flickr set slideshow.

Last week I found myself with a free day while staying in the Bay Area - perfect time to visit the USS Hornet, the World War II era aircraft carrier on display at Alameda, California. Besides the ship's Second World War history, the Hornet also was the ship to welcome home the crew of Apollo 11 in 1969.

For this USS Hornet flickr set, I converted all the images to black and white. Many of the images were taken on my iPhone.

For this image, I took the black and white version into Photogene and used 40s vintage preset. In Pixlromatic I used Dazed preset. In NIR Color HD used silver buff. In ArtistaOil used oil realism 01 and sharpened in Photogene.


My USS Hornet flickr set slideshow.

One of my current favorite iPhone photo apps is You Gotta See This by Boinx Software. It's a simple camera replacement app — start the camera and slowly wave your camera around the scene. When finished, the app presents seven different collages to choose from. Swipe through and save your favorites.

To get a handle on this app, I took a basic and simple photographic approach. I chose subjects that would dominate the center of the image. Then when doing a swipe, I try to end with the last image being of the center subject. When the app builds a collage, this image will be the last used. This is how I finished the Babe Muffler Man image above. This image was taken in San Jose on March 4, 2012.

To see other examples, search You Gotta See This in Flickr.

You Gotta See This is $1.99 in the iTunes Store.