Category Archives: Scenic

San Francisco Peaks, Arizona. Copyright Joanne Mason

The San Francisco Peaks are the remnants of ancient (and not so ancient) volcanoes near Flagstaff Arizona and south of the Grand Canyon. They are very picturesque, especially in winter. I have posted numerous images from this region before. Recently, I’ve been working with an app on the iPad, Snapseed. I post this here as an example.

Snapseed was developed by Nik, about which I’ve spoken of very highly before (Nik here). Nik was recently bought by Google. There are now iPad, Windows, and Mac versions of Snapseed. The iPad version is free. Snapseed is an extremely efficient, slick, easy to use, and powerful photo-editing program. The iPad version makes some compromises. But the iPad provides an efficient and easy to use tool for photographers, especially in the field. So I have been playing around with it.

Here is the original image of the San Francisco Peaks.

(Click on the images for larger views.) This image was shot with the Fuji X100 and saved as a raw image. The image was then transferred to the iPad with the iPad camera connection kit and subsequently opened in Snapseed. The iPad retains the raw format and makes possible viewing of the raw image in the camera roll. Snapseed then does the raw conversion to a jpg. (Snapseed will only convert raw files if the images have been transferred with the camera connection kit.)

For the image above, and roughly in order: The image was straightened a few degrees with the Alignment tool, then cropped. Then converted to black and white. In the black and white conversion, several profiles can be applied; a “Contrast” profile was applied. In the black and white tool, brightness and contrast can be adjusted independently, and both were boosted. A red color filter was applied. Finally, a substantial degree of sharpening was done using the Details tool. The image was then exported back to the iPad film roll as a jpg.

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