Editing photos using camerabag photo editor – Special photo filters – CameraBag 2
Camerabag photo editor
Camerabag photo editor is an application which I happened to see on the Mac app store and I thought I would give it a try, when I saw that I could get a 30 day free trial from the website rather than buying it first. I am looking at it in terms of a comparison with SnapSeed which I managed to get on my iPad. I was fortunate in that I found the application was free on one day of the week. I think I was alerted to the app being free by the application I have on the iPad which alerts me when apps are dropped in price or become free, whether that be a special one-day offer or a permanent change in price.Snapseed is an alternative
SnapSeed for the iPad is an excellent application that has a reasonable set of tools to manipulate photographs. There is also a desktop app which I presume does the same sort of thing and I have been tempted to buy it. With both of these applications, SnapSeed and CameraBag 2, I would be hesitant in making the purchase due to the fact that I already have Pixelmator. Although Pixelmator can’t do the filters and adjustments quite as fast as either Camera Bag or SnapSeed, it does do the same sorts of things. Another advantage with using Pixelmator 2 is the fact that I can make changes which are nondestructive. With using the other two applications for making changes to photos, you would have to first make sure that you are working on a copy of your original, rather than the original itself.
What can you do with CameraBag 2
When I first opened the application, my first task was to drag-and-drop a photo into it directly from iPhoto. You can of course use the file open command to get images to work with from your hard drive, but to drag-and-drop is always nice and easy. The first thing that you see is a list of filter effects over on the right hand side of the application. When you move the mouse across these filters you see a large thumbnail, giving you a preview of that filter on how it affects your photo. To apply the filter you have to just click on the plus button. It is as easy as that in the camerabag photo editor.
It is possible for you to apply more than one filter at the same time, but you should note that some filters will work against each other and cancel each other out. I found this out by adding the Holga filter and also the Skater filter. There is a section also within this application that allows you to add borders to your images. I did wonder if it would be possible to add more than one border and found that it wasn’t possible. For instance it could be rather nice to first add the paper border effect, which gives a ripped paper effect to the edge and then to add another border around that. It is not possible directly within the photo editing application although I suppose you could put on one border, save out the image and then bring it back in again. Then put on the second border. You would want to do that last of all so that you don’t apply filters to the border that mess it up.
How useful is the application Camera Bag 2
Like I said, with many of the adjustments I would be more likely to open up Pixelmator and do the adjusting in that application. On the other hand though this Camera Bag application for the Mac is quite quick in operation and is fairly useful for applying a couple of preset filters quickly. CameraBag photo editor is also handy when you have a photograph that you want to make different and more exciting and you don’t really know quite what you want to do to it. You could just throw the picture into Camera Bag and just click on a few filters quickly and see if something stands out as a good improvement.
Camerabag photo editor video
The tool for creating a vignette in camerabag photo editor is very useful and is certainly one thing that I would be likely to use the application for. Then quite possibly, if I was opening the application to do the vignette, it is also likely I would also look to see if I needed to make any other changes to things such as the contrast, brightness and saturation of the photo.
The controls of the filters in the Mac app Camera Bag 2
With some of the photo editing filters you do get the opportunity to adjust the filter. Mainly the adjustment is concerning the amount of effect you give to that filter, but there are some filters which also have other sliders. There were a couple of filters that had sliders which rather than working as a slider that you moved from left to right, you clicked on them and it changed the setting in an seemingly arbitrary way and the button jumped back to the centre of the slider. I didn’t particularly like the way that worked.
On some of the filters you get curves that you can adjust by clicking and holding on the curve and changing the shape of it. There are also bezier like controls for changing the shape of the curve. One such filter where you have these curves is the RGB filter which allows you to adjust the colours of the photo.
Overview of the Camera Bag 2 photo filter application for the Mac
If you don’t have an application like a Pixelmator, Aperture or Lightroom and you need to make adjustments to photographs, then this inexpensive application could be just what you are looking for. The application does work reasonably well, although I did find that with some of the filters, the interface or the options for that filter needed extra work to make it more useful and intuitive. There was one filter which applied a border to make the image square and I thought it would be better if there was also an option to move the image within that square. It would be good to be able to choose the area that you wanted to crop down to the square shape, but in Camera Bag 2 it wasn’t possible to do that. There are some filters where the sliders don’t work as sliders and without a doubt that certainly did annoy me.
For the casual photographer, that just wants to add a couple of preset filters and maybe put one on top of another, then this application is pretty good. I expect that this application will get better in time and if you have bought from the Mac App Store, then you will get the updates as the application is improved. It would seem a good idea that if you do buy this application and there are things that you don’t like, that you should make contact with the developer to inform them regards the shortcomings. The other application which you might want to look at and make comparisons with, would be SnapSeed which is from Nik software. I already have SnapSeed for the iPad so I doubt if I will buy it to have on the desktop as well. The desktop version could have the advantage though of being able to work with larger images. Overall I would at least recommend that you go to the web site for CameraBag2 and download the trial version and play with it for thirty days and see if it is a fit for you and the way you work.
Tell Me Which Are Your favourites
Tell me your favourite photo app or if you have more than one favourite – photo applications. Sure there are loads of photo editing apps out there and I would be keen to review some more of them. Have you tried Pixelmator yet for photo editing
