iPhone photography: the last picnic for this year?

An Indian Summer and possibly the last picnic for this year. Migrating birds, flying over the lake. A gentle shift from summer into autumn. In the kitchen: days of apple. Root vegetables. Figs, satsumas, grapes and cheese. The basil on the balcony is still blooming and life drawing sessions have just got started. A glorious beginning to autumn.

I’ve been interviewed about my new Seasonal Shift Goal Kits and I’m already working on the Winter Shift Goal Kit. An exciting kit, shifting our focus from the active summer days and into the inner world of creativity, introspection and intuition!

Today, Apple introduced us to the iPhone 4S, but what I found really exciting and innovative is Siri, a voice control virtual personal assistant! “Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk.” Siri writes and sends email messages and texts — and reads them to you, too. It searches the web, takes dictation and plays the music you want to hear. It helps you find your way, checks the weather forecast and shows you around. It places calls, schedules meetings and helps you remember things. And it wakes you up. Impressive, eh!? I think we’re going to have to get used to people talking to their phones!

I’ve got some goodies lined up for you who visit Marmalade Moon. I’ll soon be releasing some new desktop art: Golden Ratio Autumn Wallpaper and Vintage Folder Icons: Purple Grapes, both share their palette of rich purple and orange with the Autumn Shift Goal Kit. But first check back in on Friday for a new interview, and prepare to be inspired!

iPhone photography: Migrating Birds

Tags: Apple, autumn, Goal Kits, iPhone, planning, Seasonal Shifts, seasons, technology

The iPad lets you interact directly with your device with your fingertips, which makes the experience feel uncomplicated, natural and tactile. But some users prefer using a stylus, and some use a mixture depending on the task at hand. So when do you need a stylus and how do you pick one?

My Experience

Touchscreen computing really appeals to me. Finger painting feels very intuitive to me and I prefer to use my fingers to do everything on the iPad, except writing. That’s when I like to use a stylus.

There’s something about the angle you hold a pen that becomes part of your handwriting. The way your writing forms a unit, from one word to another and from one passage to another. It’s different than writing with your fingers when it becomes more about drawing each individual character, like writing in sand, and you don’t get quite the same flow writing with your fingers as you do when you write with a pen.

Choosing a Stylus

Here’s a useful comparison of 12 different styli to help you pick one that suits you. Check out the video and for more depth, the companion article Drawing on the iPad: 12 touchscreen styluses reviewed and see what you think. While I haven’t tried all the styli featured in Macworld’s comparison, I’ll be back with an article on the styli that I find useful for painting and writing.

Related Articles:
Top 20 Apps to Turn Your iPad into a Portable Creative Studio

Tags: handwriting, iPad, iPhone, review, stylus, tools, touchscreen

Getting Lost is Just Part of the Process. Digital collage by © LUMILYON.

If you’re interested in learning how to to create an artful, poetic, digital photo collage, you’re in luck! Award winning iPhone photographer Lumilyon has written the second free tutorial in her amazing series. This time she reveals how she creates her stunning, dreamy digital collages using her iPhone!

In this unique tutorial you’ll learn:

• one of Lumilyon’s techniques for creating a collage using an iPhone
• how to create an interesting background with just one click of an app
• how to extract an element from a photograph and collage it onto another
• how to blend two two photographs together by blurring them

You’ll need 3 creative photography apps to follow along in this guide for how to create a digital collage using your iPhone:

• Tiny Planets – Stereographic photos on your iPhone (free app!)
• Juxtaposer – Fun and Intuitive Photo Compositing App for your iPhone and iPod Touch
• BlurFX – Fantastic out of focus pictures

Now head on over to this priceless tutorial: iPhone Tutorial 02: Little Fishy Collages.

Related Posts:
The Secret of Artful iPhone Photography
15 Best Photo Apps for iPad and iPhone
PhotoSync: Wirelessly Transfer Photos and Videos
Top 20 Apps to Turn Your iPad into a Portable Creative Studio

Tags: apps, collage, iPad, iPhone, photography, software

Renewed Help Section

We’ve been improving the help section at Marmalade Moon to make it really easy to learn how to customise your desktop with icons and wallpapers.

Video Desktop Tutorials

We’ve got a series of brand new video tutorials to make it simple and quick to learn how to change the icons on your computer and how to change your desktop wallpaper. Each tutorial comes with a free, downloadable PDF that you can save to your computer.

Guides for Mac and Windows

There are tutorials for how to customize your icons in Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OSX and you can learn how to customize your wallpaper on Mac OSX, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, on your iPad and on your iPhone or iPod.

Tutorials on all Levels

For beginners there’s an An Introduction to Desktop Customization and a series of articles with Suggestions for a Productive Desktop. I hope you find these new resources helpful and just like before all of these resources are free.

Tags: desktop art, getting organized, icons, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac, productivity, wallpapers, Windows

PhotoSync is a handy app that makes it easy to wirelessly transfer the photos and videos from your iPhone to your computer as well as to your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch.

A simple way to share photos and videos between iOS devices and computers, this is a gem of a tool for any iPhone photographer.

Related Posts:
15 Best Photo Apps for iPad and iPhone
The Secret of Artful iPhone Photography
Top 20 Apps to Turn Your iPad into a Portable Creative Studio

Tags: apps, iPad, iPhone, photography, software, video