Digital Gems features ideas for enjoying your digital life and brightening your digital landscape. The series showcases suggestions that connect with the energy of the season and focus is on bringing more ease and simplicity to your digital life.

Winter      inner life and restoration
Spring       planning and renewal
Summer   activity and completion
Autumn    harvest and gratitude

Feel free to share your thoughts! What are your biggest challenges in your digital life? Which are your suggestions for a simple, easy digital life?

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

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

iPhoneography Tutorial 01: Vintage French Street Scene. © LUMILYON

If you’d like to learn how to create an artful, dreamy photo like the one above, you’re in for a treat! Award winning iPhone photographer Lumilyon, has generously shared a free tutorial that reveals how she creates her exquisite, breathtaking, poetic photos!

In this unique tutorial you will learn:

• one of Lumilyon’s techniques for transforming a photograph into art
• a secret trick that involves a hidden menu
• how to add variety to generic app presets such as grunge effects and light leaks so that the apps you use will be less recognisable
• you’ll also get a feel for the many possibilities of the apps used in this tutorial and for how you can create your own variations based on Lumilyon’s technique

You’ll need 5 artful photography apps to follow along in this guide for how to process a photo:

• 100 Cameras in 1
• Pic Grunger
• PictureShow
• Lo-Mob
• Photogene

Now head on over to this gem of a tutorial: iPhoneography Tutorial 01: Vintage French Street Scene.

Related Posts:
The Secret of iPhone Collages
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

MOBILE PHOTO EDITORS

Filterstorm

Filterstorm’s unique touch interface makes it intuitive, easy and fun to use. The versatile and varied set of tools for editing photos includes powerful masking tools, that give you the ability to apply any of the filters by brush, color range, and gradient, as well as to the entire image. Selectively adjust your photo by painting on your adjustments. Includes in-app video tutorials.

For iPad and iPhone. Developer: Tai Shimizu.

Photogene

Intuivitve and easy to use to edit, enhance and share your photos on the go. Professional editing tools. Photogene is an excellent everyday photo editor.

For iPad and iPhone. Developer: Omer Shoor.

PhotoForge

PhotoForge is a digital darkroom with an impressive range of tools; image manipulation, painting, retouching, effects, and color correction.
PhotoForge is available for iPad and iPhone.

Developer: GhostBird Software.

Adobe Photoshop Express

The free, basic mobile photo editor that lets you upload, view and share your photos.

Available for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Developer: Adobe.

MOBILE PHOTO EFFECTS

Pano

Take beautiful, seamless panoramic photos directly from your iPhone. Handy semi-transparent guide helps you line up all your shots perfectly. 360 degree panorama images.

For iPhone. Developer: Debacle Software.

QuadCamera

4-8 serial shoots are taken in sequence by the iPhone’s camera, then composed into a single shareable image with six selectable effects. One of many toy apps by Takayuki Fukatsu that allow you to do fun and artistic things with the iPhone’s built-in camera.

For iPhone. Developer: Art & Mobile.

TiltShift Generator

Create more dramatic-looking images, focused only on one spot. Processes your photos with blur, color, and brightness to apply radical depth-of-field effects. Makes even flat cell phone images look like DSLR-quality shots with depth of field.

For iPhone and iPad. Developer: Art & Mobile.

ARTISTIC VINTAGE FILTER EFFECTS

CameraBag

Recreate the magic of film by emulating photography’s most beloved and iconic vintage cameras, film, and processing techniques. Effects can be stacked. Easy to use with an intuitive, simple interface.

For iPhone, iPad, Windows and Mac. Developer: Nevercenter.

lo-mob

Retro lo-fi and photographic experiments on your iPhone. Select or snap a photo and lo-mob immediately generates a list of previews of all the different effects. Pick the one you want, tweak it if you like, and save or share your photo via e-mail as well as through a range of social media services

For iPhone. Developer: Aestesis.

PictureShow

Choose between 37 analog presets or mix your own style with frames, light leaks, noise and vignetting. Features lens kit, random shuffle effects and social photo sharing.

For iPhone. Developer: graf.

Plastic Bullet

Randomly generates the look of many combinations of cameras, lenses and films turning your photos into gloriously unpredictable works of art. A true electronic lomography app that encourages you to explore the “happy accidents” of your photography. Share directly to Facebook and Flickr.

For iPhone. Developer: Red Giant Software.

Film Lab

Recreate the look of analog film stocks with Film Lab’s impressive set of film and film styles from brands like Ilford, Kodak, AGFA, Calotype, FORTE, GAF, Polachrome, Rollei and Fuji.

For iPhone. Developer: CLBITZ Ubiquitous Communications Inc.

FX Photo Studio

Tons of effects that can be stacked on each other, combined, randomised and saved as new presets. Includes basic photo editing like cropping, rotating, flipping, as well as social photo sharing.

For iPhone and iPad. Developer: Mac Phun LLC.

Hipstamatic

Turns your iPhone into a small toy camera. Take your time swapping a variety of camera components, film, lenses, and flashes with hip descriptions, for a variety of different looks and styles. Can not save your unprocessed photo.

For iPhone. Developer: Synthetic Corp.

Instagram

Instagram offers a selection of filters and borders but what really sets this app apart is its focus on social media and photo sharing. Easily share photos through Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Foursquare and Twitter.

For iPhone. Developer: Burbn, Inc.

Which are your favourite photo apps for the iPhone and iPad? What did I miss?

READ MARMALADE MOON VIA EMAIL

With Flare, you can effortlessly add effects and textures to your photos then save them to your Mac, upload them to Flickr, or send them in an email. Choose from a variety of Flare’s built-in high-quality presets or create your own using dozens of individual photographic effects. Once you’ve created the ultimate look for your photographs, save and share your preset creations with other Flare users quickly and easily.

Easy to learn for casual hobbyists, Flare also has the flexibility professional photographers need. Your photo is just the beginning!

Old Rose. ©Marianne alias "macounette"

This wonderful photo of a rose was shot by my Twitter buddy Marianne and is her first go with Flare! She says “This app is great. Easy to understand and lots of possibilities. Love it!” You’ll find Marianne and her iPhone photography on Flickr, Posterous, Tumblr and Twitter.

Give Flare a go before buying it by downloading a trial version of that lets you experience all the powerful features of the application but limits the size of photos that can be exported. You can take advantage of the introductory sale and get 50% off Flare on the Mac App Store. (The sale ends on March 18th)

Go to FlareApp.com to learn more about the application, download additional presets, browse the online users guide and more. Then head on over to the Mac App Store and pick up the all new digital desktop darkroom that is Flare for the Mac.

If you’re using Apple’s e-mail you can turn off the distractions notifications, and the problem is solved by being out of sight out of mind. Instead of knee-jerk checking your e-mail, you can check mail when you feel like it or when you have made time for it.

Here’s how to turn off notifications for Apple’s mail

Open the preferences. Change the dock unread count to none! That’s it!

While you’re at it, you can also make changes to how often you want to automatically check your e-mail, as well as change your preference to only check for mail manually. Change the sound for new e-mail or set the sound to none at all.

Now it’s up to you to check your email instead of having that “unread count” broadcast to you. A subtle shift, but one that can make a powerful difference.

It was a real treat to find that a selection of my art work has been published in an iPhone app that presents Swedish illustrators and designers!

I’m represented by Illustratörcentrum (The Illustrators’ Centre), Sweden’s largest agency for illustrators and graphic designers. They’ve just released a free iPhone app Illustratörcentrum that presents Swedish art and design. The idea is to help clients find the perfect fit for their projects. There’s lots of inspiring art in this app and it’s fun to browse and see the wealth of different styles, ideas and techniques out there!

iPhone photography: computer error

It started last weekend with a faint but ominous and mysterious flicker. Last Sunday there was an election in Sweden, and on Monday it was clear that the racist far-right Sweden Democrats won its first-ever parliamentary seats. Alarming and deeply depressing. And then my laptop gave up the ghost.

In the middle of all this mess, it was a HUGE relief to find that all of my art work that I’d backed up on Dropbox was safe and sound and that I could simply continue working from a different computer, without having to also recreate all the art work I’d already done, both on the commissioned work and on the new collection of Process Icons. (Yes, I’m using a referral link in this post. If you register and install Dropbox (for free) using the referral link, we’ll both get extra free space!)

I’m way too busy  just now to even begin looking for the warranty for my laptop. In the meanwhile all of my e-mail, my bookmarks and RSS-reader are trapped on my broken laptop. This is why you won’t see much of me online, as well as why I might owe you a response to your e-mail. Please bear with me until I get the situation sorted out.

The moral of the story? “Always backup your data” and “there’s never a good time for a disaster”? My little disaster with my laptop is a catastrophe in my small world, but in the bigger picture, it’s a storm in a teacup.