Halftone 2 Comic Book Creator is Apple’s Free App of the Week [Download]

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Apple has named the Halftone 2 Comic Book Creator app its Free App of the Week.

Halftone 2 makes it easy to create comic and scrap books with your images. Choose a page layout, apply photo filters, position captions, add speech and thought balloons, place some WHAMs, BAMs, and POWs, mix in a few sound effects, and share your creation as an image, multi-page document, or high-definition video. There’s no faster or more fun way to share your stories.

Captions and Balloons
• Over 30 unique caption and balloon styles (speech bubbles, thought balloons, banners, scrolls, and more)
• A powerful 3D perspective feature lets you tilt your captions and balloons
• Includes six professional comic-themed fonts (plus everything on your device)
• Optional drop shadows add depth with configurable color, opacity, blur, and location
• Custom fonts can be added by opening a TrueType (TTF) or OpenType (OTF) font in Halftone 2
• Control over font color, size, line spacing, and alignment
• Ability to add multiple colored outlines to text

Stamps
• Over 80 professionally-designed graphical shapes like WHAM, BAM, and POW
• Optional “Action Pack” in-app purchase adds over 50 more stamps designed by comic design company, Blambot
• A custom stamp feature allows you to add your own images (with support for alpha channels)
• A powerful 3D perspective feature lets you tilt your stamps to make them more dynamic

Photo Panels
• Photos can be imported directly from your photo library, Facebook, and Flickr
• Full control of the scale and rotation of each photo
• A configurable Juicy Bits “Toon” filter turns your photos into comic-styled artwork
• Comprehensive photo editing tools from Aviary that include automatic enhancements, filter effects, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, redeye, whiten, blemish, and selective focus

Page Options
• Choose from over 30 multi-photo page layouts
• Each page can have its own background color, gradient, or paper texture (over 30 included textures)
• An optional page blending mode simulates the way ink interacts with paper

Video
• Video is exported at up to 720p high-definition and can be saved to the camera roll for later use or sent directly to Facebook, Dropbox, or other compatible apps (like iMovie)
• 50 licensed sound effects are included that can be assigned to each photo panel
• A “Sound Pack” in-app purchase adds 50 sound effects, including growls, crashes, instruments, vehicles, background ambience, and more
• Each panel has a customizable transition that controls the incoming speed and movement of the virtual camera
• An optional soundtrack can be added by choosing a song from your music library
• A unique “auto stretch” feature automatically shortens or lengthens the video to match the length of your soundtrack

Editing
• A document library lets you create, save, copy, and work with multiple projects
• Full support for undo and redo
• Captions, balloons, and stamps can be placed inside a photo panel to clip them at the panel’s edges
• A built-in guide introduces all of the basic concepts
• Includes a link to an expanding list of helpful tutorial videos

Output and Sharing
• Output formats include image (JPG), PDF, CBZ, and video (MP4)
• Output can be shared via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, Weibo, instant message (MMS), saved to the photo album, copied to the clipboard, sent to another app, and printed to AirPrint-enabled printers
• An experimental 3D anaglyph feature lets you put on red/cyan 3D glasses and view your output in three dimensions (yes, really)
• Optional halftone image processing with configurable dot size, opacity, and gain to give photos an authentic comic-styled look

You can download Halftone 2 – Comic Book Creator from the App Store for free.

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iPhone Photography Awards – IPPAWARDS 2015

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The iPhone Photography Awards has announced the winners of its 2015 Annual Awards. They were selected from thousands of entries submitted by iPhone photographers from 120 countries around the world.

“This year’s entries were especially impressive ranging from intimate, thought-provoking moments to stunning, captivating imagery,” said IPPAWARDS creator Kenan Aktulun. “We’d like to congratulate all of our winners who once again showed the ability of the iPhone to take astonishing photographs.”

 

To check out some of the other amazing submissions, hit the link below, scroll down to the bottom and select a category.

http://www.ippawards.com/2015-photographers-of-the-year/

Read More

 

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Simplified: Here’s a List of the Biggest New Features & Improvements in iOS 9

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Apple just announced iOS 9, the next iteration of the operating system that drives and powers Apple’s mobile devices, like the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Although iOS 9 focuses mainly on making its current features more powerful and improving the stability and performance of iOS as a whole on all devices, Apple has brought some significant changes via iOS 9 that are worth noting.

As we’re sure you want a simplified digest of the features (TL;DR), we’ve composed a list of all of the greatest new features you can expect from iOS 9 that Apple has publicized:

New Features in iOS 9:

  1. A new News application that can be tailored to your personal news/blog interests

  2. An improved Notes application that accepts text formatting, images, smart links, sketches, checklists, and other interactive content

  3. An improved Maps application that gives you transit directions, walking distances, and the ability to see what’s nearby with Yelp-like discovery

  4. A new Wallet application that stores your Apple Pay credit cards/debit cards, store loyalty cards, boarding passes, coupons, and more

  5. CarPlay now works wirelessly with your car to provide music, notifications, and much more

  6. Siri just became smarter with an Apple Watch-style interface and the ability to search for things on your iPhone more effectively, perform more personalized actions, and more intelligent responses and features

  7. An all-new start screen next to your Home Screen with shortcuts to your favorite contacts, applications, SpotLight, Siri, news, and what’s nearby

  8. Plugging in headphones or speakers now instantly displays music controls on your Lock Screen

  9. Caller ID improvements now suggest who may be calling you when you get that random number on your Lock Screen

  10. An all-new low power mode is now available to save your device’s battery when it’s getting low

  11. Developers now have access to even more APIs to make third-party applications even better on iOS 9 devices all across the board

New Features in iOS 9 Designed Specifically for iPad

  1. All-new multitasking experience with redesigned App Switcher, side-by-side applications, and slide-over quick reply

  2. New video experience allowing you to have picture-in-picture multitasking so you can watch a video while you write an essay or surf the Web

  3. An improved QuickType keyboard with text-editing tools, like cut, copy, paste, and text-formatting tools like bold, italics, underline, and attachments

  4. An improved text editing experience with two-finger swipe gestures that let you position the cursor where you want it

Improvements to iOS That Aren’t Really New ‘Features’

  1. iOS 9 can make your iOS device last up to one whole hour longer than with iOS 8 or earlier installed on it

  2. iOS 9 OTA (over the air) updates have been made much smaller to improve storage space problems on earlier versions of iOS (iOS 9 is only 1.3GB OTA, while iOS 8 was 4.58GB)

  3. iOS 9 has been given improved animation fluidity, responsiveness, and performance due to fine-tuning performance with the CPU and GPU, especially with Metal

  4. iOS 9 gains improved security with six digit passcodes and two-factor authentication

  5. Apple now provides an app to easily migrate your data from Android devices to iOS devices for those making the switch

iOS 9 is currently in its first developer beta, but it will be available to the general public starting this Fall. iOS 9 works on all devices that can run iOS 8, so Apple hasn’t dropped support for any devices with this release. Compatible devices include:

  • iPhone 4s

  • iPhone 5

  • iPhone 5c

  • iPhone 5s

  • iPhone 6

  • iPhone 6 Plus

  • iPod touch 5th generation

  • iPad mini

  • iPad mini 2

  • iPad mini 3

  • iPad 2

  • iPad 3rd generation

  • iPad 4th generation

  • iPad Air

  • iPad Air 2

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