Iphone Pictures

First off, hello, and welcome to the Pad!

Second, yes, your iPhone photos should look just fine! I use iPhone photos on my pages all the time and have never had a problem. They may show as 72 ppi in program (and, yes, they actually are 72 ppi), but what matters most is the overall size in pixels. Photos from my iPhone are 2448 x 3264 pixels, and a pixel is a pixel no matter what the PPI of the image is.

What you have to be careful of is not to oversize the photo based on the PPI of your layout. For example, a 300 ppi layout has 300 pixels per inch, so you'd divide each dimension of the pixel size of your iPhone photo by 300 to get the max size of your photo in inches on a 300 ppi document. That works out to 8.16 x 10.88 inches. If you make the photo larger than that, it will start to look pixellated, but anything that size or smaller should be fine!

 

Welcome @scrpprgirl I'll echo what Melissa said. I use almost exclusively iPhone pictures on my layouts and they all look fine on 12x12 layouts.

 

I see you got your answer, but just wanted to say WELCOME to the Pad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I have been strictly an iPhone photographer since I got my first iPhone. My dh and I shared a point and shoot back in the iPhone 4 era but now that's all we use and I'm quite happy with my phone, I may get a 7 come November when my contract is up or just use his 8 when we travel.

 

Welcome @scrpp I too was a paper scrapper for yrs before going digi. I've never gone back to it and fully embraced digi. There was a learning curve and I watched a lot of videos and read tutorials to learn different techniques that could mimic what I did in paper scrapping. Yes, shadowing is key to getting a realistic look. I eventually started playing more with brushes/overlays/paint and that totally won me over. I bet you'll be the same way You'll find a style or technique that totally grabs you and you'll be hooked! Any questions, ask away, we are all here to help.

As for photos, I have the 6 too and use those photos all the time to scrap with. Any photos taken in terrible lighting, slightly blurred, etc, those ones I minimize to a smaller size on my page and use more as accents, keeping the better composed photos for the main focus of a page, keeping them a bit larger. I print 12x12 books and they print out just fine too. Another way to minimize a less than perfect photo is to convert to b/w.

I use PS CC and it is wonderful to scrap with but many use PSE and are very happy with that too. Maybe watching some videos will help or upgrading your PSE to whatever the newest one is, which probably has more features and updates to it.

Yes, money-wise, there is a bit of investment to start (isn't there always with a new hobby) but the good thing is, once you buy products, you will be able to re-use them over and over again (just remember to store the files on your HD and its a good idea to store in a second spot too in case of computer failure, or have an online backup system, etc). I store my digi stash on my HD and a second copy to an EHD.

So, don't get discouraged, take your time, play around a bit and try out techniques. I bet you'll love digi!

 

@scrpprgirl That the spirit! Go with the flow, have fun, don't ever stress about what you do and don't know about scrapping. It's a learning experience for all of us. Have fun and always ask questions if you need help.

 

Hi @scrpprgirl. I take nearly all of my photos on my iPhone. My iPhone 6 has a "HDR" setting, which creates higher resolution pictures. Obviously, they are bigger files, so you'll have to clean your phone out more often.

I almost always hit the "Auto Smart Fix" feature under "Enhance" in photo shop. All of the automatic features, including auto haze removal (another favourite, even on non-hazy photos), auto-levels and auto sharpen are super useful. I would also recommend you download the free Google Nik photo editing tools for PSE. They really give you a lot of power. More ability to control lighting issues (e.g. If I like the lighting of my background, but feel my subject is still too dark, I can play with the brightness and contrast to get it to look right for my subject's skin tone, and then just paint it onto her, without affecting the rest of the photo). It's also really easy to do an "s-curve pop" to brighten your colours in Nik. Plus there are a lot of awesome, and professional looking enhancements, including vintage and black and white styles. https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

(@LynnG tipped me off to the Nik tools in her awesome YouTube tutorial: )

I use PSE 15, and am perfectly content with it. Even for shadows. (1) I mostly use shadow styles. Pretty much all I manipulate there is the angle of the shadow. After applying a shadow style, keep the object selected, then in the style pop out, hit the gear to get settings and adjust lighting angle. (2) If I wanna do a fancy shadow to make an edge appear curled of such, I duplicate the object. Make the lower layer back, then use liquify to play with it to get a shape I like. I then apply a gaussian blur, and reduce the opacity on my shadow layer to about 20-30%.

Sorry, I talk a lot. But, we're really excited to have you here! I feel like, I'm seeing a lot of new faces around the pad this month, and this is what I feel like doing:

 

Uh...just being a man?? (yes, very sexist I know but I see my dh just lift his phone and press the button. No clicking on the spot he wants the focus on, no idea of where to place the subject etc. When he's away, he will take photos for me but you can tell they were taken, got them done, and he's then off the hook.)

May I say we usually know what we want and take the time to help the camera/phone out. The only family member I know who is worse than my dh is my one dil.

 

Welcome, @scrpprgirl. I also used to be a paper scrapper but moved to digital a couple of years ago. I still fiddle sometimes with hybrid layouts but stick mostly to digital these days. My iPhone is my primary camera and the photos work beautifully in layouts.

 

Actually, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, which is a photography technique where several photos (3 is a common number) are taken with different exposures and then combined into one image. It allows for images that have both bright and shadowed areas to show both with the proper exposure in the same photograph. While those photos do often look quite awesome, they aren't at any higher resolution than normal photos taken with your iPhone or any other camera.

 

Has he cleaned the camera lens on it lately? That is seriously half the battle! And if he has a significantly older phone, the photos may be of poor quality no matter what he tries.

 

I always assumed a higher res because I get better picture quality this way! But, that is pretty cool info.

 

Are they bad when viewing them on the phone or just when he tries to email them? Choosing a low compression/size when emailing from the older iPhones (especially the 5s or below) tends to make them quite blurry. If he's on the new iPhone 8, there's a new default file format for pictures (HEIF, I think?) that isn't compatible with a lot of image programs yet; there is a setting to export it as JPEG or to use JPEG when it's originally taken.