08 January 2013

SnApp Shots: How to Take Great Pictures With Smartphones and Apps

SnApp Shots: How to Take Great Pictures With Smartphones and Apps is a really cute little book from Chronicle Books.  Like all other Chronicle offerings it has great production values - it practically jumps off the shelf.  Since I like to take pictures with my iPhone, this seemed like another book to add to my learning curve.

The cover copy says this will "unlock the secrets" of smartphone photography and I read some reviews that said this was a "difinitive guide".  Well, I don't know about that. It has a nice listing of different things you can do to either take or manipulate photographs on your mobile device and suggestions for apps and there are really great example pictures.  But...the directions are very good.

Where the book falls down is actually in telling the reader HOW the manipulation occurs. For instance, the pages on "exposure, contrast, and brightness" start out with a description of the technique, a few suggestions for apps that might do those things, and several pages of example photographs. But the authors don't say exactly how or which suggested apps were used to create the photos. Or, in the case of a manipulated photo, what the original photo looked like before the manipulation occurred. A shame, really, because this is such a cute-looking book and it could have been more helpful than it was.

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