andera lindner

How Photo Filters Affect Online Engagement

Practically every modern camera-phone app offers them, from Flickr to Instagram to the iOS built-in camera. You can snap a photo and with instagram followers and likes buy a tap make it look reddish, or black and white, or faded and aged. It is now commonplace to capture a photo and edit it on the same device, then instantly share that photo with family, friends, or the world. But despite their present-day ubiquity, filters should not be taken for granted; they affect how people engage with photos in significant ways. In a relatively short amount of time, filter usage has changed from everyday social photographers to serious photography enthusiasts. Our research team wondered why this was the case and if filtering photos changes how people like and comment on them on social media. In answering these questions, we first needed to understand people’s motivations and perceptions regarding filter use. We did this through several semi-structured interviews with Flickr members of various photographic expertise. Then we wanted to to understand how filters affect photo engagement, specifically social engagement such as favorites/likes, comments, and views. We found that photo enthusiasts on Flickr, despite having access to high-end cameras, still use their mobile devices to take photos and filter their photos with the app.

Don’t Bother with Instagram; Here are Some Better Alternatives for Android

I'll come right out and say it: I'm not a big fan of Instagram. And no, it's not because iOS users buy automatic instagram likes have had their underpants in a wad over the Android release, but because for me, it really doesn't live up to the hype. (Their new privacy-invading terms of service makes them pretty unappealing, too). Here's why, and more importantly, here are some just-as-good alternatives for Android users (and some for iOS users too!) who want to take and share photos with or without those filters that make a 5-megapixel cell phone camera look like a 70s Polaroid.Here's the thing—putting aside the fact that some very vocal iOS users are very upset that their precious app has descended to the likes of Android users (let's be clear, some iOS users, not all - most people understand that the device you use, OS you prefer, or browser you surf with is not who you are) and the social commentary the whole depressing fiasco gives us, the truth is that while Instagram has great hype, slick sex appeal, and a bolted-on social aspect, it doesn't do anything that a half-dozen other apps for iOS and Android don't do. In fact, some of those Android apps do it just as well or better.

Quickly Recreate Instagram Filters with Photoshop Actions

We love Instagram here at Unplggd, but unfortunately this photo app is only available on the iPhone. People may have been using Photoshop instagram followers and likes to tweak their photos long before Instagram came around, but it can take some time and effort to get that photo looking exactly the way you want it to. If you want to quickly give your pictures that Instagram look using Photoshop, you can use automated actions to do just that.Photoshop actions are a time saving technique to record steps done in editing a picture. You can then save these actions and pass them along to other people. Daniel Box did a search for converting Instagram filters to Photoshop actions but couldn’t seem to find anything online. He ended up creating his own actions in Photoshop which do a great job of mimicking the original Instagram filters/effects they’re based on. Some popular Instagram filters he’s managed to recreate include Earlybird, X Pro II, Sutro and Lomo-fi.