25 May 2011

We've seen a lot of fantastic work and creativity coming from users of our Diptic iOS application. Typically the combination of other iPhonography applications used in tandem with Diptic adds an especially artistic element to iOS-based photos. In particular our users fancy Percolator, Instagram and Hipstamatic just to name a few. A couple weeks ago we saw a particularly interesting Diptic from kostasleko of a Russian church and its reflection. This effect was achieved using PicFx and Diptic. Using Diptic and Instagram, we'll show you how to quickly create  a single photo with multiple effects. First thing's first, grab or snap a photo, and send it through your favorite effect(s). We snagged a photo from Rob's photostream of the view from Alcatraz.

Using Instagram, we processed this photo twice, once with with "Hefe" filter and once with the "Walden" filter. The end result of the Instragam processing are these photos:

Next we pop-over to Diptic and pick a layout. We processed two versions of our photo so we'll use a simple double-pane layout.

The next step is simply to import both of your processed photos into your layout.

Since both of the filters we used in Instagram already add a border to the photos and since Diptic adds a border around each individual photo, let's remove the borders by going to the effects option and setting border width to zero.

With the border removed, there's one last step: lining up the two separate photos so they appear as one. The difficulty level of this last step is entirely dependent on the complexity of your photo. As you may have seen from our earlier processed photos, the two images aren't identical after going through their filters. If this is the same case for your photos, you may have to spend a little time moving and adjusting your photos until you get them to line up (enough) to create a single complete photo. After a little bit of finagling, our final view of the photo looks pretty good.

After playing around with a few in-app effects from Diptic, here is our final image. Now go forth and make some awesome Diptics!

Originally posted 5/25 on Peak Systems' blog.