TiltShift 1.4

tiltshift14Proud to announce TiltShift 1.4! Apart from a few smaller fixes this version has one new feature, a small but very convenient one.

Instead of remembering the shortcut to toggle the Focus Control in order to get the overlays out of the way and back you can now use the convenient the Auto mode, which is also enabled by default. Auto will show the Focus Control whenever your mouse pointer is above the photo and hide it otherwise, enabling you to see your photo in full glory.

Happy TiltShifting!

German TiltShift review at appleme.de

Another nice German review by Tim of appleme.de. He says:

Die Ergebnisse der App lassen sich echt sehen und der Effekt wirkt nicht nur bei fotografierten Städten wunder.

Through the wonders of automated translation powered by Google this reads as:

The results of the app can really see and feel the effect is wonderful not only photographed cities.

Thanks Google, makes almost sense! 😉
Read the full review at http://appleme.de/2013/10/tiltshift-bilder-mit-miniatureffekt-versehen/.

German review of TiltShift at appgefahren.de

Link

German blog appgefahren.de recently reviewed TiltShift.

Their conclusion: “Ein Vorteil der Mac-App, die eine sehr gute Qualität liefert, ist gerade im Vergleich zum iPhone und iPad aber die Auflösung, die nicht limitiert ist. Wer allerdings nur ab und an ein kleines Bild mit dem Tilt-Shift-Effekt versehen will, um es in soziale Netze zu laden, ist mit mobilen Apps wie Snapseed sicher besser bedient.”

Vienna III: Night Skyline

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Last guest post from the Vienna series by Peter Schlossnikel:

The final short in this mini series is a long time exposure of Vienna’s skyline. This photo works really nice with the tilt-shift effect, since the scene has a good amount of depth and mix of objects at different distances.

vienna-night-tiltshift

See the original shot for comparison:

vienna-night-original

It was shot from a dormitory called Panorama in the 20th Bezirk in Vienna. Camera was located on a public balcony on the highest floor of the building.

Here’s the technical data of the shot: Exposure 30,0 sec at f / 17 – Focal Length 17 mm – ISO 100 –Canon EOS 5D Mark III – Lens EF17-40mm f/4L USM

Also check out the kick-ass design work Peter does for his own company at petriografie.de. I had the honor to work with him on fabulous Boinx Software products like iStopMotion (Mac and iPad), BoinxTV and others since 2007. We had great fun along the way. In 2010 we started our little side (ad-)venture called The Munich Appsters, which — after some major bumps along the road — is just back with MetroCities 1.5 on iPhone. Amongst others, Peter also works with Marco Pifferi on AroundMe and the recently released Reminder+. Contact him directly for more info.

Vienna II: Karlskirche

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Another guest post by my friend Peter Schlossnikel:

The second photo is in the Vienna series is a reflection of the famous Karlskirche. Again with some quick and simple adjustments more contrast, vignette and vibrance was added.

vienna-church-tiltshift

Here’s the original shot for comparison:

vienna-church-original

Technical data: Exposure 1/1600 sec at f / 3,2 – Focal Length 46 mm – ISO 1250 – Canon EOS 5D Mark III – EF24-70mm f/2,8L USM

To be continued…

You also might want to check out Peter’s Instagram feed for lots of inspiring on-the-go iPhone shots. What I love most about Peter’s shots is that he goes way beyond using the default Instagram filters and has this unique ability to compose rather ordinary scenes into pieces of art.

Featured on the Mac App Store

This week, TiltShift is featured in the New & Noteworthy section on the front page of the Mac App Store. This is awesome news, obviously for me, but also for new users as it exposes TiltShift to new audiences that I haven’t been able to reach so far. A big thank you to the folks at Apple for recognizing the work and love I put into the product!

I am also thrilled to be in the company of my good friends of Ulysses fame. If you ever do any writing, I strongly suggest you check out this brilliant app! Marcus, Max and team have put so much thought and effort into this third iteration of their flagship product. Also check out Ulysses if you just want to experience a state-of-the-art Mac app. Last but not least they’re very fine folks, you want to support that sort of developers.

Sales Revenue

Finally, I wanted to reassure that being featured is a great thing for sales, even if it’s ‘just’ in the icon grid. This is especially true if you haven’t invested in any real marketing activities. In the revenue chart of the last week you can clearly spot the App Store page update on Friday. I wish it would continue like that, would surely make the decision to invest in marketing a lot easier…

Vienna I: Alberner Hafen

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Guest post by Peter Schlossnikel:

When playing around with the TiltShift app for the first time I immediately wanted to discover its capabilities to enhance photos that are not exactly typical tilt-shift subjects. I always love to try plugins or filter presets in a non-typical way and thereby discover new inspiring effects and ways of image processing.

Living in Vienna last year I chose three completely different images I shot in this beautiful city to play around in TiltShift.

vienna-birds-tiltshift

I took the first photo at Alberner Hafen, which is an old abandoned dock and a great shooting location. With TiltShift it was really easy to set some depth of field and add contrast and color to the photo.

For comparison, here’s the original photo before processing in TiltShift:

vienna-birds-original

A few technical details:
Exposure 1/500 sec at f / 8,0 – Focal Length 40 mm – ISO 100 – Canon EOS 20D – Lens EF17-40mm f/4L USM

You can find more of my photos on my Flickr stream.

Series to be continued…

TiltShift 1.3 available

Mac App StoreAfter a very long wait, TiltShift 1.3 is finally available! Check out the previous post to learn more. Open the App Store app on your Mac and click on “Updates” to update to the latest version.

Here’s what’s new in this version:

  • Fullscreen View. Use View > Enter Fullscreen or the fullscreen widget (⤢) common to many (Mountain) Lion apps to entirely focus on your photo and use as much screen space as possible for that task.
  • Visual refresh, chapter I. TiltShift now overall wastes less screen space, most prominently on the bottom of the window and looks a lot cleaner and nicer.
  • Important bug fixes related to Close and Save As. TiltShift should no longer break under any circumstances.
  • More small fixes. As usual, a few minor things here and there.

What would you like to see next? Use the contact menu above to tell me! If you experience problems, please also contact me before writing a negative review on the App Store.

One more thing: a few users run into a problem where the processed photo looks distorted or otherwise not as expected. The preview inside TiltShift is just fine. This seems to be related to a problem with the graphics processor on the Mac and I haven’t yet found a pattern that would allow me to prevent that situation. If you run into that issue, please open TiltShift Preferences (TiltShift > Preferences…) and turn on the option “Enable Software Renderer” at the bottom. If that doesn’t help, please get in touch!

Option for Software Renderer in TiltShift Preferences.

Option for Software Renderer in TiltShift Preferences.

Birthday Present

Sidebar refinements in version 1.3 Tomorrow version 1.3 of TiltShift will be released. While it’s not exactly a major update, it took two months to get approved, due to a very strange problem that eventually came down to a bug in Xcode 4.6.

Even though the experience of getting through review was far from being perfect, I am very thankful that there are excellent and dedicated people at Apple that helped me in the end. Without those people I might have given up on the product by now, at least dumped the Mac App Store distribution model.

Most of all, my gratitude goes to the unknown engineer who solved the bug that was causing the archive build not to include the .xcent file.

Brief technical info only relevant for developers: Upon building, Xcode generates a file with the extension xcent compiled from the original entitlements file that you have included in the target. Main difference is that variables like you Team ID will be resolved during that process. The derived xcent file is being used when resigning from the Xcode Organizer that happens when uploading to iTunes Connect or exporting a developer ID signed app, since app developing is difficult and using an enterprise mobile app development could be helpful for this. In case that file is missing for some reason, your app will no longer have sandboxing enabled, which is exactly what I witnessed.

I take it as a birthday present that the update was approved last Friday.