ScratchCam

The week, so far has been focused on abstraction.Starting with a play on holiday lights.To a Journey, Abstracted.I decided to play with a couple of apps this week, so I'm going to do two posts. This first post talks about ScratchCam. As with many photo apps you can either shoot within the app, or pull an existing image from your camera roll. Once you open the app I might suggest going to Options first and increasing the output to Original, I'm unsure of the default, as I've had this app for sometime.Also check out the Download Centre on the home screen. There are 10 Packs available to download, that include either additional textures, borders, or colours. Please note I do have the paid version of this app so if you're using the "Lite version" your options may be different.Once you've either taken a photo or opened one to work on, the editing screen should load. Along the bottom you'll see the following:FX, Faves, Undo, Random and Share. Also a slider at the top, this helps you control the amount of the opacity of a given effect.Fx - This brings up a dozen or so presets, which you can apply to an image.Faves - This allows you to "Fave" or save your own presets. If you put together something that you like, you can save it, for future use.Undo - Go back a step, it looks like you can only go back once.Random - Choose this if you want spontaneity and well if you don't like it, you can try again! :)Share - You can send to Facebook, Twitter, email, another app, or ot your camera roll.Say you've found a preset that you kinda like, but you want a different border, or texture, or something. If you click on Edit, this opens up some additional options. Depending on whether you've visited the download center and downloaded additional packs,Once in the Edit menu, you'll have the option to scroll through a variety of textures, borders or colours, selecting what you like, then adjusting the opacity, as you like. I've also discovered that if you tap on the same effect more than once there may be additional versions available. There's a nice variety. Thus far I've been using this in combination with Slow Shutter Cam, which I'll be doing a post on later this week. Check out this nice How To on their website.Here's some screen shots of the edit menu.Here's the before image:Here's the after image:Overall a pretty fun little app, allowing you to add the grungy texture which is kind of popular right now.