When we announced the Nokia Lumia 925, we also demonstrated some new photo editing techniques that’ll be delivered with a new Nokia Smart Camera. While we’re all waiting for that, a couple of days ago Creative Studio received an update to bring some of those amazing photo-editing tools to your Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphones right now.
The new Nokia Smart Camera joins the functions of the existing Smart Shoot lens, with the new Best Shot, Action Shot and Motion Focus option.
Nokia’s Creative Studio – downloadable for free exclusively to Nokia Lumia smartphone owners – enables you to add a filter to your photos, and then edit them by either cropping, removing red eye, or adjusting the colour balance.
But that’s not all. This new update adds some extras that the older version didn’t have.
There are now two new sections called Play and Blur, each of which enable you to be much more creative.
Play provides you with the Colour pop and Collage editing options.
With colour pop, you take an image and it fades out the colour, leaving you with a black and white image. It’s from here you can bring back certain coloured elements of the photo.
For instance, I took a photo of a train on the London underground and added the colour pop option. I then brought back the red colour on just the front of the train for a striking, bold look.
Also within the play section is the option to create a Collage. Scroll through your photos, picking out the ones you want to add for a nicely laid-out memory board. I created a London transport collage.
Then we have the Blur section.
Within this you can give the illusion that an object is moving, when it’s not, thanks to the Focus object option.
The handy two-step tutorial will show you how to get the best effect with this. However, all you need to do is draw a line around the object within the photo to maintain the focus. Then another to unfocus the rest.
Here’s a before and after photo I created.
The last new feature to Creative Studio is the Radial + tilt shift feature, also found in the blur section of the app.
Tilt shift is a technique used to give a new perspective on an image. Applying it to certain photos can give the illusion that you looking at a miniature scene, rather than a much bigger one.
For example, I applied tilt shift to a photo of a full football stadium as the players were running into the field. The way that tilt shift focuses the eye makes it appear that you’re looking at toys, rather than actual grown men.
Download Creative Studio today and explore your creativity.
Have you use it yet? Share your thoughts and experiences with us, using the comments section below.