Percolator App

Tutorial: “Woman in Red”

tinrocket — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:43:38 +0000

There have been some requests for Percolator tutorials, so I’m going to start off with one on how I created the “hero shot” screens for Percolator 2.0 that are used in the App Store and on www.percolatorapp.com. If you’d like to follow along, there’s a smaller version of this image that you can use to follow along in Percolator 2.0.

Source

The original photo of a model holding a coffee cup was created for us by Alex Galushkoff of Retro Atelier. Alex produced this shot as well as all of the model photography on www.percolatorapp.com.

Alex provided a Photoshop image with an alpha channel. I increased the saturation slightly, exported this in PNG format at 2048 pixels high—the maximum export size that Percolator supports. Next, I emailed this file to my iPad, saved it to the iOS photo library, then imported it into Percolator.

Grind

Once imported into Percolator, I started by adjusting Percolator’s Grind settings. “Grinding” is all the stuff Percolator does to your image before turning it into circles. The main wheel, with settings from Course to Extra Fine, determine the starting size of your image, and that effects the maximum amount of detail Percolator can use to create circles: Extra Fine is the most detailed setting and takes the longest because it uses the largest starting image size. What Grind you choose depends on the effect you want to get, so Extra Fine is not always the best setting to use. In this case, I wanted to show as much detail as possible (it’s a feature), so I chose Extra Fine.

Grind: Extra Fine (Average Circles & Effect: High Contrast)

For the Circles and Effect dials, the most important setting for this image was under the Effect dial, and that’s High Contrast. All the Effect dial options will preprocess your original image by running filters on them, i.e., Saturate will increase color saturation, High Contrast will run an unsharp mask (contrast enhancing) filter, etc. This filtered image is used internally by Percolator and will effect circle size, placement and color.

Here’s a Before and After of the High Contrast filter:

The High Contrast Effect looks really great when used with the Treble Brew—I use it almost every time I use Treble because it creates large, distinct patches of light and dark. I find this very important when using Percolator’s blend modes because it creates pleasing clusters of circle and circle-free areas. Choosing the remaining two Grind settings, Extra Fine and Average Circle size, was then a matter of experimentation—finding what “looked right.”

Before finalizing the Grind settings, I jumped over to the Brew tab and chose Treble so I could preview how it was going to look with that Brew. My general approach is to start with the Fine Grind (the default) and Average Circles (also a default) and then add detail using either Extra Fine Grind or the Smallest Circles setting. If there’s too much detail in an image, I like to chose Big Circles before using a coarser Grind.

For this image, it was important not to have any distracting circles in the face, i.e., covering eyes, etc.. In the final image, there’s still a distracting circle in the left nostril and over the left eye, but I think these are typical-to-good results.

Brew

I wanted to use the new Treble Brew for this image because it showcased a lot of new features in Percolator. Treble is a very decorative filter and I’ve found it works best when blended with the original image (its default setting), so Treble is good for showing off the new circle and image blending features.

Brew: Treble (Full Pic & Darkest Blended Circles)

Treble’s default Pic dial setting is ¾, meaning, the original image is drawn at 75% opacity, but for this image I set it to Full so that the original image would be shown at 100% opacity. Notice that the photo Percolator draws is the original image we imported, not the version filtered by the Effect dial. That’s because the Effect dial only uses its filtered image internally to create and colorize the circles.

The default Blend dial setting for Treble is Darkest, and I leave it at that. This setting makes darkly colored circles opaque (solid) and lightly colored circles transparent. For this particular image, circles appear in the model’s hair and under her arms, but not in the lighter areas like the coffee cup, teeth, or skin tones

The Treble Brew will also alter the circle color based on value: Lighter circles use a selection of the images original colors while darker circles use some percent of the Serve color.

Serve

Next, we have the Serve tab:

Serve: Soy (Vignette Tone & Brown Bag Texture)

The Soy setting in the Serve dial has a special meaning when used with Treble: It will color the background using a special gold color. This is a special color only used in the Treble brew. For other Brews, Soy will draw the background with an off-white or cream—i.e., “soy”—color. Because Percolator respects the alpha channel in your source images, we can see more of the gold in the background than if it were originally a solid color. This gives the image a highly ornate appearance.

For the Tone dial, Vignette was chosen because it’s a very dramatic, spotlight-like, effect; just thing needed for the hero shot.

Finally, for the Texture dial, the Paper Cup and Brown Bag options are great for adding noise or grain to your images, giving them a natural-looking surface. I chose Brown Bag because it goes very well with Treble’s gold Soy coloring, making the surface look very metallic and golden.

That’s it! Now all that’s left to do is save it to the camera roll. All of the settings I used are stored in the image’s metadata. You can read more about that feature here.

Your Turn…

I’ve prepared a special version of the Hero Shot source file for you to try yourself. It’s smaller than the version I used so the placement of circles will be slightly different, but it will allow you to try the workflow and effects yourself. You may download the image here: Woman In Red

If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, touch the image until a button appears that says, “Save Image.” Following the steps in the tutorial, the result will look just like the image below.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes in the comments section below!

John Balestrieri

Percolator Profiles: Marie von Kampen (mmvk)

Percolator — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:23:47 +0000

The second in our series of user profiles takes a look at the work of Marie von Kampen, a Boston-based production and stage manager who regularly contributes interesting and creative images to the Percolator flickr group.

User Profile: Marie von Kampen (mmvk)

Percolator — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:00:45 +0000

Marie von Kampen is a production and stage manager in Boston, MA, who takes at least a photo every day. She has been a regular contributor to the Percolator Flickr group, and her creative and varied percolations inspired us to find out more about how she approaches photography and uses Percolator. To see more of von Kampen’s photography check out her Flickr photo stream, find her on Instagram (mmvk), or follow her on Twitter (@mmvk).

PercolatorApp: How did you get into taking pictures with your iPhone?

Marie von Kampen: I have always loved taking photographs, so the camera was definitely one of the features of the iPhone that appealed to me. It was the appeal of the convenience of having a phone with a decent camera, and always having a camera at my fingertips—less bulky than my usual digital or film camera, and a little more discrete, if need be.

PercolatorApp: Do you take pictures daily?

von Kampen: Yes. After getting an iPhone, I found that I took at least one photo daily, whether it was something interesting or new I happened upon, or just candid photos of my friends. To do so with a more conscious thought behind it, I started a personal project—now completed—of taking a photo every day for a year. I am also doing an ongoing photo project using only the Hipstamatic app to photograph people and moments on the T.

PercolatorApp: Do you regularly use a lot of apps or do you have just a few that you use consistently?

von Kampen: If there are any apps that I am a junkie for, they are the photo apps. I’m always seeing what new ones are popping up, reading reviews, or downloading them to try them out! I just checked my iPhone, and I have 31 photo apps on it (eek!). I can say I probably play with each of them at least once a month, but there are definitely a few that I use regularly, if not daily: Hipstamatic, Autostitch, Flickr, Instagram, Camera+, Diptic, Percolator, 100Cameras.

PercolatorApp: Did you take pictures regularly before you had an iPhone or is this a newish habit?

von Kampen: I took photos regularly before I had an iPhone. I have taken photos for as long as I can remember. My first camera was a cheapo plastic model that took 110 films. Shortly after that one I got my hands on a Polaroid. Fast forward: I bought my first “real” film camera (not just a point and shoot), after I finished my undergrad studies. It was a Nikon FM10, which I still use today. I took two years of photography and darkroom classes, and I loved every minute. I’m still an analog lover at heart. The iPhone and an affordable digital camera had pulled me away from film for a few years, but I am recently getting back into film. Now I am trying to balance my time between digital and analog.

PercolatorApp: What are your preferred methods for sharing your pictures and for finding interesting pictures by others?

von Kampen: When I blogged regularly, I used Photobucket because it was free and it created easy-to-use links. I use Facebook for all my candid photos of friends and family. I eventually moved over to Flickr for my professional, travel, and project photos. I’m a big fan of Instagram and the idea of sharing moments as they happen. I really enjoy that app even more now that it has tags so you can search for specific things you’re interested in seeing.

The Internet is a large resource for finding photos of almost anything and everything. I originally started looking for photos through Google Images, and then a friend introduced me to the StumbleUpon photo search feature. Once I got a Flickr account set up, I would either pick groups, search for specific tags, or just check out the Flickr Blog. There are a few other photo blogs I peruse on a semi-regular basis, as well as few photography Twitter folks I follow.

PercolatorApp: Do you have any favorite Flickr groups? Instagram users?

von Kampen: Flickr Groups: FlickrToday, Percolator, Hipstamatic, Instagram, nighthawks. Instagram: banditphotographer, tmattisonhicks, chingsterz, 3north, powerpig, thejbot, coreyschreppel, lasbatcountry, heidibethcom, jaycalderin, jayzombie, dlanham, tinrocket, and percolator.

PercolatorApp: When did you first start using Percolator?

von Kampen: I happened to see the app on the recommended page of iTunes very shortly after the app debuted. I downloaded it because it looked interesting. I think I then played with app religiously for several hours a day for the first few weeks that I had it. The uniqueness of the images and the possibilities of combining it with other apps really captured my creative eye.

PercolatorApp: Which apps do you like to pair with Percolator?

von Kampen: I often use Camera+ if I want to make my image more vivid or add a cool effect before percolating. I found that Hipstamatic images often percolate into very interesting color combinations. I have also used Pocketbooth and Diptic with percolated images.

PercolatorApp: Are there specific types of images that you like to run through Percolator? If so, what characterizes those images?

von Kampen: For me, I often like to be simple and not too “busy.” Often these images have a large or interesting focal point, which will percolate well and still be distinguishable. I try to use images with vivid colors because they translate well into percolated images. There are always exceptions to the rule though—some of my favorite percolations have been those where the original images were somewhat dull looking.

PercolatorApp: What do you think is attractive about Percolator as a creative tool?

von Kampen: I think the app is very easy to use and has a lot of unique settings. I think it has a graphic design aspect to it, and has a lot of creative potential for the user for not just personal photos but in professional work.

PercolatorApp: Do you have a favorite group of Percolator settings?

von Kampen: I don’t think I have a particular group of settings I use more than most, but overall one of my favorites has to be the Overprint Brew setting. I really love the watercolor look it can give an image.

To close, we asked Marie von Kampen to talk about some of her favorite percolated and non-percolated images:

Exotics

von Kampen: I don’t remember much about this shot, except that I had taken it with Hipstamatic, and I hated the composition! It was from a half-dead bouquet that had been left backstage. The lighting was bad and I couldn’t get the flowers the look right in the viewfinder. I think it sat on my phone album for a while before I picked it to play with in Percolator. By using the Ishihara Brew setting with Soy, and playing with different Grind settings for a while, the final image ended up being something much nicer than the original photo.

Fuzzy Fungus

von Kampen: I considered the original image for “Fuzzy Fungus” a failure on my part. I was walking from work to the library on a drizzly day. I have a tendency to stare at the ground and trees, always looking for critter or fungi (that’s my biology background). I noticed these dark orange spots that seemed to pop out from the dark, rain soaked bark of the tree. I was using the Hipstamatic app and took the photo quickly as I was walking by, because a heaving rain had started. When I got into the library to check the shot, I saw that it was blurry, either from my movement or being way too close. Disappointed, I later decided to play with the image in Percolator. I liked the watercolor effect of Overprint and since the image was already blurry, I thought I’d see what the effect would be by enhancing the blurriness. By doing the finest Grind I could, more color combinations were created and the blurriness formed this really wonderful image.

Old Orchard Beach

von Kampen: I took this on my first trip to this beach in Maine. It was over a hundred degrees; I couldn’t even walk on the sand with flip flops, it was so hot. I was walking to catch the train back to Boston, and decided to walk along the water. Using the Hipstamatic app and shaking it then taking another shot, shaking it and taking another shot, etc. I then used Autostitch to combine the images! I loved how the contrast of black & white to color makes it almost look like the beach through the years-past to present.

Slippery When Wet

von Kampen: This one was taken as I was walking through the basement at work. I had spent most of the day at work taking random photographs; just to have some images to try out the beta testing of Percolator 2.0. I’ll admit I had no plan. I was just shooting things that seemed either interesting or mundane. After playing with the settings, I found that most photos, when I added the Full of Stars or Superstar settings of Percolator, were too busy. The photos I had tried with these settings were mostly landscapes and street scenes. I found that the “boring” still life of the wet floor sign was a simple image, with simple shapes and lines that were conducive to the bold black stars of Superstar and the rainbow effect of Spectrum.

Tōdai-ji Temple, Nara

von Kampen: A quick shot with my digital camera on my last trip to Japan. I just loved the composition of the deer with the monk under the shade of the trees (there was a heat wave at the time!). I didn’t want it to look posed, and I also was trying to avoid any extra people (huge crowds of other tourists), I saw an opening, took the shot, and hoped for the best. I also didn’t want the monk to see me take the photo just in case it was an issue.

You.

von Kampen: Part of the words on a Starbucks cup. I edited the color in Camera+, cropped out the extra things I didn’t want, then percolated it! I’ll admit I just loved the colors of this one. Aqua is my favorite. Editing it with Camera+ then Percolator on the Rings Brew setting—I think it’s barely recognizable as Starbucks writing.

Diana + Night

von Kampen: Total analog shot. This is the view from my childhood bedroom. I’ve always loved taking photos at night, and I love the challenge of using film. I had been trying to re-familiarize myself with my Diana+ camera. I did an exposure for around 3 minutes on a tripod. I realized it didn’t have to be too long of an exposure because of the street light.

Watercolored Flash Mist

von Kampen: This was a dark, if I remember correctly, Hipstamatic shot. Originally, I thought it was a little boring—just the typical trees and sun. I decided to edit the colors a bit and use my favorite Percolator setting, Overprint, to create the water-colored effect. It made the colors pop out so much more!

Percolator Profiles: Daniel Berman, aka “Reservoir Dan”

Percolator — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:55:24 +0000

Ahoy, Percolaters!

We’ve added a new section to our site, Stories, where we plan to post profiles of users, interviews, and more. We’re kicking things off with a profile of Daniel Berman (aka Reservoir Dan), prolific iPhoneographer, Percolator user, and founder of the Mobile Photo Awards. Head on over and have a look at Berman’s very interesting work, and hear what he has to say about photography and working with Percolator!

User Profile: Daniel Berman

tinrocket — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:54:01 +0000

Daniel Berman, aka Reservoir Dan, is a prolific iphoneographer who is perhaps best known for his images of the landscapes around his home near Toronto. With a background in video and television and a longstanding interest in still photography, Berman has built a successful career out of his creative visual work. Uninspired by the monotonous environment during a recent long winter, Berman began to experiment with non-representational work for the first time. Read on to learn how this work—which he calls appstractions—came to be, and how Percolator figured into its creation.

Percolator App: We are always excited to talk to people who are doing interesting and uncommon things with the Percolator iPhone app. The appstractions series certainly fits this bill. Before getting into the details, we’re curious about your overall approach to photography. Your background seems to be in video and film—have you always been a still photographer as well?

Daniel Berman: Cameras have been part of my life for a long time. I’m not one of these guys who saw Star Wars at eight years old and knew that I was going to make films—I always just really dabbled with images. I’m a storyteller ultimately so after I left university I started to get into video and film via TV because I guess I just had some things that I wanted to say and it seemed like that was a natural palette for me. It turned out that I was pretty good at making films and TV shows—not commercial fare but the kind of things that I wanted to do—and I managed to get paid for it so I just kept doing it. All the while I was always taking photographs. I find the two are very connected.

Tune in Turn on and Turn Upside Down

Percolator: When you got going with the iPhone did you find that it changed the way you approached photography?

Berman: I have to say when I got my first iPhone three years ago I really started taking a lot of pictures because for the first time I literally always had a camera in my pocket. You know when I used to take pictues with my old Pentax K1000…you’d put a roll of film in and you’d have to be very focused. You wouldn’t take a hundred shots, you’d take 36 and you’d take them very carefully and it would be a week and a half or two weeks before you saw them. It was a completely different world. When I got my iPhone I started to take crazy amounts of pictures, like thousands in a week instead of fifty.

Percolator: Do you feel like that shift changed how you were moving around in the world and looking at things on a basic level?

Berman: There’s no question for me that the iPhone—I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but it really has changed my life in a lot of ways. I still obviously make my living making documentaries and I still work in TV, but I have taken something like 50,000 pictures in the last three years and I probably took half that many in my whole life [up to that point]. It sort of lead me as a gateway drug to want to get a better DSLR and now I have a top of the line DSLR and all these lights in my office and I’m enticing people to come get their portraits done.

Percolator: Has that level of commitment to still photography changed your relationship to your TV and film work?

Berman: I read a lot of about video editing and a lot of the technical stuff behind what the new video cameras can do but I’m way more interested in photography. To the detriment of my bank account, really, because I don’t like weddings so I’m not going to go do any of that and I have three little kids so I can’t be the traveling photographer guy. It’s a very serious hobby. I love it—I just love images, I love creating images whether they move or whether they’re still.

Percolator: So the appstractions series is pretty fascinating work. Had you worked at all with more abstract or non-representational imagery at the time you started on that series?

Berman: That’s an amazing thing. I never created anything like that in my life until I got my iPhone and it was actually probably two-and-half years into having an iPhone [when I started the project]. I’ve always loved the abstract expressionists—Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning and even Jackson Pollack—that 1950s New York thing. Those types of images have always intrigued me as a viewer. What happened is that I live outside of Toronto and winter here—like Chicago or Cleveland or Detroit—it lasts a long time. For a good solid five months things are kind of brown and grey and white. That’s cool for a little while, but I love shooting landscapes, that’s kind of my thing. I don’t live in a big city anymore, I’m not into the street photography thing. So I was in this situation where I wasn’t able to shoot—there was nothing that I could see that was interesting. Percolator was one of the first apps I got. I started messing around with it and what came right out to me was that I could manipulate the resulting image. It was just colors and shapes and I felt like it got to the heart of what I was trying to do but without being filtered by the metaphor of reality.

Percolator: One of the things we think is most unique about Percolator is that it takes a lot of the “photograph” out of the photograph.

Berman: Exactly. The very first appstract that I made is probably still the one that is most popular in terms of when I post it people really like it. It started with Percolator and then I started putting it through some other apps. You can still see the percolator elements to it. It’s called “He Just Got Lonely” and you can clearly see strong elements of Percolator left in it, even though it went through, like, nine apps afterwards. In fact, the first five or six appstractions I made all started with Percolator.

He Just Got Lonely

Percolator: It’s a beautiful image and you definitely can see the Percolator in it, though you’ve really taken it in an interesting direction. Does all of your processing occur on the phone itself?

Berman: Yes. Absolutely. Everything that you see in that whole project—I made 80 images and I published a book—everything starts with an iPhone photograph and finishes on the phone and when I upload it it’s done. A lot of them started with the same photograph. I probably used the same picures a half a dozen times but you’d never know that because the end result is so different. It got to the point where the process of making these things was the journey in itself so it almost in a way didn’t even matter what I started with. I could start with anything.

Percolator: Aside from Percolator, what were the other apps you found yourself using regularly for the appstractions project?

Berman: For the abstract stuff what I would use percolator a lot as a starting point, or if I went too far with sometning and didn’t like it, sometimes I’d put it back through Percolator to shake it all up. I used Filterstorm which is a really great app for being able to do multiple exposures and to blend different parts of different pictures. So I might make, say, half a dozen versions of something and find I like the top right corner of this one, and the bottom left corner of that one, and the middle of another one, and I would use Filterstrom to combine the elements I liked into another image. I used PictureShow to quickly give me a bunch of different looks and then I’d start to mess around with those. I used Camera Bag a lot and I used Iris Photo Suite. Tiffen Photo FX is always useful for doing things. It’s really just going back and forth. A lot of it is making multiple versions of the same thing and then combining the things I liked about each one.

Percolator: It sounds like quite a process.

Berman: Each one would take me about 5 or 6 hours. Sometimes over the course of a few days. Sometimes I’d get lucky and come up with something I liked in half an hour. Of the 80 I made I’d say it was an average of 5 hours for each one.

Percolator: We’re interested in giving our users different ideas about how to use Percolator or other photo apps. After doing so much work with these apps do you have any words of wisdom to share with people who are using multiple apps to process their photography?

Berman: The real thing for me is I would love for the rest of the art community to understand that iPhone photography is not about creating a push button Monet. Not everyone who has a canvas and a set of paint makes a nice picture. Some people do more interesting work than others. I’m not putting myself in that category, but I’m saying that a lot of people just take a picture, apply a filter, and say “Wow my boring picture’s really nice now.” But the truth is, it’s not really nice now. It’s the same boring picture, it just looks like it was taken in 1971 instead of 2011. In my estimation there are probably two or three hundred artists out there who are really using the iPhone and all the apps as tools and who spend hours and days working—like any artist would—and they have a unique vision. When you see their pictures you say, “Oh that’s a so-and-so.” They have a unique voice. So, you have to be willing to play, and to not settle for just, you know, applying a filter and going home. Push yourself. Take the same photograph and try to app it twenty different ways and you’ll find after a little while that maybe the 10th one is more interesting than the 1st one because you started to really see something and learn something. It’s really just doing it. It’s like any art form. The more you play piano the better you get…. My best piece of advice is to dig in there and don’t be afraid to make tons of stuff even with the same picture to see what it does.

Percolator: You designed an album cover for Lee Konitz using Percolator. How did that come about?

Album Cover for SOLOS: The Jazz Sessions

Berman: I produced a 39-part series on great jazz artists performing solo in a church in Toronto. We’ve put out about twenty DVDs and they sell OK, but digital audio sells a lot better. So I’ve got six of them on iTunes and Amazon and I decided to design all the covers for the series on my iPhone. So the first one I did was the Lee Konitz one and I used Percolator for really the whole back of it. And then I used Phoster to put a grid on there and put the title on. And so that was basically percolator with a grid and a title on it.

Percolator: Very cool. What are you working on these days?

Berman: I founded the Mobile Photo Awards this year, which is a competition open to images shot with any mobile phone, and will showcase 25 winners in a gallery tour exhibit and award some other cool prizes. I’m also working on a documentary film on a Cuban jazz musician. Basically always trying to push the boundaries and learn new things.

Percolator: Any last thoughts you’d like to share about Percolator?

Berman: You know, no other app does what Percolator does. It’s unique.

Percolator: Thanks so much for speaking with us Dan. It’s been a pleasure!

Percolator 2.0 is Served!

tinrocket — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:23:48 +0000

PERCOLATOR 2.0 NOW AVAILABLE IN THE APP STORE!

We are thrilled to announce that Percolator 2.0 is now available in the App Store as a FREE upgrade for current users. Percolator will soon be $2.99—but to celebrate this launch—we’ll keep Percolator at $1.99 for a short while.

Let us know what you think—send us a tweet (@percolatorapp), post a comment to the Facebook page, or give us a review in the App Store!

We can’t wait to see your percolations on the Percolator Flickr group and/or on Instagram (#Percolator / @Percolator)—post away and show us what you’re doing with all the new features!

Oh, and don’t forget to check out the new Percolator 2.0 video on our homepage—it has music and everything…

Many, many thanks to all of our users for your support, suggestions, and encouragement, and to our intrepid beta testers for your time, patience, and excellent feedback!

Happy Percolating, everyone!

John Balestrieri & Team Percolator

Make It Blendy—New Brew Subwheels Coming TOMORROW with Percolator 2.0!

Percolator — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:00:14 +0000

A good number of our users let us know that they wanted more control over how the original picture and the circles combine in their percolations. We like our users—a lot!—and we know they have high standards for picture percolation, so we knew we needed to come up with something both fun and unexpected for the update. Hence:

Behold! A proper coffee, keeping its caffeinated cool amidst what appears to be a fairly intense “tablescape.”

Take a moment to notice the new Brew subwheels, Pic and Blend, set at None and Full, respectively. Maybe you’re into the full circle effect—and, don’t get us wrong, that is A-OK by us—but maybe you’d prefer something a little je ne sais quois?

IT'S REALER THAN BEFORE

What’s that, you say? Indeed. Click on over to Full / Full and boom—that salt shaker is a little glassier, that spoon is a little more reflective, that cup of coffee a little softer—ah, you can almost imagine that first, delicious sip… Best of both worlds, one could argue—but we didn’t stop there…

Feast your peepers on this comely array:

Marvel at how the difference in uniform circle opacity changes the overall effect of the percolations. Just think of the variety that will be at your lovely fingertips!

But wait! There’s more! Evaporate, Condense, Lightest, and Darkest work their own, fascinating magic…can you tell what’s going on with these settings? Post your comments and let us know!

Hey Mr. Fancy Pants....

We’ve been having a blast playing with the Brew subwheels in the beta versions of the app and we know you will brew up some spectacular percolations with all of these new options. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Percolator 2.0 is launching TOMORROW in the App Store—and it’s f-r-e-e to current users of the app. Get Blending, people!

Take it To-Go! In-App Sharing Coming December 13 with Percolator 2.0!

Percolator — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:00:21 +0000

One of the many exciting enhancements coming in Percolator 2.0 is in-app sharing to Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail. Here’s what it looks like:

1. Make your perc…

ooooooo!

2. Tap the ♥ button to see the share/save menu and select where you want to send your perc…

aaaaaah!

3. Give it a personal touch…

oooooh!

4. And watch it automagically appear!

Wow! So many Likes!

Keep your peepers peeled for more news as we near the launch date for Percolator 2.0—December 13!

Rise, Boil, Drip, and Drop—Coming December 13 with Percolator 2.0!

Percolator — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:43:33 +0000

Check out this quick video we made showing the bubbly animation effects—Rise, Boil, Drip, and Drop—we’ve developed for Percolator 2.0!

Fun, right? We think so!

Watch the blog or follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@percolatorapp), or Instagram (@percolator / #percolator) for more posts on the exciting new features coming with Percolator 2.0, launching in the App Store on Tuesday, December 13!

A Finer Grind—Subwheels Coming December 13 with Percolator 2.0!

Percolator — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:00:12 +0000

Percolator 2.0′s Grind wheel now sports two subwheels for more control and perc-refining possibilities. Tweak away!

Let’s say we start with this lovely source image:

Photo licensed through iStockphoto.com

Here are our standard grind settings:

In order to pack more settings into the interface, we developed some nifty subwheels. Tap on the Grind tab and—ta-da!—two new wheels appear, Circles and Effect. Circles controls the size of the circles in your percolation. Effect will run a filter on your photo before circles are made, which gives the circles different qualities. Pretty nifty, huh?

This series shows the options available on the new Circles subwheel:

Golly, just look at all those options!

We think Biggest looks best with the new Color Gels brew:

The series below shows the options on the new Effect subwheel:

(Note: we’re showing Inky Edges with a stirred setting so it’s easier to see the new black edges that appear with that setting.)

When you need to re-grind to see your new settings, the button is now a nice obvious blue—plus you can cancel if you change your mind.

Look for more posts on the fabulous new features coming in Percolator 2.0, launching in the iTunes App Store Tuesday, December 13!

[Update]

We snuck in one more Effect option since this was written: 2.0 will also ship with an “Auto Adjust” option that improves the contrast and color saturation of the image to improve your circles. It’s the default option!

Remember the Magic—Metadata Import Coming December 13 in Percolator 2.0!

Percolator — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:00:26 +0000

With Percolator 2.0—launching December 13 in the App Store!—your Brew, Grind, and Serve settings import directly into iPhoto, Flickr, Twitter (via TwitPic), Photoshop and PreviewApp so you can remember (and share!) how you got to that perfect perc.

When uploading to Flickr, a default image title (“My Percolation”), and description (The recipe) are set:

Remember, you can always change this in the software you use to upload to Flickr as well. We also set a keyword/tag:

and the camera/device:

Here’s how it looks in iPhoto:

And in Photoshop:

And in PreviewApp:

Download the original photo if you’d like to take a look at the EXIF data.

Kisses!

Photo licensed through iStockphoto.com.

Improved Interface Design—Coming Soon in Percolator 2.0!

Percolator — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:41:30 +0000

Well, hello there!

We are kicking off a series of posts highlighting the many exciting features coming in Percolator 2.0 (launching December 13!) with a look at the sleek-ified design of the app’s interface.

For Percolator 2.0, we had to find a way to have the interface accommodate many more settings, while maintaining overall simplicity for the user. In the image below, those wee arrows to the right of the Fine, Rings, and Black settings indicate the presence of subwheels (more on that soon in a couple separate posts), which give you the ability to make many more adjustments to your percolations. We wanted the Brew and Share function buttons to stand out in the toolbar so we designed a subtle graphic meant to evoke those great molded designs on the bakelite handles you can find on vintage percolators. We thought the + icon was a little generic, so we made a camera button instead, and—because we really like thinking about cups of coffee— we tweaked the coffee cup a bit, too!

For comparison’s sake, below is what the original, very-first Percolator interface looked like… buttony, straightforward, and not exactly overflowing with pizzazz, right?

We are very excited about how far the app has come since its first incarnation and we hope that you will be as thrilled with version 2.0 as we are.

Stay tuned as we unveil more new features leading up to the launch of the update. Thanks to all of our users for your patience over these many months!

We are (in) Wired!

Percolator — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:03:41 +0000

It’s not just the coffee that has us so excited. Percolator made Wired‘s App Guide!

Jeepers, that's a lot of apps!

We are pleased as Punch to be profiled in the “24 Outstanding Apps” for photography category, where Percolator 1.2 made a strong showing with a 7 out of 10 rating. We wish we’d had Percolator 2.0 launched in time for the review (it’s coming soon!!!)—particularly since it addresses the concerns the reviewers had with the app—but we are still very happy and proud to appear alongside such excellent apps as 8MM Vintage Camera (8/10), Hipstamatic (7/10), Halftone (7/10), and PhotoForge2 (8/10).

Little old us?

Pick up this special issue if you haven’t already.* The reviews are thorough (and tough!) and the range of apps covered is impressive.

*Newsstand price: $10.99 (Yeah, that’s what we thought too. We hear an app version is coming soon, though.)

Percolator 2 Update: Almost There

Percolator — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:28:48 +0000

Percolator 2 will be launching soonish, we promise! We’ve pushed the launch date a couple times and now we are aiming for “sometime this fall.” What’s with the shifting timeline, you ask?

The App

Originally, we were thinking Percolator 2 would be a fairly substantial update, with some cool new filters, tap-to-share functionality, and maybe a little spiff-up to the interface. What we’ve ended up with is a version that has improved everything from the speed of processing to the placement of circles, not to mention the addition of a host of new sub-settings, several new Brew settings, Tone and Texture settings, animated percolations, and a whole lot more.

Once we committed to this level of development—don’t worry, the update will still be entirely FREE to our loyal current users—we decided we wanted to support the launch with something a little more exciting than a new blog post and a few tweets. Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to:

New Website

Percolatorapp.com is getting a makeover and we are very excited about how it’s coming together. We re-wrote and re-designed the landing page and we even went out and got some fancy custom photography to boot. Here’s a little sneak peek at one of the new pics (before Percolation):

Retro photography by Retroatelier for Tinrocket, LLC.

A Moving Picture!

That’s right: Percolator is getting its first promotional video! We found a great composer who created a sweet tune for us and now we’re homing in on the perfect visuals to go along with it. This has been an extremely time consuming but very fun project, with lots learned along the way.

So…

Percolator 2 is pretty close to being ready to submit to the App Store for approval, but we’ve got a ways to go with the site and video. In the meantime, rest assured that we are working as fast as we can so we can release the new version as soon as possible!

Thanks to all of you for your patience and support—we think Percolator 2 will be worth the wait!

New York Times Mention

tinrocket — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:27:26 +0000

Hi Everyone,

We will have a blog post update on Percolator 2′s status in a couple of days. Sort of a “Where We Stand Right Now” update. We are very close to releasing. Really. There’s mainly the work of setting up the new website, making new screenshots & sample images, etc.

In the meantime, I was very happy to see the New York Times coverage of the NYC Photowalk last Sunday, as well as Doctor Popular’s picks for ”10 Great Photo Apps.” Percolator made the list, woohoo! There are a lot of great apps in the list and a few new ones I’m going to try out myself — Interlacer, Decim8 and Magic Shutter.

To celebrate the coverage, I’m putting Percolator on sale for a little while. Now would be a great time to recommend Percolator to a friend — or even better — to Gift It.

Finally, August 9th was Percolator’s one year anniversary. I want to thank everyone for the past year, you’ve made it a great one!

John Balestrieri