A girl and her toy ...

I have alluded to the fact that I have been keeping myself busy with a toy. It is a new toy - a toy I don't need - a toy I don't deserve - a toy that is embarrassing to list along with the other multitudes of toys I have that I don't need and don't deserve - but there - I have it anyway!

It is an iPod Touch - not a phone - just a toy - to replace my 80 G ipod that Ryan was coveting so I gave it to him - see ... aren't I just the sweetest thing? So giving ...

And I like to keep my toys in pristine condition (thus the reason Ryan wanted my iPod - it looked brand new - because I kept it in a bag). I am a 'bag lady' and can't resist buying them, so I have lots and lots of bags. So it was not surprising that I found one that fit my iPod exactly and stored it in there.

I decided to look around for a bag for my tinier iTouch and what do you know - I found a very cool bag from a very nice Italian company that I had bought in Norway and felt bad that I was not using it. Fits PERFECTLY! So - It should stay protected ... although I seem to be playing with this a lot more than I was listening to music on my iPod ...

It has two cameras - which I find mystifying. If you hit that little camera icon in the upper right hand corner, it swaps to the other - one on each side - so I will be sitting there looking at a landscape in my camera, accidentally hit it and be TOTALLY FREAKED by seeing my ugly mug pop up on the screen! Not a good feature for someone who abhors photos of herself ... This is a photo of my iTouch taking a photo of me taking a photo of it with my camera:

And then I went 'apping' as I call it. Looking for apps. Being new to apple (it is the evil nemesis of everything I have used and for the most part is for non technical users - thus I have pointed my nose to the sky and shunned it). But OH, MY, GOSH! What fun apps it has. I looked in the photography section and could find real time processing and post processing apps. Post processing is my thing, but the real time is fun to play with to.

This little puppy would take, real time, photos in many different modes - this one was 'sketch' and of my computer if you can't tell:

But the post processing ones put my Photoshop to shame (not really - but when they cost 99 cents and, well lets just say the full blown Photoshop that I own ... didn't cost 99 cents - these really do a great job for the money).

This one would change your photo to black and white then let you brush with your finger and paint in the color. It took me FOREVER to figure out how to do this in photoshop - you needed to learn about layers, and masks, and desaturation, and bla, bla, bla - but here is a little baby I made in 5 seconds:

Many of the ones I got - and how can you stop when they are free or just a dollar? Would do many things - reminiscent of photoshop - change the hue and saturation, sharpen it, change the vibrance, etc. This one would just do funky stuff to your photo:

The original:

After putting a 'wave' filter on it:

Then, I remember the time I tried this myself - it was a disaster and took forever. This puppy took about, oh, one second:
There is a cool app that sketches a photo using scribbles:

One that paints you:

And my favourite: 'The Monet Maker' - it makes a pencil sketch and you rub your finger where you want the color:

I did a bunch to my barn ... the original photo (oops - I just notice it is cropped - and my photos are not - so sort of my original photo):

The Monet Maker:

Changing the Hue and Saturation just to see what would happen

A sketch:

and the one again that turns it black and white and you paint in the color. I goofed up with a little blue - but realized that it is much easier to do this rubbing your finger on the screen than using a mouse - I might just need one of those pads that you use with Photoshop that you draw on and do all you sketching - instead of using a mouse .... but they are for artists and artist? I aint!

Yes, I am spoiled, but oh my! I am having so much fun!

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And just in case this seems confusing - the photos were not taken with my iTouch (duh) but I transferred them to it to play - all the stuff I did here I did on my itty bitty iTouch.