Color filter simulation app

[Thorsten]

Hello everybody.

Although I have been using B&W film for a few years now and although I also use yellow and red filters now and then, I still have issues with deciding which filters I really need in a specific situation.

Now I thought: There are so many apps and filters, e.g. for Adobe Lightroom, that try to emulate the effect of specific films, so maybe there is also an App for the iPhone that would show you the emulated look of the film currently loaded on the display and where you also might add red or yellow filters to the effect. After all this is not a complex calculation for modern pocket-supercomputers.

I have looked, but I did not find anything. So I just want to ask to make sure that I did not miss anything. Is there an iPhone app that shows me on the screen directly how a photo would look, if I e.g. use FP4 + a red filter?

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

Such an app won't really work. Scaling the RGB values from a phone sensor to give a B&W image won't give an accurate rendition of a filter's action. Taking a phone picture through a filter and then converting it to B&W will give a closer approximation.

Some years ago I went around photographing various common scenes through a variety of filters. That gave me a good idea of what I could manipulate in my photography by using filters - not that much, as a rule. I settled on a deep orange and occasionally a green as my primary filters. Along with, of course, a polarizer.

For color I carry a warming filter and the ubiquitous polarizer.

Occasionally I may add a soft focus filter - though I confess I have never taken a picture I really like using it.