2022 is an exciting year for us, as we update the BeCasso family of apps by our new Rendering Core (read more about it). Last summer, we started to roll out the first major updates, and we are very intrigued to yet see the impact this milestone has on the creative works of our users. Some of the most exciting new features involve the support for wide gamut colors and the ability to export at resolutions of 64MP!
For this to work, we not only had to rethink how images are filtered and colors are blended, but also how to optimally use the different hardware generations of the iPhone, iPad and Mac, to properly upscale our image effects even at these extreme resolutions. Naturally, this involved laborious testing with a set of well-selected photos in order to maintain our high quality control standards.
Despite a rigorous testing procedure, the first interactive beta versions of our apps in fact revealed many more edge cases and bugs. After all, a prolonged hands-on evaluation with real-world user-generated content (UGC) revealed to be inevitable.
Gathering Photos for a UGC Study
As chance would have it, I would get on a 2-week trip through Switzerland in August 2022, just as release candidates for Graphite, Waterbrush and Oilbrush were around the corner. Without hesitating, I took this as an opportunity to capture a set of user-generated content (UGC), later to be used as input for testing these apps with fresh content.
Hardware, Setup and Tools
To truly highlight the processing capabilities of our apps in an unbiased way, it is paramount to us that neither a pre-processing of the input photos nor a post-processing of the outputs was taking place. All photos were taken on an iPhone Xs (26 mm, 12 MP) and Fujifilm X-A5 (15 mm, 24 MP), either saved with a sRGB or P3 color profile. All photos were edited and stylized on the iPhone Xs, and to be in line with a quick editing process, no session took longer than 1 minute per photo including retouch. All results were initially saved in the now supported 10-bit HEIF format.
Key Features: Image Enhancement & Abstraction
A few key insights we could gather from our set of stylized photos are listed below. Most of these are intrinsic characteristics of our image processing effects and help our users to enhance and abstract their photos in an artistic way.
Mood Uplifting
Tone controls can lift the overall mood.
Contrast Enhancement
Contrasts are enhanced in photos with atmospheric perspective.
Wide Gamut Colors
Left: Output /Â sRGB tone mapped, right: colors with wide gamut.
High-Resolution Exports
Higher precisions are provided in high-resolution exports.
Face Obfuscation
Image obfuscation via image abstraction is an intrinsic feature of our apps.
Graphite 2.0: Video Support
Brand new with the upcoming version 2.0 of Graphite is video support. Find below a few selected examples of stylized video sequences.
Get the Apps Now
Oilbrush and Waterbrush featuring the new Rendering Core are available today on the App Store, and are provided as free updates to all existing users. If you want to share your digital masterpieces with us and get them featured, feel free to tag them using #GraphiteApp #OilbrushApp #WaterbrushApp on Instagram and Twitter, or post them in our Facebook BeCasso Creatives group.
Switzerland: Stylized Travelogue
I am delighted to share all of the edited results as a stylized travelogue. Storytelling templates and features of the Unfold app were used for formatting.
BeCasso
Clip2Comic
Graphite
Waterbrush
Oilbrush
Artcard
