Freeway Timelapse #2

Some months ago, I bought a cheap cradle for the phone, stuck it on the windscreen and fired off a series of shots as I drove up the freeway to band practice one rainy evening. I have a cable release (also cheap) which doesn't work on every camera app, but it does work on SlowShutter. I set the shutter speed to 'B' and just held the shutter open. In this case, for 14 seconds.

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SlowShutter image.

This is what I got. I thought I might get something a little more interesting if I could crank up the contrast and the colours. And improve the definition. Well, I would have to, as this is pretty dull.

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Ambience improvement in Snapseed.

So, I tried maxing out the ambience in Snapseed, which sent the image in the direction for me.

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TangledFX version.

I cropped the image in Snapseed too, to the 16:9 ratio, to give the image a more wide-screen feel. Then I used TangledFX to enhance the contrast and definition. I think I started with the "Small Details" button, but I also played with settings in "Tune", reducing the scale effect factor right down, so it wasn't so obvious that the image had been 'tangled'.

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Imperfections removed with touchRetouch.

Next, into touchRetouch to remove some imperfections caused by the windscreen. There were several, although the only one visible here is a dark mark in the bottom right hand corner.

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A canvas finish added using Photocopier.

By now, my image has a vaguely painterly nature, so I decided to enhance that by adding a texture from Photocopier. I chose "Velazquez".

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Then to finish, I increased the saturation a little in Snapseed and added a vignette with the "Center Focus" button. It's no world champ, but I liked where I was able to take the image. It looks better big, just like rock 'n' roll sounds better up loud.

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