Around 1838 or 1839, a French artist and physicist stood near a bustling street of Paris to ‘capture the moment’ unaware that the picture he was about to take will be remembered for years and that he will become a world-renowned personality. He patiently waited for over 10 minutes to take the photograph. Due to the shutter speed, the moving traffic did not fall on the picture except for a boot polisher and a man getting his shoes polished. ‘Boulevard du Temple’ is the first ever photograph recorded in history with people as the subject! The earliest surviving photography of nature was taken as early as 1826! These pictures started the enriching history of photography!

Guess how big the early cameras were? They were so huge that they had to be carted in ‘photographic vans’! Now, you can easily fit a camera in your pocket! Digital photography was invented in 1969 and today we can take pictures and edit them immediately, thanks to the useful apps that can be downloaded to the Android devices. Here are few useful Android apps for professional photographers:

1. Retro Camera:

Who doesn’t love the retro look? Go back in time with this app! It contains 5 camera features which help in converting digital images to analog ones. For example the pinhole camera gives the effect of an old scratched image. Each feature options to convert images to black and white, frame designs, focus and flash options, shutter sounds, etc. The drawback with this app is it offers just 972 pixels.

2. PicSay:

PicSay has it all and the ultimate app to own for a photographer. Do you want to make funny edits or genuine post processing? This app offers all the choices. It has other features like changing color, saturation, exposure, temperature, correcting red-eye and many more. It has some special features like LOMO effect and offers cross processing! However, it could with a few retro effects.

3. FX Camera:

Love the fish-eye effect on your photographs? Get FX Camera. Not just Fish-eye it has other choices like Warhol, SymmetriCam, ToyCamera, Polandroid, and Normal Camera. Quick UI and excellent visual cues are the biggest advantages of FX Camera. The app is handy when you are travelling and wish to take a quick picture and process it immediately. Its biggest disadvantage is you cannot transfer pictures from your SD card and process it.

4. Vignette:

You can get myriad looks with Vignette. It has over sixty effects and fifteen frames you can use for the picture. The app does not contain any funny effects and exclusively for serious photographers who wish to make some authentic editing or wish for retro styles. You can download a free version and give it a trial run. The end-product of the effects is mind-blowing. It gives a professional and artistic style to your photographs.

5. Pro HDR Camera:

It is one of the first HDR apps available on Android devices. Creating high-resolution images is just a one-tap process on your device with this app. The app has been successfully tested on Motorolla, Samsung HTC phones. It may not function efficiently on LG, Sony or other devices which is a huge back draw.

6. Adobe Photoshop Express:

The good old Adobe Photoshop! Though it has limited feature, it delivers those features really well. It comes absolutely free minus the ads. The app is simple and user-friendly. It has some amazing features like intensifying the saturation by just a swipe of your finger. It offers seven features including three exclusive effects like Rainbow, Pop and Vignette Blur.

7. Camera 360:

The app has multiple features and functions. Though the free version is really good, the paid version has more features. You can save both the original image and the edited one. When the photo’s getting processed, you can open the original copy to compare the changes. You cannot import photographs from SD card to edit.

8. Photaf:

Love panoramic photos? Photaf offers panorama option using the support of orientation sensor in the camera. All you have to do is tap on the ‘Create Panorama’ option and the app is converted to a camera. An icon in the bottom shows the previous picture and a floating icon shows the camera orientation. However, don’t expect a smooth stitching always.

9. JustPictures:

It is an excellent app for multi-tasking. You can talk to a friend and open an image simultaneously. The app doesn’t take any time to load pictures and albums. You can display photos without any comments or graphics disrupting the picture. In short, it manages your pictures, albums and favorites smoothly. The app display pictures from your SD card and from various social networking websites.

10. Quick Pic:

Functions like zooming, scrolling, rotating, cropping and using the image for other functions are very simple with this software. Just like in computers, each folder has four thumbnail pictures showing the content. This is better than the built-in gallery viewer that comes commonly with Android devices.

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No doubt, android is one of the leading OS in tech market these days and is moving in equal pace with Apple iOS. No one can deny the truth that the Android OS offers an amazing power, flexibility, and customization features to the Smartphone enthusiasts. But, still the owner owes some responsibility because if the user is not proactive some widgets and apps can eat up the system resources. Here are a few tips that will help to add some life and energy into your smashing android phone.

Turn off background apps:

Android has the ability that it allows user to perform multitasking in various applications, but, you will be surprised to know it affects the functioning of your Android phone. If you are not using YouTube, Facebook or any other app, close it because it engulfs your memory resource and battery life while running in the background. It is highly suggested to close all the unnecessary apps. Android has a native app “shut down”. It shows the list of all running app and allows the user to opt the one he likes to close. You can also make use of the app like “Advanced Task Killer” for this purpose and also it is free.  

Organize your widget:

Everyone is crazy about their widgets but, it may cost you in terms of speed and performance. Take some time and surf along the widgets to smell which widgets you used the most because loads of widgets slow down the speed of the phone. Moreover, live widgets or the one that upgrades frequently like the weather widgets cost more on speed than the static widgets. To improve the speed of your Smartphone you can change the settings of active widgets to less frequent. A small cleanup effort on the home screen will definitely speed up your phone.  

Exit GPS function:

Many of the tech lovers don’t realize that GPS on their Android phone continually consume their valued processing power 24*7. It may result in slow speed and less effective performance. In order to save your Android phone from the grief, you must turn off the GPS function when not in use.

Organize your Google service:

An android based Smartphone automatically embrace access to the Google services such as Gmail, Contacts, Google+, books, currents and many more. If you are not in need of these services, switch them off and protect your phone from the bothersome of downloading piles of data. Follow the following steps

• Open your phone’s setting app
• Remove the services that are useless to you
• Tab the counts and opt the services you want

Live wallpapers:

Live wallpapers kills battery life and bog down Smartphone performance because it uses an enormous amount of the processing power. Though animations and vibrant colors add value to your phone and stint an impressive image but, it badly affects speed and performance.

The above mentioned tips are few ways to boost your phone’s speed; you can also launch apps for this purpose from Android app store and can expedite your phone without paying a cent.

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If you are anxious about your spouse’s behavior, or concerned about your child’s safety, or dissatisfied by your unproductive employees, and if you are in a search of an easy solution that takes away all your worries, android spy software can help you the best. It works like an undercover cop on a secret mission. It helps u not only track an android phone but also monitor all the activities without letting the phone’s user know about being monitored.

Features of android spy software:

Spy on calls: Records all calls and details of all the calls made or received.
Spy on SMS/MMS: Viewing all the sent or received or deleted SMS/MMS.
Location Reporting: not only viewing the current as well as the location history and maps.
Monitor Internet Usage: You can access the browsing history, read emails which are sent or received, and view all social media activities as well as URL log.
Spy Multimedia Files: You can have access to photos, videos and audio files stored in the phone.
You can have access to minor details as well through features like: 
Contact Details: Complete contact information log
Surrounding recordings: Allows you to know what is happening in the surroundings of the phone
Alerts: Notifies you about SIM change
Calendar activities: Helps you view address book, calendar entries and meeting scheduler
Live Control Panel: You can remotely access the android’s screen.
Remote Uninstall: You can uninstall android spy software remotely from the monitored phone if you want to quit observing.

Why should I rely on spy software?

You can easily install android monitoring apps on the smart phone you want to monitor. Android spy software begins uploading the data from the phone being monitored, to your online account, from the very minute when the installation is complete. Once installed, the software hides and can never be detected but the user. You only need to log in to your secret and secure account using internet. All the logs are presented category wise, so that it is easy to sort and browse. The best thing about android spy software is that it is not reliant on the phones database to get the record of activities, it is entirely independent. You can access the data from your online account even if it has been deleted from the phone because it is instantly uploaded to your monitoring account.

Keep an eye on the moles and the slackers

For a profitable business it is vital to have an efficient workforce. But every business has to deal with some moles and slackers. Android spy software is ideal in a situation when you find that your employees are wasting the work hours and you want to increase the productivity of your employees. These apps are quite useful for monitoring the phone usage and you can observe how your employees use their androids especially during the work hours.

If you suspect you employees meet secretly to your competitors or information leakage has been observed, then to help out find the accused you need to install android monitoring apps on their phones. It helps you locate your employees when they are out for field work. Android spy software provides you with complete SMS data to your account, call details along with recordings of the actual phone calls, and browsing history as well. In this way, you can probably prevent any leakage of company’s confidential information.

Worried about your child’s safety?

Every year so many children are being kidnapped and abused. Being a parent you are always worried about the safety of your child. Android monitoring apps helps you track the location and closely observe the activities of your children. If you suspect your children are abusing their vehicle privileges, android spy software can help you control their usage. Nowadays, SMS, MMS, Facebook, WhatsApp and other forms of text messaging and calls have become a popular way of communication. You will find android monitoring apps really amazing if you are worried about you children’s internet and mobile phone habits. If you are curious to know what your children are texting about, or what do they talk on phone calls for hours, now is the time to stop making guesses because now you can totally rely on the android monitoring apps.

Find out why your spouse’s behavior is doubtful

You are always overtly concerned about your loved ones. And when you feel your spouse is being unfaithful to you, nothing seems right and you feel helpless. But now you don’t need to worry, android monitoring apps are there to help you find if you spouse is cheating. Now you can stop being curious about where they spend their time and what are their intentions, because android spy software is ready to solve your problems secretly.

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Does the image above look a little weird? That is right, it is Chrome running full screen on an Android device. A curious Nexus 7 user (Smackel from Reddit) accidentally found out we can turn this hidden feature on by pulling some strings and making a few tricks.

It ressembles the way Mac computers can turn apps full screen, getting rid of all the icons, bars and extra bells & whistles. Similarly, this full screen mode makes the browser take over the notification bar, giving the user a few more millimeters of navigating power.

It is interesting to think that just a few milimiters of screen real estate can make such a huge difference. Browsing suddenly feels much cleaner and more pleasing to the eye. But let’s cut through the chase – how exactly do we do this?

First, you need to have an Android 4.0+ device and download Chrome Beta (not Chrome for Android). If you fit the lonely requirement, you can go full speed ahead! Simply follow the next steps:

Type “chrome://flags/” in the address bar
Enable WebGL
Go to the Boids and Buildings Chrome Experiment page
Click on the “Launch Experiment” button
Click on “Run”
You are now on full-screen and can close this page
Keep in mind this is not an official feature just yet, so it’s not perfect. Full screen mode will go away after you close Chome Beta, but you pretty much have to kill it. It continues to work if you leave the app running in the background. If Chrome Beta gets closed, though, you have to follow the last 3 steps again.

This is more than likely no accident or bug. We are willing to bet Google has been secretly planning to introduce this this as a feature in a future update. The coding must be there. If it is a bug, though, we agree with Smackel that is is about the coolest one we have seen.

[via ChromeSpot]

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All you mobile image manipulating fans will be happy to know that Photoshop Touch, Adobe’s editing suite that gives you a little more than just a few filters, has finally graduated from tablets and is now available from smartphones. It costs an extra $5 (sorry, tablet owners, but it’s a separate app and not an update), but you’ll get the ability to edit images and layered PSD files on the go. When you’re back in front of your computer you can load those files into the desktop version of Photoshop and pick up from where you left off.

More features include the ability to use a selection tool for precise color and level adjustments for all or parts of an image, brushes, the ability to apply text and text styles, a Camera Fill feature that’ll let you fill an area with your device’s camera, free Creative Cloud integration with the tablet and desktop versions and 2GB of free Creative Cloud storage. Get to the Google Play Store and grab this if you’ve been waiting for it, and don’t forget to check out the tablet version for $10 if you’re looking for something for the bigger screen.

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The Chrome for Android team has been quite busy lately. A new build for Android devices has come to the stable channel, it brings a lot of improvements and changes. The most notable change will be the improved scrolling performance in webpages. It’s a gripe many of us have had ever since the browser launched, and it’s one that Google hasn’t been as quick to address as other areas. The hatchet is buried for the time being now, though, so head to your favorite site and start flinging around to see just how much smoother it is.

Another big change is the increase in responsiveness to pinch-to-zoom on web pages. Again, it’s something we’ve all let out a slight moan about even if the implementation wasn’t bad enough to drive us away from the app. Other changes include faster interactive pages due to an update V8 javascript engine, continuous audio playback while Chrome is in the background (it will pause when a phone call is in progress, though), support for more HTML5 features, and more.

A few users are already raving about some of the changes in the Google Play Store so get over there and give it a whirl for yourself. For you new folks, it’s a free download, so if your stock browser, Firefox, Opera, or whatever other browser you currently prefer has been giving you trouble lately then you owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot.

via phandroid

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Verizon’s Twitter support handle dropped some interesting news in a response to one curious customer. Apparently a new update is almost ready for deployment by Samsung, but there is little to tell us what we might expect. The wishful thinkers among us will hope for a build of Android 4.2 or higher, bringing the Galaxy Nexus in line with its other Nexus brethren.

For now, there is no way to tell if we will be seeing a minor bug fixer or something a bit more substantial. “Soon” is a relative term, so that could mean any indefinite amount of time in the future.

Nexus owners are no doubt frustrated at Google’s seeming insistence on neglecting the Verizon LTE version of the phone. Whether that has to do with their relationship with Verizon, or more with the hardware they are dealing with isn’t quite clear.

[via DroidLife]

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One of the main reason behind the popularity of WordPress is its repository of plugins. You’ve got a plugin to do almost anything – integration of social sharing buttons, managing mailing lists or creating static html files, etc. There are also plugins to optimize your blog for speed and performance.

For a page carrying lots of images, it is necessary to optimize the images for best performance and to prevent slow loading of the page.

Click here for tips on: JPEG Optimization For The Web

Here are some recommended plugins for WordPress to optimize your images and increase your site’s speed and performance.

1. Hammy

Hammy optimizes your page content’s images. It generates images of various sizes based on your content size and when a user accesses your website, it automatically displays the most appropriately sized image (sometimes the smallest size).

This helps your website load faster, especially for mobiles users. Hammy is easy to set up, giving you only three options to configure.

2. Lazy Load

Lazy Loading is a process in which images are only loaded when the user sees the image. Lazy Load plugin is the easiest plugin you’ll ever have to use – just install and activate – and it needs no configurations.

Lazy Load makes your site load faster and preserves your server’s bandwidth.

3. Imsanity

Imsanity resizes uploaded images if they are larger than the configured size. The only options you need to configure are the maximum size of uploaded images and jpeg image quality.

It works upon the uploading of images. Imsanity also provides a bulk-resize feature which can be used to resize images that were uploaded prior to installing Imsanity.

4. WP Parallel Loading System

HTTP 1.0 allows only two connections from a domain. WP-PLS creates subdomains of your blog and allow downloading of files from them. Browsers get more hostnames to download content from, making multiple connections and downloading multiple required files quicker, making your website faster!

5. CW Image Optimizer

Want to reduce the sizes of your images without any loss in quality? This plugin shoudl work well. However, it is not easy to setup, especially if your site is on shared hosting.

It also provide a bulk optimize feature if you’ve got many images to optimize.

6. EWWW Image Optimizer

This plugin decreases the size of your images without affecting image quality. It is easy to setup and the author provides step-by-step installation instructions on the plugin page. Also includes a bulk optimize feature.

7. PB Responsive Images

Responsive images are images that fit according to a visitor’s screen resolution, no technical coding required. You can configure images size and the plugin will automatically insert the responsive image syntax in the post.

This helps you accommodate to readers who visit your side via mobile or tablet devices.

8. WP Smush.It

A plugin which uses Yahoo’s Smush.it service to optimize your images and reduce their size, Smush.it is a popular plugin that needs no configuration.

Just install and activate it, and it will optimize every image you upload automatically. It also provides an optimize in bulk feature.

9. Parallelize

This is an appropriately named plugin which parallelize resources among many hostnames, thus allowing browsers to download files from multiple domains thereby enhancing page loading time.

Configuring Parallelize is easy but risky; follow the instructions as closely as possible.

Have other WordPress plugins that can help you optimize your images for faster loading times?Share them with us in the comments below.

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