Creative iPhone photographer, Kayan Ensan shows us how he created his beautiful image in this detailed step-by-step tutorial which covers many useful iPhoneography skills and techniques. Thank you Kasan.
I discovered Kayan Ensan’s close-up work while browsing through Flickr pages a few days ago and stumbled on his rather beautifully executed dreamy Christmas image. This image was shot with the latest iPhone 6+ with an Olloclip 15x lens and then edited using several apps including Facetune (marketed as an app for smoothing out selfies) and Snapseed.
I asked Kayan if he would like to create a tutorial for iPhoneographyCentral, and I was delighted that he responded very quickly with this excellent, very detailed, step-by-step tutorial. This image looks deceptively simple- Kayan is one of those artists who pays close attention to detail in order to make the simplest of images grab your attention. Please read on to discover exactly how he achieves this.
Apps you will need:
- Facetune
- Litely
- Tadaa
- Bokehful
- Over
- Afterlight
- Snapseed

This is the original image of a leaf I photographed in our garden, with the olloclip 15x lens and my iPhone 6+.

I begun with reducing the chromatic aberration from the edges using the Facetune app. The “Smooth tool” is excellent for this job. I chose the stronger “smooth” option.

I then used the same tool (smooth) for the background… really great for selectively removing the noise in this area only.

After changing the colour in the “Litely” app I used the native editing tools available in iOS 8 to make some adjustments. You can see the settings I used above.

The Bokeh effect doesn’t look quite right in the app Facetune. The Bokeh looks to strong so to soften it, I smooth it with the “Smoother tool” option,

Still in Facetune, I then choose the Patch tool. Place the circle on one of the Bokéh light dots and the more you increase the size of the circle, the more it will blend. The final result will be a more realistic lens Bokeh effect (as shown below).

Now, add your name and type anything you wish. I used the font and artwork app “Over”. Choose “Add TEXT. I used Helvetica Light

Then press Edit. I edited the size and the character to separate the letters.

After adding the artwork and placing it…save it and we are done with this app…and we have the Black and white style.

Now, with the colored on, open Tadaa app again and choose the “Grading” tool and press “edit mask” and highlight the leaf.

The aim here, is to make the edges have sharper points to make it look like we focused on these edge points. You can disable “Edges” to get full manual control.

I save the work so far then I open the app “Afterlight”, press the film icon then the Light Leak and choose number 25, position it in the corner and then choose number 5 for the pink colour.

I save the work again and then I go back to the Facetune app to blur the edges of the name using the tools shown above.

You can also freeze the whiteness of the edges by using the Tone tool. Choose the whitest color by pressing on to it and holding; you will see the colour on the palette. Make sure to be very close and move it quickly and this will make the edges give the appearance of more detail.

And the for the final touch! – I used the “Selective Adjust” tool in Snapseed app to selectively reduce the brightness.
To view more of Kayan’s work please visit:
Kayan on Flickr
Thank you Kayan for sharing your work with us at iPhoneographyCentral.