“Mix and Mix” – Retrica features (3)

The secret for creating “best-of-all-time” pictures is “Mix and Mix.”

Create your “Pic of the Day” with Retrica filters and effects

Retrica has diverse filters and effects available, which you can combine to produce completely different results than when you use only one of them. You can add variety to the light and color of a picture with a filter and then apply an effect to make it a cool picture. Or you can create a feel of your own by applying more than one filter.

As you mix different effects to bring variety to a picture, it may happen that the weather, season and ambience of the time when you are taking the picture get recorded far nicer and more beautiful. This is why I can’t help but love Retrica – a camera app that captures more than meets the eye.

You want to capture the moistness of today?  Combine Vignetting with Lime.

Every year in the high summer, the crepe myrtle trees along the street opposite the Seoul Arts Center explode into full blossom. Instead of growing towards the sky, their branches grow sideways, low and wide, with strong red flowers among lush leaves. Around this time of the year, I love to look at the crepe myrtle flowers (which Koreans call “100 days of red” flowers) – so much so I often stay on the curb even though the light turns green and wait for the next green light. As it happens, on the day I recently visited the neighborhood, the air all around was filled with moisture as the rain, which fell all morning, had stopped for a while.

I took a picture of the beautiful flowers with the regular camera on my mobile phone, but it was a shame that the wet street, crepe myrtles turning deeper in color after the rain, an air of anxiety from dark clouds not cleared completely yet, and people bustling and chattering were not fully captured. If you feel your picture is lacking in something as I did on that day, why not make the most of Retrica’s special ability to record the ambience of the day to the fullest.

I put the Lime filter on the photo to clothe it with light mint and green like fresh lime. It recreated the damp atmosphere of the rainy day all over the picture and turned the colors of the flowers a lot deeper. When I tapped on the Vignetting Level 2 button to make the edges darker, it created an air of anxiety and dim darkness from the dark clouds not cleared yet. Compared with the original, the picture I made with the Retrica app was a lot closer to what I remember about that day. Through this experience, I learned a lot about Retrica’s filters and effects, which make pictures more realistic and closer to memories than original pictures taken without any effects added.

Mix filters and effects to create your own photo styling

It was one of my typical days, and I felt like having an ice Americano. So I brewed coffee at home. Then I proceeded to record memory of that glass of coffee, so I turned on Retrica. It may be just a plain glass of coffee, but you can make it look as if it were at a café with a great atmosphere, depending on how you shoot it and what effects you give to it.  

I applied the Mint filter to shoot the glass of coffee. You can slide the filter buttons sideways to pick a filter, or you can slide the viewfinder sideways, and the filters will change in the same way. Every time I use Retrica, I find it really intuitive and convenient to use.

The Mint filter gives a bluish feel to a picture and makes a clean and pure atmosphere hanging over it. I wanted to apply this tone, but I was afraid that the aroma of Americano would not come across if too much blue is applied. So, I adjusted the intensity of the filter slightly. It is not hard to adjust filter’s intensity: With a filter selected, tap on the filter button once again, and the Adjust bar will come up. I get to ooh and aah once again at the intuitive way of adjusting intensity.

After adjusting the filter, I clicked on the icon in the shape of the sun to the right side of the viewfinder to make the rather darkish picture brighter. After that, I pressed the Grain button at the bottom to create a subtle noise as if it were from an old-fashioned television and then inserted the day of the week and time using the Time Stamp button to add the picture to my Today’s Home Café records. This is my own photo styling: I create pictures my way, using the effects that I want to my heart’s content.

Why stick to one filter? Retrica offers a rich variety of filters.

Retrica is rich in filters. There is no reason for sticking to only one filter. You put a filter that you like on a picture and save it. Later you can take it out of the album and try other filters on it as freely as you want.

I took a picture of a pretty sitting cushion with floral patterns using the Rigel filter, which gives an antique feel like a disposable film camera. I also applied the Blur effect to make the surroundings slightly blurred, which makes the floral patterns stand out more clearly. With Retrica’s logo stamp added, the picture takes on a classic feel.

As the Rigel filter has an intense effect of fading, I adjusted the intensity by tapping on the filter once again. I lowered the intensity to give a lighter touch of fading. It looked great already, but I love to make my pictures more special!  So I clicked on the mountain-shaped icon on the left of the shutter button to bring up my album. Pictures are displayed from the most recent to the oldest. Select a photo, and the Delete and Edit buttons will appear at the bottom. Click on Edit, and icons for filters as well as Blur, Vignet and Rotate effects will come up for selection.

On this screen, I tapped on the filter button to try the Screen filter on the photo. A trace of an old film frame on the subtly faded photo, a slightly blurred illustration notebook sitting indifferently on the cushion, and the flower-patterned cushion with its grain coming across vividly by contrast – with these effects, the photo came out real nice as if it were a piece of artwork.

A common cushion lying around at home turning into a special piece of work…… This amazing experience was completed by mixing filters and effects available on Retrica.  Curious to know what it would feel like? Let’s turn on Retrica right now and create your “Pic of the Day.” All you have to do is tap on and mix what is available to your heart’s content.