Camera... what? (EN)

Ok, so what's the CameraBag 2 anyway?
This is a quick "how-to tutorial" guide that will explain to you a little bit about every CameraBag 2 features.
"How can I add more filters to use on my photo tweaks?" "How about more light and less color?" "I need to cut that guy off my photo!"
CameraBag 2 is a user-friendly software, that allow you to do almost everything you want to with your favourite photos. You can edit your photos easily with a lot of filters if you are new on this, or you can test your skills editing your photos manually with lightning and color tools.

Editor notes

This is a quick tutorial for the most important features of the software. It was done with 2.6 version of CameraBag 2 and it may be changed when you see it. If you have any question about the software contact me via Steam Friends and maybe I can help.
In addition, I hope I can translate this guide and publish it in Portuguese too (PT-EU) in the next months.
Any sugestion to my work is valid and well received. Please let me know what do you think abou this guide.

This is a turorial created and made by me, with every single word, printscreen and action. I just ask you that, if you want to share this tutorial in other website, please contact me asking my approval. It's not that hard and I thank you if you include the original link to this tutorial and/or to my Steam Community page.

First things first - Presentation!

CameraBag 2 is a 2013 software made by Nevercenter Ltd. Co., and it was created to make photo enthusiasts lives easier.
You can edit your photos adding great effects, editing their colour and lighting, and add some stuff you maybe have seen from professional photographers and people related with image and video. The truth is: you can actually work with this software, edit your photos, learn some things about it and about photography and, in the end, your photos will be actually pretty good and with that professional touch! You'll also notice that, with some time and experience, your eyes and mind will be trained to take more and better pictures, adding to this software the "knowledge feature" I like to talk about and share with my friends.

The Quicklooks Menu. Allows you to reach, easily and quickly, to where's important. My Styles, Cameras, Adjustments and Borders.


On My Styles it's possible to use the so much loved filters. These are pre-loaded filters with some "photo styles" you may want to use. It's the quicker way to get that effect you want to use in your photos. This is the main feature to all of you who want the great result with no work at all. If you want a quick b&w (black and white) photo or a sepia effect on that photo of you car, this is the step to take. Easy, quick and painless! My Styles, also known as Filters. But don't worry if you like a filter but you want to modify it a little bit. You can do it. (Explanation on the next chapters.)


Cameras is the right menu for you if you just want to add to your shot that lomo effect or an instant photo colors. This is the "main filter menu". As on My Styles menu, you can modify and add effects here too. Ultimatelly, you can also save your own filter, created by you, and use it anytime you like. Add a 1973 camera filter to get that 1973 photo effects. Simple as it gets!


Ok, and this is the most complex but also the most intersting menu. The Adjustments menu allows you to, manually, modify you photo and, for instance, add to it a little more of light or a little less of contrast. Ahead, I'll explain what is what and how to use them. The main question is know what do we want. After that, we just need to know how to do it, and that I'll explain to you.


To me the Borders menu is an extra of this software. And what an extra! This is great when you want to add a little more to your photos and, for instance, share with your friends. It's possible to create a great cd cover to that holidays of yours, with a vinyl effect, or even a 35mm old film effect.


But, in the end, all this information is for what?
Scroll down!

My Styles

Let's now talk about My Styles. (And no. It's not about your jacket.)

The first step after installation is download more filters. These are free filters and are available, as single filters and as package, on the official website. To easily get them you just have to click on Download Filters Online, under File tab.

I recommend to download the full package. It's a really small .zip file and you will get a lot of great filters to use, free of charge and with no limitations at all, whenever you want.
To install them you just need to extract all the files to your My Styles folder, located by default on your Documents (Windows). For instance, the path to the folder should be something like C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\com.nevercenter.camerabag2\My Styles.
After that, restart the software and you should notice that, on the right side of the screen, under vertical tab My Styles, you've get "a thousand" more filters to use.

It's important to notice that there are two types of filters. In the most cases they're unique and ready to use, such as Library, Paris, 1985 and Downtown. But there are kits that include every effect in a set of normal filters. Examples are Magazine Kit, Autochrome Kit or even BW Filter Blue and BW Filter Orange, for instance. I'll explain, further, how can you use them and which situation do you should take the normal filters and the kit ones.

These two photos I've taken are both in "original condition" and with no corrections or effects/tweaks. They're from different formats and the one on the left (Volkswagen Polo) is an "auto mode" photo, it means that was taken with the default features of the camera. The one on right (Fiat 850) was taken in "macro auto mode", and it means that the focus (sometimes, not only the focus) was chosen by the user but everything else was automatic and made by the camera itself. This is important to know because some filters result better with some kind of photos. For "auto mode photos" we can use filters like b&w, cinema and gold alike and linen. But for "macro mode photos" the best solution is something like lolo alike, magazine and portrait.







Let's get started!


Load the image you want and choose My Styles on the vertical tab, right on the right of the screen. After that, you may choose one of the filters you want. Let's select the Library filter on the first photo.


As you can see, you have a preview of the photo with the effect you want (even if you don't click on it) and, in the plus sign right next to the name of the filter, you can add that same filter to the image you have on the work area. So, it's possible to have multiple filters on the same image at the same time. Also, you can notice that below the photo you have some small modules, let's call them so. This filter is nothing more that modifications on this modules. In this particular case we have tweaks on Exposure, it was corrected some Luminance Contrast and was add some Coloring and Grain.


Now, let's modify this a little. If you click on one module, you can edit it as you like. Also, it's possible to hide a module and/or delete it. I don't like this photo with Grain, so let's delete it! Do you see that white cross on the upper left side of the module? That's the "delete module" button. And the one on the upper right side is the "hide module" button. In this next image, you can see that Luminance Contrast module is hidden and the Grain module is about to be deleted.


Let's add another effect, so. Let's choose Vignette II. This is a really simples effect. Is a second level of a set, and this particular effect is also under the Adjustments vertical tab (more info further). As you noticed, the Grain and Luminance Contrast are already done, the first one was deleted and the second one is hidden. Now I add Vignette II and the work area is already showing what's the final result of this mix. This Vignette II added that soft black areas on the corners of the photo. In this case you can modify the radios, the falloff and the amount of the circle. To do it, just click on the module.

If you want to create and save your own filters you can do the tweaks you want to and add so many filters as your computer can process, and then you can simply click on "Add to My Styles" right on the top of the My Styles list.

Let's load the other image we've got. We add some filters, remove what we don't like, and here we go.


When ready, we can save our work and tell everyone that we own a thousand dollars camera and we've taken seventy four workshops and three master degrees on photography and image editing.

Cameras

Once you already know how this "filter modules" works, it will be now a lot easier to you understand the Cameras Menu.
Again, picking a photo you like, let's see what we can do in this menu.

This is the 1983 Camera effect.

Similar to My Style, there are "filter modules" here to. Basically, in this effect, it was added a little blur, the colorized film effect and some grain. But in this menu we can only modify a little on the effect we used, and it is almost everytime the Amount and the Remix modules. Every camera has is own kind of effects, so you may try them all and know what's right for your photo.

Adjustments

Adjustments is, in my opinion, the most important menu on this software. It has the most simple but powerfull tools to edit your photos.
Some of them are present on the My Styles menu too, such as Vignette and others. However, on this chapter we have the effect on its "row" format, which means that it's easier and better to work from here if it's possible and if we know how to do it.
Is divided into five categories, and you should know how to use them all. So, because of that, I'll do a full tool explanation with images so you can take the right tool in a simple way.
First of all, know the categories. Under vertical tag Adjustments you'll see the next categories: Basics, Light, Color, Photographic and Utility.


Basics

Crop/Straighten
Dragging the edges, it's possible to "cut" the photo. It's also possible to apply a minor rotation.

Exposure
Adjust the exposure, more or less lightning.

Contrast
Adjust the contrast of the colors.

Saturation
Adjust the saturation, that means how much "vivid" are the colors.

Temperature
This will add a more "yellow" (warm) or "blue" (cold) to your photo, sort of speak, giving to it a environment touch.

Multi Tool
It's nothing more tha a kit with Exposure, Contrast and Saturation modules.


Light

RGB Curve
A simple kit that allow you to mod every the R (Red) G (Green) B (Blue) code of a photo as just a value. This is a advanced tool that, normally, is only used by people who already know a little more about coloring and lighting.

Luminance Curve
Simply adjust the luminance.

Luminance Contrast
Adjust the contrast of the luminance, great to use if you add the previous module to your photo.

Shadows
Highlight the shadows.

Highlights
Adjust the highlights of a photo. You should not abuse on this, because if you do the photo will have a non-natural touch.

Brightness
As simple as it gets. Adjust the brightness.


Color

Coloring
Allows you to add a colorized effect to your photo.

Coloring Curve
You can get even more mods with this if you used the previous module.

RGB Curves
Unlike RGB Curves module on Light categorie, this one allows you to change the R (Red) G (Green) B (Blue) code of a photo as three seperated values. Again, this is an advanced tool for advanced users. But everyone is newcomer someday, so try on!

Hue Saturation
Selecting hues, it's possible to adjust them with this tool.

Hue Shift
Allows you to shift hues based on the curved you've modified.

Hue Brightness
Adjust the brightness on hues you've selected.

Split Tone
After selecting a dark and a light color, it's possible to create a two tone photo and its amount.

Color Balance
Working with the RGB, this tool will balance the colors. This is similar to RGB Curves modules.

Greyscale Mixer
The best tool for b&w lovers. This allows you to mix grayscales with RGB as your own like.


Photographic

Vignette
One of the most used and powerfull tools on the software. This will create a circle arround the image with its outside black. It's possible to change the radios of the circle, the amount and the falloff. With the help of other tools, this is great to, for instance, create a good effect on a macro photo.

Lightleak
This creates an accidental effect when camera let break in too much light. With this you'll work with oranges and purples.

Grain
Self-explanatory. This add grain to your image.

Sharpen
It's a great tool to use when we have a little blur we didn't expect. But caution, again, this is another module that you have to use carefully. You may not use this too much on a single photo, because if you do it will create a very sharpen edges and lines, and in some cases it will make your photo seems a cartoon drawing.

Blur
Add some blur to your photo, and that's it. You can choose from a gaussian blur, a box blur or a circle blur. But, for this circle blur, we also have the next module.

Circular Blur
Choosing the radius, it's exactly the same as previous module.


Utility

Watermark
Allows you to add a watermark to your photo. Choose the file and then set the position, opacity and more of your watermark. It's not possible, yet, to do this with multiple files at the same time. But let's wait for an update for it.

Output Size
Choose the size of the output file you want to save.

Constrain Size
Choose the constrain size of the file you want to save.

Borders

On Borders menu we can add even more good things to our favourite shots.
Like on Adjustments menu, we can divide this into two categories. So we have the Dynamic Borders, and the Static Borders (or Image Borders). The Dynamic Borders are likely to be modified, but the Static Borders are just "on-off modules", that we can't modify.

Let's set one of each.

This is a Dynamic Border. On this case, we can tweak the thickness, roundness and the color of the border itself.

And this is the Static Border (or Image Border). About these we can only set them or not, once we have no possibility to change anything on them.


It's also possible to load custom borders to the software, but I didn't try this feature yet because I can't find good material to use on the web.

Official "how-to" videos, from Nevercenter

Here you can watch some official "how-to" videos, by Nevercenter.

How-to

Let's get this done!


Cropping and Straightening

Contrast

Color Corrector

Stacking Curves And Effects

Vignette

Sliders

Borders

The Colorcross Style, And Styles As Basic Adjustments

Anatomy Of A Custom Filter

Temperature

Aspect Ratios

Official YouTube channel - CameraBag 2 "how-to" playlist
Official YouTube channel
Official website[www.nevercenter.com]

[geMini]

Big up, you must have spent a lot of time on this.

["Cactus Jack" Gamer]

This is really helpful and good, a very solid guide - however, they don't seem to have a "download the full package" option on the website anymore - I believe in the latest upgrades they automatically give you about a hojillion styles.

[Convoker]

Thanks for your time, that's big job done here!