iPhone: Tips on how to create fun digital greeting cards, animated stickers

Every new Apple iPhone iteration comes with powerful A-series silicon, which is at least a level or two above the competing Android phones in terms of delivering performance. Even the camera hardware too, they boast top-notch features.

Besides taking good images, iPhones come with several editing tools and filters to enhance the photography experience. One can create beautiful and fun digital greeting cards and even custom stickers.

Thanks to the Visual Up feature on the Photos app, users can pick a subject be it a pet animal or human, and create a sticker with customisations and save it for messaging later.

There are many things owners can create with just their iPhones but fearing their effort will go in vain, refrain from going forward. To help you get going with iPhone, I interacted with popular Visual Artist Sidharth, who goes by the moniker 'TooSID' on Instagram.

Recently, Sidharth conducted a session 'Workshop: Design Your Own Pataka Card on iPhone' at Apple's official BKC Store in Mumbai, as part of the Today at Apple session series.

"One thing to observe is there are a lot of underrated native apps on iOS. Keynote, sticker maker, and photo filters are pretty useful if you know what you’re creating," Sidharth told DH.

Here are some inputs from Sidharth for new iPhone users:

No fear: whichever app you open, whatever design you’re creating, Never be scared of it. Most people already assume they’ll create something bad even before starting to create. You’ve to accept the vulnerability and have the courage to make a bad artwork and then improve it as you keep on practicing.

Press everything: Any software or app can at best have a few hundred buttons. Press all of them, see and observe what each button is and does. There’s an undo button, one can always press it. Zoom in zoom out, and basically get used to the software/app

Layered Decluttering: A lot of times we lose objectivity to an artwork. Not sure if it looks good or not. This rule saves me every time I’m stuck at a hurdle like this. You basically make a version 1, and note what things work and things don’t work. Then in the second version, you remove all the things that don’t work and retain the ones that do. You keep making iterations until you reach a version that completely works.

Visual Artist Sidharth

DH: Any third-party apps that can be recommended for iPhone owners to make Pataka cards

Sidharth: There are dozens one can explore. There are free apps and some paid ones. But apps like Procreate Mobile can be quite fun. I would recommend people play around with some 3D scanning too with apps like Polycam out there.

Here's how to make stickers with Photos app

Step 1: Open the Photos app on your iPhone.

Step 2: Tap a photo to open it in full screen.

Step 3: Touch and hold the subject, then tap Add Sticker.

Step 4: The sticker appears in your stickers menu, which you can access when you use the iPhone onscreen keyboard or Markup tools.

Step 5: Tap Add Effect to apply a visual effect such as Outline, Comic, or Puffy.

Step 6: Tap the close button to close the stickers menu.

Here's how to turn Live photos into animated stickers:

Step 1: Open the Photos app on your iPhone.

Step 2: Tap a Live Photo to open it in full screen.

Step 3: Touch and hold the subject of the Live Photo, slide it up until you see a duplicate image of the subject, then release it.

Step 4: Tap Add Sticker.

Step 5: The animated sticker appears in your stickers menu, which you can access when you use the iPhone onscreen keyboard or Markup tools.

Step 6: Tap Add Effect to apply a visual effect such as Outline, Comic, or Puffy.

Step 7: Tap the close button to close the stickers menu.

To get more on iPhone, device owners can try to attend 'Today at Apple' sessions virtually and also at physical Apple stores-- Apple BKC (Mumbai) and Apple Saket (Delhi).

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