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Photography
Let’s face it – whether or not we own an iPhone, most of us are aware of its proficient picture-taking ability and the abundance of apps to support it. The popularity of iPhoneography has driven developers to produce apps of the highest quality, and to fill numerous photographic niches.
The iPad, however, isn’t known for its camera, yet plenty of iPad owners can be seen at concerts and events, taking pictures and video. It seems bizarre that these folks haven’t had a quality iPad-specific photography app to work with.
It comes as a relief, then, that this void in the App Store’s catalogue has started to be filled. The new arrival is Blux Camera, the latest in a series of photo- and videographic apps by Blux Touch, which have been hugely popular on iPhone. But can this app turn your iPad into a truly usable, if rather overgrown, photographic companion?
It was at the launch of the iPad 2 that Steve Jobs predicted we would soon be ushered into a new era. One in which the predominance of PCs would fade away and our reliance on them to get work done would be greatly reduced. Fast-forward a couple of years and thanks to better hardware and a steady release of increasingly powerful apps we inch closer to that reality day upon day.
A perfect example of this is writing. I love the freedom and mobility the iPad affords me. I can write up a review or blog post from pretty much anywhere. The only piece missing for a streamlined workflow was the ability to resize images. While there are many capable image editing apps, most are overkill for this simple task, but fortunately Reduce came along to solve that small friction point.
In every category of the App Store, there are one or two top-of-the-range apps which attempt to elevate themselves above their competitors. They are usually a joy to use, both because of their feature set and because they are pleasing on the eye. This quality and exclusivity often brings with it an inflated price, but often enough, users are happy to pay more.
At $14.99, image editor Process is clearly attempting to fall into the category of apps mentioned above. In fact, the App Store profile of Process tells customers directly that this app is different from its competitors — providing a large selection of presets and editing tools as well as rapid processing.
Based on the price alone, you might reasonably assume that Process is immeasurably better than Snapseed, Photoshop Touch, or Photogene – but is it? Let’s find out for ourselves.
In the world of desktop image editing, there is only one name that springs to mind in front of all others – Photoshop. But when it comes to the iPad, the choice isn’t so clear, despite Adobe’s presence in the App Store.
With this in mind, I approached this review of Photogene with the hope of discovering a more heavyweight alternative. Mobile Pond, the developer of Photogene, is hardly a household name – they only have this one iPad product in the App Store – but this is an app which is slowly gaining popularity. At $2.99, it’s certainly a cheaper alternative to the products produced by the software giants, but when it comes to serious editing, is it a better alternative?
Have you ever seen those photos where there is one color highlighted in the scene and the rest of the image is grayscale? That’s a very basic photo editing technique known as “color splashing.” Don’t they look great? How would you like to take any photo you have and achieve the same effect in minutes, right there on your iPad?
ColorStrokes HD not only makes this process possible, but enjoyable, easy and downright great fun. You may enhance the odd photo here and there, or you may go a little bit Color-Crazy and churn out photo after photo as I did in my testing, simply because it is genuinely good fun. Either way, this little gem is sure to add a little more color to your life. (more…)
I have been a huge admirer of Aviary for a long time now. I don’t use their web apps often, but I’m in awe at them for showing the world what web apps are capable of. The range and quality of their toolkit on the web is praiseworthy. It’s no wonder that the developers have started licensing their toolkit.
Image editing in the mobile phone genre is largely powered by Aviary, and the most famous example of this is the recently launched Twitpic app. Not just comfortable being in the background, Aviary has launched its official iOS app in the app store. Let’s go check out how functional it is. (more…)
Showboat is an inexpensive scrapbooking app, with some good basic features for throwing together collections of photos quickly. This app will provide a way to showcase your photo collections of app screenshots, real estate summaries, art portfolios, items for sale, etc. It’s an ideal app for when you know you’re Internet access will be absent or patchy.
Although it’s still undergoing development, this is an app to watch. Lets take a look at what it offers out of the box right now. (more…)
The level to which people are willing to go to get their photos touched up never ceases to amaze me. Even before Instagram, it wasn’t like there was any dearth of image touch-up apps.
Mashing up multiple images without drastically changing the moment captured for posterity is something that most people love to do. Instead of just clicking through a folder full of pictures, it is so much fun to look at collages or mashups instead. After the break, let’s take Diptic for a spin and see if it can add some spice to our images. (more…)
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’ve got enough photography apps I don’t think I’ll ever get another one.” Nah, me either. The thing is with all that’s out there for the iPad — iPhoto, Snapseed, Filterstorm and many others — they exist because we love taking pictures and we love to edit, filter and rearrange them in as many ways as possible.
After all, our pictures represent our memories frozen in time. With the introduction of apps like these we can add an artistic touch to those memories without having to spend hours learning high-end software like Photoshop. So, if you’re one of those people who can never get enough photography apps then this look at the latest app climbing the charts is for you.
Read on to see what Layout has to offer and how it compares.
