iPhone App Reviews

XLCamera

Tony Mei | Jan 6, 2012 Photo & Video

User rating: (1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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XLCamera (0.99$) by Maksym Tsanko

Available on iPhone & iPod Touch

According XLCamera, you can enjoy better “pictures at low light with much better quality.” This sets off alarm bells immediately. I’m skeptical of any app that claims to boost your iPhone camera’s picture taking ability. Does XLCamera live up to it’s hype, or does it fall short like dozens of other photo apps?

Let’s look at technique behind XLCamera’s photo enhancement. XLCamera uses two-step process to brighten and enhance dark images. There’s a ‘torch’ function that toggles your camera flash to stay on. An additional a built in slider adjusts images by tweaking with color saturation and hues. The slider doesn’t make images magically brighter, but increase the warmness and blurs the sharp edges associated with flash night-photography.

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Tags: $.99, camera, photo editing, photos, Tony Mei

Photofunia

Michael (Admin) | Oct 21, 2011 Entertainment

User rating: (3 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)

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Photofunia (free) by Alexey Ivanov

Photofunia may be filed under Entertainment but it’s really a photo app and a pretty cool one at that! There are some great apps out there that allow you to do some impressive tricks with your photos, but they also require a little effort (like Juxtaposer).

This one, however, asks you to do next to nothing except choose your photo(s). Photofunia is a collection of over 150 photo templates that will drop your pics into everything from billboards to art galleries to magazines. It also uses facial recognition to automatically turn you into people such as a zombie, a bodybuilder, and a Carnival dancer, among others.

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Tags: photo editing

PhotoForge

Michael (Admin) | Oct 2, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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If you wish you could have Photoshop on your iPhone, PhotoForge may be as close as you’re gonna get. It has a whole mess of tools that you’ll find in Photoshop like smudge, clone, brushes, erase, undo/redo, curves, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, crop, and the list goes on and on and on. GhostBird Software also built in a bunch of filters so you don’t have to buy a separate app if you want to make your pics black and white, sepia, lomo, posterized, and all manner of other effects.

There’s a LOT of functionality in PhotoForge and I’ve had it on my iPhone for well over a month… but I honestly didn’t know what to do with it! Sure, it’s an awesome tool if you need to brighten up dark photos or pump up the colors on something, but for most folks a photo would have to be pretty special if you’re going to start doing that kind of thing.

What about the crappy everyday pics we all take with the iPhone camera? I know Photoshop pretty well, but without layers and marquees and the ability to import other images, this app started to seem pretty limited despite the massive arsenal of tools it provides… and if I, master of all Photoshop disasters, can’t figure out what to use PhotoForge for, how are YOU gonna use it? Well, today I finally figured out what practically everyone could do with this app on a daily basis.

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Tags: $2.99, photo editing

Puri! 2.0

Michael (Admin) | Aug 6, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)

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Is it wrong for a 30-something guy to be dressing up photos with a gaudy teen-centric photo stamp app? Yeah, it probably is but I’m doing it anyway so screw you!!

Photo booths in Asia have been laying flowery, ultra-cute designs over pics for years, and I’m guessing it’s probably catching on in the western world now but to be honest I have no idea. What I do know is that the iPhone is the perfect platform for apps like Puri! where you can take a photo (or select from the camera roll) and apply all kinds of frames and stamps and text, all in the name of making them sickenly cute.

I may not be an expert in this kind of app, but I feel pretty good about saying that Puri! gets the job done and offers a pretty big array of cartoony cuteness that’s just waiting to make it onto your photos.

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Tags: $2.99, good for kids, photo editing, photo sharing

Walls Creator

Michael (Admin) | Aug 4, 2009 Utilities

User rating: (3 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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It’s no secret that I have a massive crush on the C@rds app series from Hot Chili Apps, and now they’re applying their skills to a slightly different kind of photo/text mashup with Walls Creator.

One of the first things you ever did with your iPhone was probably set the wallpaper image which is what shows up before you “Slide to Unlock” it. Wallpaper is cool, but without an app like Walls Creator you’re limited to using just one photo in that space, and if it doesn’t scale well with the clock and the slider then tough crap!

Walls Creator provides a bunch of templates, 29 to be exact, that include photo masks, multi-image templates for combining all kinds of junk into one image, and of course there’s also a text tool. It’s pretty sweet if your unlock screen is something you find yourself changing with any regularity.

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Tags: $1.99, photo editing, Wallpapers

B-Day Giveaway: Juxtaposer

Michael (Admin) | Jul 30, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

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Iron Mike would NOT make an attractive woman

Ok, let’s try to make up for the Enigma debacle…

I literally LOL’d when I played with Juxtaposer last year and gave Mike Ditka the body of a young, hot starlet on the cover of Hustler magazine! Iron Mike himself hasn’t seen the pic… I know this because I’m still alive.

Juxtaposer is a very smart app that’s pretty easy to use and can be ridiculously funny in the right hands. Pocket Pixels gave it a major update in January and if you miss out on getting it for free it’s still a great buy for just $3.

iTunes Link – Juxtaposer
Juxtaposer website

* Today is iPhone App Reviews.net’s birthday *

Tags: $2.99, photo editing

EffectsLab

T.J. Brumfield | Jul 19, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)

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This review is also due to a request. My wife wanted me to find her a good photo app for adjusting images on her phone. This site has reviewed apps like LOMO Camera and ToyCamera, which are designed for a very specific purpose. I’ve also come across a few designed more for entertainment purposes, transposing part of your picture with another image. What she wanted was something practical. The iPhone doesn’t have a flash. If she is taking pictures with her phone, she wants the pictures to turn out well.

Christopher Comair’s EffectsLab comes to the rescue. EffectsLab adjusts images. There are no toys or gadgets. There are no extraneous bells or whistles. There isn’t even a splash screen. You open the app, open your image and adjust it. Perhaps the app won’t wow you over with splashy graphics or polish, but this swiss-army knife of image filters gets the job done when it counts.

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Tags: $1.99, Photo & Video, photo editing, T. J. Brumfield

eyeFro

Michael (Admin) | Jun 12, 2009 Entertainment

User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I confess… my only motivation in grabbing eyeFro was to put a gigantic afro on my dog! And my only motivation in writing this review is it’s Friday so I’m feeling a little stupid and a little lazy, so this review will be a quickie:

eyeFro is is super simple – just take a photo or load one from the camera roll and *hope* that eyeFro will put the Fro in the right place. If the app can’t “dig” your photo (read: can’t figure out where to place the Fro) then you’re outta luck! But when your photo has the right amount of funk where people are looking straight at the camera with their eyes OPEN the results can be somewhat satisfying. If you want to change fros, give the iPhone a shake.

Personally I’d rather select and place the Fro myself ‘cuz I’m nutty like that, but I think I can appreciate what PunBros is trying to do with their Fro automation. The app isn’t perfect and has a bit of a tendency to crash when shaking to change fros, but if you’re super-bored and have a dollar to burn, then maybe eyeFro is what you’re looking for.

Tags: $.99, funny, photo editing

Q&F: FantasyLens

Michael (Admin) | May 28, 2009 Photo & Video, Quick & Free

User rating: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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There must be a zillion apps that let you stick photos behind silly templates, so why did I pick FantasyLens? I dunno… I guess I liked the icon? Plus I wanted something simple to mess around with on Memorial Day at my dad’s house.

Widgetize provides 24 templates with face cutouts to fuel your need for photo wackiness. Most of them look like old paintings that I’m guessing were chosen for their ‘public domain’ status (ie: the dev didn’t need to pay for them) but that shouldn’t stop you from giving the app a try. You have to take a new photo with every new pic you want to make… no choosing from the camera roll here… but if you can get the camera angle and distance just right it’s possible to produce a pretty seamless photo fake.

The seamlessness is courtesy of several controls for adjusting image settings like brightness, contrast, and saturation, and it’s also possible to undo/redo/reset/save. These features are a big part of why FantasyLens is worth downloading; the app is by no means perfect…  app rotating/resizing is more or less absent… but if you just wanna goof off there’s no harm in trying this one out.

For the record, the kids at my dad’s house LOVED FantasyLens. Their parents didn’t give a crap but the 8-year-olds just went ga-ga for it, just in case you (a) don’t mind them passing around your iPhone, and (b) need to keep them occupied for a while.

Tags: free, funny, photo editing

mStache

Michael (Admin) | Jan 25, 2009 Entertainment

User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Vandalizing photos with mustaches was hilarious when I was 10 and it’s still funny now! What can I say, I’m an immature moron.

mStache’s job is to put mustaches on photos, and it has 15 in all including everything from wild-west styles to Hulk Hogan handlebars to a Charlie Chaplin patch. The process of adding a ‘stache is simple enough… select a photo or take a new one, tap to add your “womb broom” (sorry, I got that term from a guy I used to know), and hit the arrow buttons to cycle through the various types of facial hair.

I love the idea of this app which is why I’m including it in the upcoming app giveaway, but I have to admit that it’s lacking some functionality that would make it a lot more fun to use.

For starters, the mustaches really need to be able to resize and rotate. Right now they’re one-size-fits-all and the angle can’t be adjusted which makes it hard to incorporate them into photos. The other thing that would really help is the ability to import or at least resize larger photos. In the current version of mStache big pics get cut off and there’s no way to adjust them.

On the plus side, mStache gives you the opportunity to upload your newly ‘stached pics to an online collection at mStache.com and they also get saved in your own personal mustache gallery.

If Brian Cantrell could work some improvements into this app it would be much easier to recommend to $.99 app shoppers.

Tags: $.99, photo editing

Q&F: Comeks

Splash Jackson | Jan 5, 2009 Quick & Free, Social Networking

User rating: (6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Comeks may seem like just another comic-style photo editing program, but the eyes can be deceiving. Actually, this app falls under the Social Networking category as a micro-blogging tool that offers a fun way to keep people posted on your status on either Facebook, Bebo, or Friendster. You have to set up an account at comeks.com for this to work however. If you dread the mere thought of having to manage yet another online account, Comeks also gives you the option to export your creation to your photo library or send it as an email.

The actual photo editing portion of Comeks is pretty sweet. You can import any photo from you gallery or take a picture using your iPhone camera. Or you can choose a solid background color to build up from. Once you have your canvas, there are numerous sticker categories to choose from that range from “callouts” to “mustaches.” What I found that worked really well was after choosing a sticker, you can rotate, resize, and drag it in place all using the multi-touch methods we all are accustomed to. To top it off, Comeks allows you to add text in one of those white speech or thought bubbles so you can tell people how you really feel. The only drawback for me was the dwindling choice of stickers within each sticker category. I hope Comeks Ltd. plans to add a plethora of more sticker options in future updates; of course at the price of FREE, you can’t complain too much.

I noticed in the iTunes app reviews that many people experienced crashing issues. While I didn’t have any crashes after extensive use, a stability fix and more stickers in a future update would probably help the lagging two-and-a-half star rating in the app store. Nonetheless, Comeks is a social networking app with lots of promise and potential to be a high-polished and well sought-after micro-blogging tool.

Paris, you got nothing on me!

Tags: free, photo editing, status update

Juxtaposer

Michael (Admin) | Dec 5, 2008 Photo & Video

User rating: (4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Pretty much everyone, at some point in time, has had the uncontrollable urge to take a friend’s photo and do something truly evil with it. Juxtaposer is an awesome photo-editing tool that can make that dream a reality!

It may seem complicated at first, but it’s really not. Just choose a base image, then choose an image you want to paste over it, and start whittling away at the edges of the top photo until the two images have become one.

The genius of Juxtaposer is in how it handles the photo on top, the one you’re blending into the base image. Instead of actually erasing, it’s just creating a mask that hides the parts you don’t want. This means you can unerase which is by far one of the most valuable operations in this iPhone photo editor. There’s also undo which is awesome in itself, but being able to resurrect pieces of a photo is just brilliant.

Hendrik Kueck also built in different types of “brushes” for erasing your top photo, and with a little experimenting you’ll quickly find out that each has its own uses. There are also numerous other options that let you copy images, view images with transparency, zoom in for a better view, bring in more photos, and things like that.

You don’t have to be a genius with photo-editing software to use Juxtaposer, but it does help if you have a steady finger. There are numerous upgrades that would make Juxtaposer even more amazing like color operations for adjusting hue/brightness/contrast and varying brush sizes, but I’m quite certain the developer knows this already and just needs to decide how close he wants to come to turning this app into a full-fledged iPhone Photoshop tool.

If you’ve got photos and want to have some fun with them, get Juxtaposer! $2.99 is a very fair price for a photo editor of this caliber.

Tags: $2.99, photo editing