If you’ve liked the Percolator facebook page, you’ll notice they’ve posted links to free promo codes of their app. They posted 5 more about an hour ago. If you go quickly, you might be able to get a copy.
This is my review of Percolator from a while back. I should probably update it because the app has been updated and got new stuff.
Aquarella is yet another interesting app by JixiPix. They’ve made other apps that I recommend, such as Dramatic BW, SimplyHDR, and PhotoArtista Oil. There’s a lot to like about Aquarella, and a couple of things that bug me. Let’s take a look at their familiar user interface. (You can click on the images to see them larger.)
Just like in their other apps, JixiPix provides the user with a lot of presets. The 32 Aquarella Presets will apply a watercolor effect while keeping the colors roughly the same. The 28 TwoTone presets will change the image into a watercolor using two tones instead of all that are present in the original. When working on a two tone image, there is a tone panel where you can choose the two tones you want to use.
If you want to make your own adjustments, or fine tune a preset, tap on the adjust button on the bottom to bring up this panel. The color panel is where a lot of the heavy lifting is done. By adjusting the details, you can get a image with a subtle painterly effect to an image that looks like a rough watercolor. The color detail slider affects how much overall detail is in the image by adding or subtracting the range of colors. The enhancing colors slider adjusts the saturation. Wet Edge Strength adjusts the thickness of the line between colors. Wet Edge Detail also affects the amount of detail in the image. To me it acts like the clarity slider in photoshop or lightroom.
Texture is the paper style that image is painted on. It varies from subtle to a very noticeable canvas.
The wash and Bloom panels both make the image appear more like a watercolor. Think of the Wash as overlaying color on your image. It will change the color in your image slightly, or quite a bit, depending on what the Color Strength and Color Shift are set to. There are an incredible 63 choices in the wash panel.
The bloom is basically adding a texture to the image that makes it look like a watercolor. Some of the bloom overlays have drips or splatters to make it look like someone actually painted it. You can adjust the opacity of the bloom by adjusting the Bloom Strength. If you switch from normal to reverse, it basically inverts the white to black and black to white, giving you even more variety to the 41 textures to choose from.
The Share panel has a number of features to note. First, in the settings panel, you can choose to save your images as low, medium, or high. I always choose high. You can also save your settings as a preset and name it so you can use the same settings in the future. There are buttons to share directly to facebook, twitter, and tumblr. The app will render the image for those mediums, which takes some time.
Not everything was perfect with this app for me. The loading and saving were very slow. They do admit that the app is optimized for the iPhone 5, so thats probably my issue. I’m using an iPhone4, so I’m sure its faster on the newer models. I tested the loading speed multiple times, with the slowest being 37 seconds before it even began to render the image for the first time. The fastest loading time for me was 20 seconds. It seems like 27 seconds is about the average time. In an age of instant gratification, this is a lifetime haha. The save times were much worse. The first few times I saved an image I thought it was taking way too long, so I decided to time it. After a number of tests, 2 minutes seems to be the average time it takes to save a hi-res image.
These are examples that I created. The last one is an example of a two tone preset.
The results are great for an easy to use app. Its fun to play with and theres a lot of room for customization. The wash and bloom overlays are where you’ll be able to really make your photo look like a watercolor. This is an app that can save your photos that might be a little out of focus by turning them into a lovely painting. If you enjoy turning your photos into paintings, Aquarella is an excellent app to pick up.
***Full disclosure, I did not pay for this app, I asked for a promo code so I could review it. I’m not being offered any compensation for this review. ***
LensLight by BrainFeverMedia is very similar to LensFlare, but it has even more to offer.
For me, the strength of this app is creating or enhancing the lighting of your image. In my example picture of the tree below, the morning light was very nice, but not defined or gold enough for me. LensLight fixed that quickly and easily. Continue Reading
Kaleidoscope Camera by Binary Noise Ltd. is a great alternative to the typical camera app. It makes it very simple to create unique images from everyday objects.
Kaleidoscope Camera provides a real time view with smooth interactivity that makes adjusting your image very easy. There are 6 different mirror configurations that range form a spiral to a mandala.
After you take the picture, you are given the option to save to your album, post to facebook, or email it to someone. Theres nothing complicated about this app. Continue Reading
Kyoobik Photo is another app by JixiPix. I was first interested in checking this app out after discovering another creative app called Percolator.
Below is the user interface. Its very simple and easy to use just like their other apps. One new thing in this app is the ability to add or erase tiles. In this example, I erased the tiles on around the edge. If you wanted to, you could erase a line right down the middle, or random tiles here and there. Continue Reading
PhotoArtista oil is another excellent app from Jixipix. It does a great job of turning your photos into oil paintings. There are a number of presets in different categories ranging from realistic to abstract. The lower you scroll down in the presets, the more abstract the presets get. If you prefer more control, you can fine tune your painting with the sliders.
A-HDR is an app used to create pseudo HDR images by applying filters/presets to a single photo. A lot of the filters are, in my opinion, a good way to overprocess your image. Having said that, there are a couple that seem to work well on the right image. The good thing about A-HDR is you have the ability to make your own adjustments before or after applying a filter/preset.
Easy mode is where you can choose a filter/preset to apply to your image.
Photoforge2 is a photo editing app I’ve been meaning to review for a while. It just got updated the other day which made me want to dive in again and see if it was better than the last time I looked at it. There are a lot of features, but not many that stand out as exceptional compared to other apps.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve used PhotoToaster in some recent images. I have to say its great when you don’t feel like editing everything manually. There are some great filters included and you also have the ability to fine tune them after applying them.
If you want to get everything done in one click, you can choose the little globe icon on the bottom left and select the global preset you want. If you’d like a little more control, you can apply filters in up to 5 different categories including: lighting, effects, vignette, textures, borders. If you want to do everything manually, just select one of those categories and instead of applying a filter, you can switch to sliders mode and make your own adjustments. When you’re done with all of your adjustments you can even save them and turn them into a preset filter.
This is what the layout looks like.
Here is a look at some global presets. There are 4 different categories that you can access by touching the dial in the bottom left corner. They are basic, deluxe, supreme, and your presets.
Pros
Cons
This is my most recent image edited with PhotoToaster.
Conclusion
This is a great alternative to customizable filter apps like Magic Hour and Process. I actually prefer this one over those because of the ease of use and beautiful results. I think its well worth the price to keep as an option for quick editing.
Rating: 5/5
Price: $1.99
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
***Full disclosure, I did not pay for this app, I asked for a promo code so I could review it. I’m not being offered any compensation for this review. ***
I still remember the first time I saw the video for AntiCrop. It looked like it was capable of doing amazing things. The video showed the app doing the same thing as content aware fill in photoshop by extending the image. AntiCrop is from the makers of TouchRetouch and since I was so impressed with that app, that I received via promotional code, I bought this one.
I really wanted to buy AntiCrop the first time I saw the video, but there were some negative reviews complaining about consistency. I’m here to tell you that the complaints were accurate. This app does do some great things once in a while, but its way too inconsistent and seems to struggle much more often than succeed. Perhaps if you use TouchRetouch to fix the mistakes AntiCrop makes, this app could be useable.
Start out by loading a photo or taking one with the in app camera, which is the same as the default camera.If you load a photo, you can choose between 3 sizes.
Once the photo is loaded you simply drag the border that you wish to extend. Its that simple. After a moment the app will try to fill in the new area with similar data.
Thats really all there is to AntiCrop. Have a look at my test results below.
The images that worked.
I have to say it did a good job at continuing the slope of Shasta with just a little unnatural pattern in the hill on the left and the repetition of the cows.
The failed images. I recommend clicking on the extended versions to inspect them yourself. You’ll likely find unnatural patterns and objects in places they aren’t suppose to be.
There are some floating leaves and branches.
This is a trainwreck.
Conclusion
I had a 33% success rate, thats not anywhere near passing in school or the world of iphone apps. I have a feeling it would have been even lower had I tried to use this on other images.
I like the idea for the app, but how often do you find yourself needing to extend your image? In its current state, it’s not worth the price to see it work once in a while.
Rating: 2/5
Price: 0.99
Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad.Requires iOS 3.1 or later
