I’ll admit it, I’m spoiled by photoshop CS5 and all the awesome plugins I have. I keep trying to find apps that come close to those photoshop plugins, at least in terms of flexibility. When it comes to black and white conversion, nobody can touch Silver Efex Pro2 in my opinion. Thats what I want on the iphone. Dramatic Black and White comes closer than the others and is the best black and white app I’ve used to date.
The UI is clean and straightforward. You can choose a preset from 3 different styles and there are a lot to choose from. If you’re feeling lucky you can tap the dice in the top right to get a random effect. If you like control, you can adjust everything even after choosing a preset. There aren’t a lot of controls, but enough to make a difference. Especially useful is the ability to adjust red, blue, and green values.
Oddly enough, my favorite feature of the app is the spotlight (vignette.) You can adjust the size, shape, center, and opacity. Its the most versatile vignette tool I’ve seen so far. I’ll let you in on the real reason I’m geeked about it in another post.
There isn’t really anything else to cover, the app is really that simple. This is the first image created with the app. I didn’t edit with anything else beforehand because I wanted to showcase this app alone. When used with other apps, I think the results would be even greater.
Conclusion
Dramatic Black and White is more versatile than Simply B&W or other apps where black and white conversion is an afterthought. This is definitely an app that I’ll be keeping on my iphone and using not only for black and white photos, but also for more complex color photo edits with layer blending apps.
Rating: 5/5
Price: $1.99
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Also available on Mac.
***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. ***
iPhone Photographer | David Pasillas 
Sold!
Yeah. Wait until I show you what else I’m going to do with this app.
ohhhh? Can’t wait to see!
I’ll tell you something if you’re going to compare a desktop program to an app. Buy the desktop application of Dramatic Black and White, do some serious reaserch on the apps, the iPad and desktop versions of the apps. Plus when I do a black and white conversion with editing, I use a few apps or desktop programs to get it to my liking or close to an actual silver black and white print. JixiPix by far makes increduable programs for mobile editing. I’m a huge fan of their apps for both iPhone and iPad. One app can’t go it all, I would of said the app is a great start for black white editing and not compare to Silver EFX.
I respect your opinion, but I stand by my review. I think SEP2 is the gold standard for black and white conversion, so I compare everything else to it, be it a mobile app or desktop software. Is Dramatic BW going to be the only app you need to create stunning images? No. I agree that no app can do everything, but thats fine seeing as they’re only a buck or two.
For the purposes of this blog, I’m only reviewing iPhone apps. I’ll leave the iPad and desktop reviews to other people. This blog is about shooting and editing solely on the iPhone. I don’t know if its still considered iPhoneography if I was to use desktop programs. Sure, if I wanted to, I could edit all of my iPhone images with photoshop and blow away what these apps are capable of doing, but wheres the challenge/fun in that.
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