PhotoToaster – iPad App of the Week
This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.
This week’s App is PhotoToaster.
Flexible Interface
PhotoToaster™ combines the ease of use of a ‘pick from a preset’ app with the power and flexibility of full manual adjustment. Three different editing interfaces are available to provide ease of use for the novice and creative accuracy for the discerning professional. Start with the collection of beautiful global presets, move down to the category presets, or dive right in and adjust individual settings. The edits are non-destructive, so you can experiment all you want.
Blazingly Fast Performance
Speed is a major ingredient of the Toaster. You don’t have to let go of a slider and then wait to see the result. The sliders are ‘live’ and the feedback is instant. There’s no waiting with the Toaster.
Non-destructive
Non-destructive photo processing means that order doesn’t matter. If you add a vignette and then adjust crop, the vignette will be reapplied. If you add a border and then do an image adjustment, the adjustment is applied only to the image. This allows for a fun and creative editing experience.
Creative
The adjustments are combined to provide infinite possibilities. Your photo doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s with the Toaster. Even if you start with a preset, you can open the manual settings and adjust the controls until it’s just right for you.
You can email or message the result, post it to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr, or save to your photo album.
£1.49
Regular readers of this series will know that I have a particular fondness for image editing apps and do like trying out different photo imaging apps.
PhotoToaster allows you to edit photographs, manipulating the brightness and contrast, add filters (effects), add textures and add borders or vignettes.
Within the app are a range of basic, deluxe and supreme filters. These can make it quick and easy to change an image for immediate use. Where this can be useful is when you are using a series of images for a presentation or a poster. You can apply the same pre-set filter to the images to get a consistent look to the presentation or poster. There are many of these, but you can also add your own.
Instead of using the built in pre-set filters you can also edit various aspects of your image. The controls are easy to use, and as well as pre-set effects you can also fine tune the controls and filters. The brightness filters allow you to adjust the brightness and add lighting effects.
The FX filter allows you to add and adjust a range of photographic filters, these are many of your typical filters such as black and white, sepia, etc…
The app also allows you to apply a vignette, a white or black fading border. Again you can fine-tune the effect if required.
I do like the textures that you can add to an image and this is probably the best feature of this app and where it is different to the many other apps you can buy.
As well as texture you can also add borders to your image, depending on your image you may find that you need to adjust the pre-sets.
Once you have finished editing you can export the image back to your photo library or any of the various social and online photo services such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram.
Overall I do like this app and it is simple and easy to use. It is much more an image manipulation and special effects tool over an image editing tool and therefore useful for that purpose. It is an universal app so will also work on the iPhone and iPod touch.