Photo Editing Software and Applications

PencilApp is a bare-bones online drawing tool designed for your tablet and your computer's Web browser. 

Unlike other similar online drawing tools — such as draw.io, QueekyPaint or Sketchpad, for example — PencilApp just has a pencil, an eraser and a text-typing tool.

While post processing is a necessary part of digital photography, spending countless hours in front of the screen editing photos is not favorite activity for most photographers.

There are loads of Photoshop actions that are available for free download. The problem is that most of the free actions are low quality. However, there are some high-quality actions that are available for free.

Like the Holgarizer:

You can emulate a toy camera effect with this Holgarizer action. It will make your photos look similar to those that would be taken with a Holga camera. This is a great action for experimentation as you'll get some really fun effects of your photos.

Savage Interactive, the creators of Procreate, are currently working on Procreate 2. This idea was formed after celebrating Procreate's success in winning an Apple Design Award earlier in the year. The company's plan for Procreate 2 is to make sure it's better. Well, Obviously. Procreate 2 is planned to feature a variety of graphics accelerated image filters that are built on Open GL. This allows for fast, real-time adjustments that give the user nearly limitless possibilities.

With social media and keen special effects, new app Camerarrific aims for dominance. 

Smartphone users are so addicted to snapping photos and video and sharing them online that Roberts thinks they are hungering for a smartphone camera app that far surpasses its competitors.

“It’s hard to come across an app you can take good quality pictures with,” Roberts said.

Roberts claims that Camerarrific is one of the only camera apps around that features photos at full resolution lossless compression -- with so much color and detail that Roberts could recently pick out tiny dirt patches when he shot the grass in his lawn.

Roberts says the app has 10 times as many photo filters as its nearest competitor, Instagram, and the effects can be previewed live. There’s even the ability to do so-called “green screen” special effects with video. Starting in early 2014, users will be able to tag music to a picture, with the tag automatically linking to songs on iTunes.

The revenue model is to provide Camerarrific as a “freemium,” with money made off purchases of extra features such as additional filters. Enigmatic Flare is sticking to iPhone only at this stage, with Android coming after launch.

On the 'Built-in Apps' page in the iPhone 5s and 5c section of Apple's website, although the actual app screenshots look the same, Apple is using new (flatter) iOS icons for the iLife and iWork suites designed to match the style of iOS 7. The iPhoto and GarageBand icons are identical to the ones that were leaked last week in the iCloud Storage preferences.

GarageBand is free on the App Store for all iOS 7 compatible devices; additional GarageBand instruments and sounds are available with an in-app purchase. iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are free on the App Store for qualifying iOS 7 compatible devices activated on or after September 1, 2013. See http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/ for iOS 7 compatible devices. Downloading apps requires an Apple ID.

It seemed odd that GarageBand was left out of the free software bundle last month. Obviously, Apple is looking to rectify this by moving to a freemium model with the app; offering the core functionality for free but making In App Purchases available for extra instruments and sounds.

As a replacement for the now-defunct Cards app, in line with our report from this morning about printing integration into iPhoto,  Apple will integrate photo book creation and print features directly into iPhoto for iOS. This will offer a more streamlined experience for users, as only one app (which customers are encouraged to download the first time they open the App Store on their new device) deals with photo management, photo editing and printing.

For Keynote, Apple seems to be expanding the flexibility of the suite. The new version will offer 30 different template themes to start from, a substantial increase from the 12 the app currently has. The copy also talks about a new feature for the iMovie app called iMovie Theater. Apple’s description is unclear on exactly what this feature is, but it seems to somehow simplify the process of sharing your movies across your devices.

Also, the website copy reveals new tidbits about the upcoming additions to the suite.

Have you ever found yourself digging through your closet, desperately looking for something to wear? Does it seem like your wardrobe needs an upgrade? If you're like us, then you could definitely use some organization in the fashion department.

Ever since we saw Cher Horowitz's amazing virtual closet, we've craved something similar. And it turns out, our dream of a high-tech closet is closer than we think.

Today, there are countless apps and websites that can help you sort your clothes, keep track of all your garments and ensure that you never run out of new and interesting combinations. Though apps can be really useful, they are also overwhelming, as there are so many. But don't worry, because we've done all the work and narrowed it down to the best five applications to help you organize your closet -- and trust us, there really is something for everyone.

In the beginning there were phones and cameras. We used phones for phone calling and cameras for camera photography. And then it came to pass that in the year 2000 the first camera-phone was sold in Japan, the J-phone. That’s when mobilography entered our lives and it doesn’t seem to be planning on exiting any time soon. But once the euphoria from the ability to take pictures with phones began to dissipate, we’ve noticed that pictures come out from phones kind of… wrong. Not bright enough, not sharp enough. Eventually, folks have figured out how to deal with that, too. Enters the mobile photo editing software. In seven or so years in its existence, there have been probably hundreds, if not thousands, of different apps allowing user to alter mobile photographs as he or she saw fit. And now there’s one that’s actually quite different. It’s called Clashot (available free on the AppStore and on Google Play) and it serves as a mobile platform, rather than just an editing app.

There are a lot of photo book makers out there -- even Flicker joined the fray not too long ago -- but one company that we've been really impressed with ever since  it debuted is Mosaic, and now, Android users can take advantage of the service as well!

Mosaic's trademarks are simplicity and affordability. And thought, admittedly, every photo book app or web service seems to tout that they are both easy to use and affordable, Mosaic truly does make the process incredibly simple: just pick 20 photos from your phone to create a 20 page photo book for only $20.

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you may have noticed that our news editor DL Cade has been running the show as of late. Here's the reason: for the past 3-4 months, I've been hard at work building a new website service - one that we're finally revealing to the world today.

Bokeh, and is a mobile lifeblogging service that lets you save and share all of life's little moments throuh an easy-to-use app and easy-to-browse website. Private journaling apps and services make it easy to remember the days of your life, but generally they’re completely private — there’s no way for family and friends to drop by and follow along with your life.

When he introduced the iPhone and iPad, Steve Jobs asserted the touchscreen devices didn’t need a stylus because humans come with 10 great touchscreen controllers sticking out of our palms: fingers. 

SketchBook Pro

$5 for iPad and Android

SketchBook Pro takes the prize for this category. It’s a comprehensive sketching and painting program from Autodesk, a company with decades of expertise making design software. This powerful app comes with a variety of painting and drawing tools that you can use to create sophisticated works.

If you’re no painting expert, the app is still simple and entertaining to use. It has many different controls for painting effects — pen and brush shapes, sizes, stroke pattern, and so on — but the menu system makes it a breeze to navigate. You never get lost. And while you can use this app with your bare finger, if you use a stylus it will feel almost as if you’re drawing in real life, not digitally on a screen.

SketchBook Pro also has a few extras, like the ability to time-lapse record your painting in progress, that could be used by teachers to show how an expert would create a particular image.

Zen Brush

$3 on iOS

Zen Brush is also an app that has styluses in mind. It’s a particularly good companion for tablet styluses that have a brushlike extension, because the app is about making Japanese-style calligraphy and painting. In some ways it’s more basic than the other apps mentioned here because there are fewer settings; it is aimed at producing images with few colors that feel as if they’ve been painted in ink. You can change the background and ink colors, but the choices are from a limited list.

What this app does well is recreate the sensation of painting with a brush. It also has an elegant interface and built-in sharing options so you can show off your artwork on Twitter. The app’s not for everyone, and you may find its choices limit the artwork you can produce, but it’s definitely worth its $3 price.

Our KakaoTalk for Android update list has been rather short as of late. The last update the app received was just a minor one back in September, after receiving an additional two updates earlier that week.

The mobile app developed by Nik Software (a Google Company). Is currently available for iPhone and iPad, as well as Android devices and even on the web via Google+Photos.

The latest update to iOS and Android includes a new feature called HDR Sacpe, which really does a fabulous job of increasing the dynamic rnage throughout your photo. With a little more tweaking (I'd increase the contrast and maybe do some selective adjustments to bring out the green tones in the grass some more, then lessen the saturation on the oranges in the sunset), this would be a postcard quality shot, all taken and processed on my phone in less than 2 minutes.

It also looks like the latest update has done away with the resolution limitation. Previously, photos were reduced in size if they were larger to begin with. That limited your ability to print with higher resolution images. In the photo above, the image started at 3264 x 2448 and the final product stayed the same — exactly 7.99 megapixels.

Another enhancement in the latest update is a new shadows slider, which you’ll find in the ‘Tune Image’ section. I played around with it a little and the results are great. In photos where you have a lot of detail lost in dark shadows, Snapseed will brighten just those areas to help restore what you otherwise may have missed. Like other effects, it works better with some images and less with others.

Just for fun, here’s another sample before and after image created completely with Snapseed, the HDR Scape effect and the new Shadows slider, taken with my Xperia Z1. Like the previous photo, Snapseed didn’t reduce the resolution of my image. It started at 3140 x 2160 and the final image remained the same.

MacPhun has launched a fully-featured photo editing software suite, called Intensify and Intensify Pro, designed for Macs.
Announced today, Intensify is available for devices running OS X 10.7 (Lion) or higher and brings features like Pro Contrast, Structure, Details and Micro Sharpness for fine-tuning images, as well as more general one-click presets for making the snaps look better with the minimum of fuss.

There’s also support for multiple effect layers and enhancing images with things like smart brushes, gradients and other effects. Naturally, you can also share them directly to social networks.

Intensify for Mac is available from the App store priced at $39.99 and there’s also a Pro version (which can be run as a plugin for Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom, etc. or as standalone app) that costs $59.99 and is available to download from the MacPhun website. It can’t be offered via the Mac App Store as it does not allow the sale of plugins, MacPhun said.

Facebook has updated its social networking app for iOS to version 6.6, bringing with it some additional functionality that desktop users have enjoyed, improving the overall process. After updating, users will be able to add photos to comments they leave on statuses, something that has been available for a little while now on the Web, as well as some other changes.

In addition to the photo ability in commenting, the iOS version of the app has also scored more editing functionality, likewise bringing it inline with the desktop version. Both statuses and comments can be edited using the mobile app, and any changes that have been made via editing will be visible on iPad and iPhone from the changelog accompanying it.

For English specific users, Facebookers can leave icons on friends timelines from the mobile devices. In terms of privacy changes, editing and reviewing them from a smartphone or tablet is now easier with privacy shortcuts in the form of a small lock being placed near the user’s name. Tapping on the icon pulls up the new privacy shortcuts.

Beyond that, changes made to the app include various bug fixes, none of which were detailed. As far as app updates go, version 6.6 isn’t very substantial, but those who use the mobile social networking app often or as their primary means of access will find the changes convenient, boosting their mobile interaction with their Facebook friends.