Overview
If there is another app out there that can show off the phenomenal capabilities of the iPhone's touchscreen, I don't know what it is. I demonstrated Photoboard to a non-iPhone using friend - I have one left... ;) and his response was... "Wow! Now that is cool." Photoboard is an app that allows you to manipulate and view photos in a creative way.
Functionality
When you start up Photoboard, you'll see the two screens above. You can immediately start playing with their provided tutorial image. Squeeze it, pinch it, drag it and twist it. It's pretty nice. There are just two things to know:
- You can do anything with the image as far as movement goes.
- Pressing down on the screen and holding brings up the interactive dial.
You're given the option of tweaking the settings (gear icon) - this allows you to change the apps background and adjust its transparency, you can add more photos from your photo album (+ icon), group the ones on your photoboard (stacked image icon), or take a high-quality screen shot (camera icon).
In addition, you can tap and hold the screen while on top of an image, which will bring up options to to either remove the image, or group it with other existing ones.
You'll get a little "add" happy at first as you start playing and suddenly realize you've run out of background space to tap. In the bottom right image, you can see that when I tapped on the background, my interactive dial was floating off the screen. I couldn't get to the + icon. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that by tapping and swiping on the background that all the images moved over and gave me more background space to work.
In addition, when you're running out of room, just tap and hold on an image and then "Group" all the images into a stack. You can then drag this stack out of the way and begin playing with more images.
Review
Photoboard is really a fun app. I can see photographers or photo addicts loving this. It gives you an opportunity to show off photos and your iPhone's abilities at the same time.
I did have the app crash on me a few times. When I relaunched it, all my added images were gone. Arrgh. When the app is closed properly, however, all your previous images remain on the board.
As far as
usefulness, I can't decide if the app is more fun than it is useful or perhaps best described as eye candy and an app that contributes to iPhone hype (see friend's comment above). I'd love to have this capability with my desktop Mac - across all my applications. The ability to drag, drop, twist, pinch, etc., is really cool.
I thought the camera icon for the screen shot was a little misleading. With the app being about photos, you'd think that this icon would allow you to take a picture and add it to the board. However, there is currently no way to take a picture from within the app. That's a little curious.
Summary
Photoboard is for the iPhone what a rainbow is after a spring shower. It's captivating and memorable to look at and appreciate. However, a rainbow isn't something that's actually useful. This app has me wanting more while at the same time standing back in appreciation of its capabilities. I feel like a respectful spectator more than anything else. Hats off for the wizardry behind the creation of this app!
