Review: Corel Paint It! Show- Smudging Never Looked So...Good?

Overview The advent of the iPad immediately commenced the demise of many product categories. The ‘magical’ device promised to be a portable internet device, eBook, video and music player, alarm clock, toy, gaming machine, magazine, newspaper, organizer, productivity device… and on. One of these original selling points was the digital picture frame feature. This often forgotten, native feature enables the iPad owner to prop up the device and have it rifle through your library of pics, similar to a computer screen saver. Corel Paint it! Show is a unique new app available for the likeable price of $0.99 that offers a whole new view on the digital picture frame idea. Created by none other than Corel (shocker), the producers of mega-popular software titles such as CorelDRAW, WinZIP, WinDVD and Word Perfect, Corel Paint it! Show brings a taste of these media-centric programs to the iPad. Features At it’s core, Corel Paint it! Show is a photography filter application. Grab your own photos from your iPad or Facebook library and you can apply any of five filters: Oil, Modern, Illustration, Impressionist and Pen & Ink. When you apply these filters, instead of getting a ‘processing’ or ‘rendering’ screen and waiting, you get to watch the program paint your picture right in front of your eyes. I guess to call it ‘painting’ is kind of a stretch. You actually do see the brush strokes paint the different colors in real time, but after a while, these strokes just kind of push the pixels around until it gets more and more defined. At some point, you realize that Corel Paint it! Show serves double-duty. If you fill your queue with the pictures of your liking, you can mount your tablet and use it as an attention getting photo frame. No need to sit and wait until the picture lamely slides or dissolves to the next. No, watch as your blurry Halloween Party snap goes from a blank canvas to a work of art. So if the first duty of this program is to serve as a digital picture frame, the next is to serve as an actual photo filtering app. For some strange reason, I have always been a sucker for image filters. It is probably because I wasn’t blessed with much talent in the art department, but I think it is amazing that you can snap a photo, click a button and then pretend that you painted a picture. You can use any of the five filters on any photo to turn it into a potential work of art. You can either wait until the filter is done ‘painting’ or else capture it in an earlier, less defined state. At this point you can save it, email it, or upload it to Facebook. It’s always nice to have options. The Good The painting feature will not duplicate a real artist’s brush, but the effect is very pleasant. If you don’t get stuck on the ‘how does it do that!’ you will be mesmerized by the slow evolution from clean white canvas to finished work. The Facebook integration is also a nice addition (and, good business decision). Just don’t try and pass it off as a real oil painting though, because then you will remember that you friended your middle school art teacher- and she knows that your unicorn was indiscernible from an elephant. She will then call your bluff and you will get teased for being friends with your middle school art teacher. Not fun. Did I mention that you can play music in the background while using this as a photo frame? Yes! The Bad If you just want to use this for the filtering capabilities, I couldn’t figure out how to just apply the filter and be done with it. You have to kind of watch it and wait until it is done or as done as you want it to be and then save it. It would be nice to just apply a filter to all of the pictures in your queue and then come back later to a finished product. Are names with exclamation marks awkward to anyone else? Especially in the middle of the name.  Geesh. The Verdict Corel Paint it! Show deserves a look from anyone interested in using the iPad as a digital photo frame or image manipulating device. The nice pack of features, well executed paint feature and integration with Facebook make this app a should buy. I give it two thumbs! up. Follow Me.

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