Create Beautiful Monochromatic Images Using Photone
Photone ($0.99) by Christopher Brierley Jones is a simple photo editing app with a single function: creating monochrome images in a wide variety of colors.
When Photone is first opened, it displays a color palette that is used to choose your preferred toning color. Choosing a color is as simple as dragging your finger around the screen.
Purples and pinks are in the upper left, oranges are in the top right. Blues are in the bottom left, and greens are in the bottom right. As you get closer to the middle, colors become less saturated, until you reach a neutral shade of gray. All of the colors meld together, allowing you to pick from an entire color palette.
You’ll need to keep the layout of the colors in mind, because once you’ve chosen a photo from the Camera Roll, you can’t go back to this color screen. However, you can still change the color of your photo with your finger on the screen, there just isn't a precise guide to quickly choose the color you want.
Photone is not a color filter, so your shadows stay black and highlights stay white. It was a more subtle shift than other apps with colored filters. Photone changes the colors of your photograph without causing a loss in quality.
When you’ve picked a color for your picture, it can be saved to your photo library or sent in an email.
I have a lot of photo apps with this common functionality already built in and I’m sure that many of you reading this do too. Photone does what it says it does, and does it well, but it probably doesn’t warrant purchasing if you already have an app with tonal shift available.
However, if you don’t have a lot of photography apps, this is potentially a great (and affordable) addition to apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic.
I’d also like to add that this app, like many other photography apps, requires Location Services to access the Photo Library. This is a part of the iOS API, and Photone will not function without Location Services enabled. Photone is not collecting any personal information, but if you are the type to keep that disabled, this app is probably a poor choice.
