Toast Your Photos To Perfection With PhotoToaster
PhotoToaster ($0.99) by East Coast Pixels, Inc. is a fast and powerful approach to non-destructive mobile photo editing on your iPhone and iPad.
The App Store is home to many photo editing apps, and this makes it hard for some to stand out above the rest. However, PhotoToaster is definitely a new app that stands out with it's powerful photo processing options and non-destructive editing.
On launch of the app, you see a screen that would be called the "home screen" of the app. From this screen, you can import from the Photo Library, take a new pic with the Camera, log in with your Facebook account, paste in an image from the clipboard, view tutorial videos, email support, get tips, view more products from the developers, and get a link to their Facebook page.
Importing from the Photo Library or Camera will take you to the fun part of the app, which is the photo editing screen. You'll notice that there are two toolbars on the top and bottom. The top will have controls for saving, cropping, undo/redo, tips, and going back to the home screen. The bottom has all the tools for your editing needs.
The crop option gives you landscape, portrait, and square format. When you pick the format you want, you simply move and pinch to zoom the image and get exactly what you want in the crop. This is effective and does actually work as well as the freeform option in some other apps.
The bottom has several options. The Global Presets, Lighting, Effects, Vignette, and Borders.
Global Presets affect the overall look of the image - like filters. They are split up into three categories: Basic, Deluxe, and Supreme. There are 13 effects in each, so there's plenty of choices. Some filters will look great on certain photos while others will not.
As you pick filters, the effect will be instantly applied to the photo. There's no long processing times or lag. Pick an effect and instantly see how the photo looks with it. This makes going through several filters fast and easy.
When you have a filter picked, it's time to customize and tweak it for your liking. The Lighting, Effects, Vignette, and Borders options allow you to view thumbnails of the effects, like you were able to in Global Presets.
You can even switch to the sliders view, where you have complete control. Using the sliders will have the effect appear in real-time as you move it, so there's no processing time. Adjust and it and watch the image change.
At any time, if you decide you don't like the changes you make to an image, you can go back with the undo and redo buttons at the top. You can revert back to the original image if you are displeased and want to start over too. PhotoToaster is non-destructive photo editing and that's always welcome in the photo apps market.
With all of your tweaks and adjustments, you can even save your settings as a new Global Preset. To do this, make sure all your settings are as you want them, and then return to the Global Presets tab. After Supreme, there is "My Presets." Tapping on the "New Preset" will add your current settings to Global Presets to be easily accessed next time.
When you're done with your image, it can be saved to the Camera Roll or shared several different ways. The image can be sent to Tumblr or Facebook, and sent by email and SMS. If you send a photo by email, a link to the app will be included and your settings will go along with it. The SMS option will just copy the image to your clipboard so you can paste it in a message.
I found the interface of PhotoToaster to be clean and efficient. The icon is beautiful as well. This is truly a powerful photo editor and gives you complete control of how your images appear. The best part is that it does all of this fast.
For iPad 2 users, the experience should be even better, as the app takes advantage of the dual core processors in the device.
PhotoToaster is currently on sale for only a dollar for the introductory price, and is a universal app for your iPhone and iPad.
So do yourself a favor and start "toasting" your photos to perfection in PhotoToaster!
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