TouchUp for iPad : Paint Effects on your Photos with your Fingers [Review]

TouchUp for iPad

TouchUp for iPad

TouchUp for iPad [rating: 4/5]

When one normally envisages photoshop style effects and the workflow associated with them it generally revolves around the entire image, or a selection we have made with a simple rectangle or “lasso” tool.

TouchUp for iPad lets us use our fingers to paint effects on, or off of our images and photos, as well as layer further effects over one another. So how did we find the concept in every day use?

TouchUp is a well presented app. The people at RogueSheep have a relatively short history in apps. But then so do most software houses. In that time they have managed to put out apps of a definitive quality. TouchUp for iPad is no exception. RogueSheep have also won few awards. So we should be in good hands.

The main desktop of the app is rather hokey for my tastes, but works well. You can tap little photos of effects areas, or work areas, or your gallery to manipulate your workflow and import and export images.

The workspace when editing an image is clean and tidy, and best of all makes sense.

TouchUp for iPad_2When you are done editing there are all the usual options for Twitter, Facebook or email to share your work. You can also import images from flikr to work on initially, as well as from your own photo library.

One of the things I really like about the app is that you can very easily recreate those trendy black and white shots with key objects colorized. In one of their tutorial videos on their web site RogueSheep illustrate this by painting color back into a street shot that has been made black and white, so that the traffic lights end up being the only coloured object in the picture.

But your creativity can go much further than that. Base effects included in TouchUp are as follows : Black and White, Sepia, Blur, Contrast, Brightness, Temperature, Saturation, Tint, Hue Shift, Color Paint Brush, Tint Paint Brush. And as I’ve already said you can layer and combine those.

It needn’t end there either, as Rogue Sheep offer more effects online as downloadable options. For cash, of course! But some of those are quite nifty. Like Dodge and Burn for $1.99.

How you combine and use those effects is up to you. And at any point you can go back and forth between the various layers of effects you have painted on your image, and tweak settings.

All the menus are easy to understand iPad OS popups that allow you to scroll though options, expand settings areas and twiddle widgets to get just the hue, brightness or strength you want to give an effect.

One niggle I had was that there are no controls for cropping or rotating your images. So you may need to use another app to get your photo prepared for TouchUp. By version 4.0, which is where TouchUp for iPad is right now, I would have expected that option to be in there. Perhaps in version 5.0?

Right now TouchUp is $2.99. And at that price I’d say it is money well spent.

Pros

  • Cool Concept; Painting effects with your fingers is fun.
  • Easy to Use.
  • Nice User Interface.

Cons

  • No crop or rotate.

$2.99 (View in iTunes)
Category: Photography
Updated: Oct 30, 2010
Current Version: 4
4
24.3 MB
Language: English
Seller: RogueSheep
© 2010 RogueSheep Incorporated
Rated 4+
Requirements:Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later

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