photo editing

Pic Stitch for Windows Phone 8 - Joe Belfiore recommended

Apps

By George Ponder, Friday, Apr 26, 2013 at 6:09 pm

Pic Stitch is a new Windows Phone 8 photography app that has seen a bit of success over on iOS. It is part photo editor, part collage maker, and part photo sharing app. It caught the eye of Microsoft's Joe Belfiore and we have to admit, it does make a nice first impression.

Fotor for Windows Phone 8, a simple yet effective photo editor

Apps

By George Ponder, Tuesday, Apr 23, 2013 at 10:19 am

Looking for a simple photo editor for your Windows Phone 8 device? You will want to take a gander at Fotor.

Fotor is a nicely laid out photo editor that will let you edit new images or pull the older photos out of your Pictures Hub to edit. The tools range from cropping, exposure, to special effects. The best part of it all... Fotor is a free Windows Phone 8 app.

Photo Shader receives a few edits as it moves to Windows Phone 8

Apps

By George Ponder, Thursday, Feb 21, 2013 at 8:57 am

Photo Shader has been around for some time now and Windows Phone 8 version was recently released over in the Store. Along with making a jump to Windows Phone 8, Photo Shader also received a few new features such as Live Tile support, pinch to zoom, a few more effects filters and a few design changes.

Photo Shader wasn't a shabby photo editor to begin with and the updates keeps things nicely in focus.

Mangatronic goes for that Japanese comic look for your photos

Apps

By George Ponder, Monday, Feb 4, 2013 at 8:48 am

Mangatronic is a Windows Phone photography app that gives your pictures a comic styled effect, similar to what you would find in Japanese Manga drawings.

Mangatronic converts your photo into a sketch drawing and offers twenty-five effects to apply to the drawing. Mangatronic has potential but the interface needs to be a little more user friendly and more detail needs to be preserved in the final image. It's worth a try but also needs a little fine tuning.

Fhotoroom: Windows App Review

Apps

By George Ponder, Thursday, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:36 am

There a plenty of photo editing options available for your Windows Phone. One such option is Fhotoroom. Fhotoroom is a nicely featured photo editor that has recently migrated from our Windows Phone Store to the Windows Store on your Microsoft Surface and Windows 8 PC.

We took the Windows RT version of Fhotoroom out for a test drive recently and found Fhotoroom to be a capable photo editor with potential but with some room for improvement.

Windows Phone App Review: CamVintagizer

Apps

By George Ponder, Tuesday, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:14 am

CamVintagizer is a photo effects app for your Windows Phone that allows you to apply some interesting special effects to your photos. If my count is correct, CamVintagizer has thirty eight effects spread across nine categories. Effects can be stacked and edited images can be shared on Facebook or saved to your Windows Phone.

CamVintagizer is a nice photo effects app for your Windows Phone and nice addition to your photo editing library.

SoMee for Windows Phone updated and free for a limited time

By George Ponder, Monday, Aug 27, 2012 at 1:11 pm

SoMee is a photo editing app for your Windows Phone that was recently updated to version 1.3 and it appears the $1.99 paid version is now free for a limited time.

SoMee lets you crop and apply various filters, effects and frames to your pictures. SoMee will also let you share your photos on Facebook, Twitter or simply save them to your Pictures Hub.

Windows Phone App Review: Fhotoroom version 2.0

By George Ponder, Monday, Aug 20, 2012 at 9:18 am

Fhotoroom v2 brings a new look to the photo editing app

Fhotoroom is a popular photo editing app for your Windows Phone that includes a Photo Sharing Network that throws a social networking twist into the pot. We mentioned over the weekend that the app was recently updated to version 2 which brings a new menu and user interface layout to table.

It's not as if the old layout of Fhotoroom sucked wind but the new version moves away from the multiple page editor to a single page layout. The results is a larger preview image and one stop editing. The Photo Sharing Network may not appeal to everyone but if you're looking for a straight forward photo editor with plenty of filters, Fhotoroom is worth consideration.

Windows Phone App Review: PhotoPatcher

Apps

By George Ponder, Thursday, Jul 26, 2012 at 8:43 am

PhotoPatcher is a photo editing tool that lets you clone out unwanted portions of your photographs. Cloning is where you take a sampling of one area in your photo and paste it on top of another area. The end result acting as if you've erased that unwanted portion from the photo.

PhotoPatcher is very similar to Smartest Eraser but instead of automatically cloning (or erasing) out the area, you have do everything manually. Some may not like the manual approach but it gives you a little more control over what stays, what goes and how the end product will look. PhotoPatcher is a nice tool to remove small unwanted items from your photos (e.g. foot in the corner, dust spec, etc.) but isn't ideal for removing larger objects (e.g. entire persons).

Windows Phone App Review: SoMee

Apps

By George Ponder, Tuesday, Jul 24, 2012 at 8:58 am

SoMee is a simply yet creative photo editing app for your Windows Phone. SoMee not only lets you crop and apply various filters, effects, and frames to your photos but you can also upload and share your finished products.

SoMee comes in two flavors, free with ads and paid without ads. SoMee isn't a powerhouse photo editor along the lines of Thumba but for what it does, it does it very well.

Pictures Lab for Windows Phone edits price

By George Ponder, Monday, Jul 16, 2012 at 2:35 pm

Pictures Lab is a very nice photo editing app for your Windows Phone. The app offers a wide selection of editing tools that includes filters, borders, exposure adjustments and more. The app is in the top five photography apps on the Marketplace and has recently had it's price cropped. The original $1.99 price tag on Pictures Lab is dropped to $.99 making the app a steal of a deal.

Pictures Lab has Facebook and Twitter integration to make social sharing of your photos easier. Settings allow you to set the image quality on images you share and save. Plus you can add an artist name (e.g. copyright) to the image's EXIF file. plus you can set the image quality in the app's settings.

If you're not sure about Pictures Hub, there is a free trial version available to let you try before you buy. The full version is running $.99 and you can find Pictures Lab here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Windows Phone App Review: Photo Light

Apps

By George Ponder, Tuesday, Jul 3, 2012 at 9:59 am

Nope. The Windows Phone app Photo Light isn't a flashlight app to use when taking pictures. It's a lite photo editor for your Windows Phone that isn't too shabby.

The main menu of Photo Light has five tiles that give you options to load an existing image from your Pictures Hub, launch your camera to capture a new image to edit, display the EXIF file information on images, access the app's settings and view the About screen.

Just a quick note about the EXIF information is that not only will Photo Light display the data contained in the image's EXIF file but it will also map it out if GPS data is present. For those not familiar, the EXIF file is short for Exchangeable Image File that is a metadata file that contains all the information your camera collects as it takes a picture. The amount of information varies from camera to camera but in general, the EXIF will contain camera settings, image size, date/time taken, and more.

Now back to Photo Light.

Nokia's Creative Studio gets updated to version 1.3

By George Ponder, Friday, Jun 15, 2012 at 12:31 pm

Another non-detailed update has hit the Windows Phone Marketplace. The other day similar updates hit Photosynth and the Dark Knight Rises apps. Today, it's the Nokia Creative Studio app.

There really isn't anything noticeable beyond the change in the version display (version 1.2 to version 1.3) and it is likely that the update makes a few under the hood adjustments that improves performance.

For those not familiar with Creative Studio, it is available on all Nokia Lumia Windows Phones and is a basic photo editing app. You can take and edit photographs through Creative Studios, edit existing photos from your Pictures Hub and create panorama images. Creative Studios has special effects, filters and your basic editing tools (crop, contrast, exposure, etc.) that you can apply to your photos.

You can find Creative Studios on your Nokia Lumia Windows Phone from the Marketplace app under the Nokia Collection.

Thanks, ej lee, for the tip!

Windows Phone App Review: Fantasia Painter

Apps

By George Ponder, Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 8:50 am

The other day we shared a list of the best photography apps for your Windows Phone. We knew that there were other worthy photo apps out there and one such app that was mentioned prominently in the comments was Fantasia Painter.

On the one hand the Fantasia Painter is a photo editing app. On the other hand Fantasia Painter is a creative suite to give your photos a serious splash of color. On top of all that, if painting is more your cup of tea Fantasia Painter can handle that as well.

It's really hard to tell how many editing tools Fantasia Painter has (the Marketplace description says 45+ but that feels a little low) but it ranks amongst the top photography Windows Phone apps on the amount of control you have over editing your pictures. Fantasia Painter is an impressive photography app for your Windows Phone and it can be a little intimidating. Once you get the hang of the controls and all the editing possibilities, Fantasia Painter can really make your photos shine.

Share a photo representing Spring and win a Windows Phone UK mug

Windows Phone News

By Rich Edmonds, Friday, Apr 20, 2012 at 9:53 am

The Windows Phone UK team are giving away four Windows Phone mugs to those who send in the best photos representing Spring. With the constant weather alterations we're currently experiencing, now would be a perfect time to get snapping to win your own brew server. The winning photos will be selected based on originality and how eye catching they are compared to other submissions - check the above photo for inspiration.

To put forward your entry, simply follow the Windows Phone UK team on Twitter and tweet them your photo. Be sure to include what app you used (if any) to add effects. On the official announcement post the team have encouraged the use of photo editing apps for Windows Phone. There are a number available, some which we've recommended ourselves. Also, why not check out our Windows Phone camera tutorial to make sure you get the most out of your camera's performance?

You've got until April 26th (17:00) to get your submissions in and note that this competition is open to UK residents only. Check out the terms and conditions for more information.

Source: Windows Phone UK

Nokia releases Creative Studio for Lumia Windows Phones

By Rich Edmonds, Saturday, Mar 17, 2012 at 9:14 am

Nokia has released Creative Studio for Windows Phone, available to all Lumia handset owners. This app is a simple (but free) photo editing suite that enables users to alter and then share photos taken with the smartphone. A number of effects, filters and tools are available to turn that snap shot into a more visually appealing photo.

What's also neat is the patented technology used in the app which allows live, in-camera effects to be active so users are able to see what the end result would be without taking the shot. As well as this, we also have a panorama feature, which many desire as built-in functionality. Hopefully, with the recent news of said functionality coming to Lumia handsets, we shouldn't need to rely on an app soon enough.

You can download Creative Studio on your Lumia Windows Phone.

Via: Techin5

LG releases Photo Exhibition for Windows Phone

By Rich Edmonds, Tuesday, Mar 13, 2012 at 5:08 pm

LG has released another app for their Windows Phone OEM store collection titled Photo Exhibition. As the name suggests, the app is a photo editing tool that enables the user to create humorous effects, add filters / frames, and more. Clipart and effects can be applied to any photo that is imported from the library.

Photo Exhibition also sports Facebook sharing, so friends will be able to see your handy work. Of course, should you not have an LG Windows Phone, there are a handful of decent photo manipulation apps available for all, including Pictures Lab.

Via: Plaffo (translation)

Aviary photo SDK coming to Windows Phone, featured on Nokia

By Daniel Rubino, Thursday, Feb 9, 2012 at 6:08 pm

Good news for your shutterbugs out there, Aviary (Aviary.com), a photo-editing startup company will be releasing an SDK within the next two months for Windows Phone. The company specializes in image enhancements and providing effects for on-board photo editing on mobile phones. The system is already available on iOS, Android and web applications, so Windows Phone seems like the next logical step.

The company's decision was partially driven by Nokia's focus on photography, especially their use of Carl-Zeiss lenses. According to Paul Murphy, a vice president at Aviary, “At a hardware level they’ve just done everything right".

Interestingly, Paul Murphy is also an ex-Microsoftie and used to work under current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, so we imagine having some of those connections played a roll too. The SDK will be free to anyone for all Windows Phones but will be first "showcased" on Nokia to show the potential of their software. While the SDK is free, the company brings in revenue by offering more premium features at a cost to developers. Finally, the company has close to 400 partners which they hope to leverage in getting more Windows Phone photo apps created.

Good news all around and we look forward to seeing Aviary tech in future software packages from devs.

Source: GeekWire; Eiffel Tower image via Shutterstock; Thanks, Stephen M., for the link!

Pictures Lab updated to version 4.0 bringing festive effects and more language support

Apps

By Rich Edmonds, Monday, Dec 5, 2011 at 6:19 am

Pictures Lab has been updated to version 4.0, two months after hitting 3.0 with the Mango refresh. Much like Thumba Photo Editor, Pictures Lab is a must have for those who wish to edit photos on-the-fly. Features including Pictures Hub integration and direct camera access make the app extremely useful with the introduction of more APIs in Windows Phone 7.5. Now, in 4.0 we have two new festive effects that can be applied to photos and a handful of translations for foreign markets. A full run through:

Added the "add another effect" functionality which allows to stack effects and borders on top of each other and therefore combine multiple effects.
Added two Christmas borders and one for New Year
Added Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian translations.
Fixed issues with Bulge and Tilt Shift effect.
Other minor bug fixes and many little tweaks.

You can download Pictures Lab from the Marketplace for $0.99 (£0.79).

CleverPhoto - Review

Apps

By George Ponder, Thursday, Oct 13, 2011 at 12:21 am

Looking for a photo editor for your Windows Phone? CleverPhoto is a simple, yet comprehensive photo editor for your Windows Phone. The user interface is straight forward and the tools offer you plenty of options to fine tune your images.

When you first launch CleverPhoto you are given the choice of launching the camera app to capture your photo or select a picture to edit from you Pictures Library. Once you've captured or selected a photo, you're taken directly to the editing chamber.

To see what all you can do with CleverPhoto, snap on past the break.