Picture Show for iPhone

As a photographer, I love the iPhone not only because of its camera but because of the apps available for editing the pictures you take. I've already sung the praises of Camera+ and CameraBag, but today I'm here to talk about a new app I found a few weeks ago called Picture Show. Like any app, it has its hits and misses. Let me guide you through the app and give you my opinion on it. Here we go.

Interface
The interface at first threw me and it definitely took a while to get used to it and to learn all the secrets of it. The icons along the bottom are useful shortcuts to things like "Effect" and "Text" but at least for me, the icons are just a little small. For the first few days, I found myself trying to tap the "Share" button and accidentally hitting the "Settings" button located next to it. A small miss on their part but not a deal breaker. Along the top bar there's two buttons, Shuffle and a "Heart" symbol. The Shuffle symbol randomizes everything from the effect to the border frame used. If you accidentally hit it, you'll have to go through each settings pane and reset everything to your liking. The heart button lets you make presets or "recipes" of a photo you have edited. Kind of nice. Now, the super hidden secret of the user interface is how to change effects on the photo. Like me, you might want to tap the "Effects" button, but that will just give you tilt-shift controls and HDR controls. If you want to change the effect from cross process to IndigoHalo for example, you flick up and down on the photo in front of you to change between effects. Hit and miss. Hit that it eliminates the need for an extra button on what is already a cluttered interface, but miss because it's a hidden way to change filters and it's not very apparent or heavily exposed.

The landing screen where all the editing
occurs. Note the small buttons.

Effects

I'm going to cover both the effects (i.e. tilt-shift) and the filters. In my estimation, this is the absolute best app for doing tilt-shift photography. It has a simple slider for intensity and a draggable circle for where to apply the effect to your photo. The end result is very similar to the effect you'd get from a real DSLR (as long as you know what you're doing) The second effects are the filters you can apply to your photo. There's the usual suspects such as Holga and Lomo and then there's silly ones like Andy Warhol popart and a mirroring effect that mirrors your photo side to side. For me, a photographer, I tend to favor the useful filters such as lomo and holga, but if you like to do silly things to your photos, there's plenty of filters that make your photos look more fun.

Example of tilt-shift

Sharing
Picture Show offers a multitude of sharing options along with the basic ones like email and saving to your Camera Roll. It offers Facebook (obviously) Twitter, Flickr. You can also check out the Picture Show Flickr group where you can upload your own shots and interact with the community at large. There's also Tumblr and Blogger (Yay!) as well as email and exporting to the Camera Roll like I mentioned earlier.

Conclusion
My final thoughts on the app are one of happiness. This app is a mainstay of the busy photography app segment, like Toyota is to the car market. Picture Show is easy enough for amateurs looking to dabble in iPhone-photography and are looking for a good app to test the waters with, but it's also good enough for people like myself who know themselves around a camera and know how to change the look of a photo. It's a good intersection into the two worlds of people who are likely to buy this app. The price is also a win at $1.99. For me, I bought this app as an impulse purchase because of the price and some pretty positive reviews. If you buy this app looking to spice up the quality of your photos, you won't be disappointed. {App Store Link}