By TAN KIT HOONG and CHONG JINN XIUNG
bytz@thestar.com.my
Once you've got all your video footage or taken your photos, you might want to edit them - especially with iOS, you have quite a robust list of apps for photo editing.
Unfortunately, while photo editing apps are easy to find on both Android and iOS, we really couldn't find any satisfactory video editing app that we could recommend.
iPhoto (iOS)
Announced together with the new, 3rd generation iPad (although it works on the iPhone as well), iPhoto is a pretty robust photo editing app that allows you to achieve a variety of effects.
SMART BRUSHES: iPhoto for iOS has a host of effects brushes for selectively adjusting parts of your image.
The tools available are quite extensive - you get exposure, brightness, and colour controls, and also some pretty good monochrome options.
The interface aims to be easy to use, but without a bit of tutorial, you'll probably only be scratching the surface of some of the features that iPhoto has.
The one big advantage of iPhoto is that it can edit photos up to 19-megapixel in size, and your adjustments are non-destructive until you save it as a separate copy.
Snapseed (iOS/PC/Mac)
Snapseed is an app from Nik Software, a company already well established in desktop PC photo editing software.
Like Nik's other desktop PC photo editing applications, Snapseed allows for a unique editing system called the "control point" system - to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and colour balance for any given part of the photo, you just add a control point and then adjust the appropriate sliders.
CONTROL: Snapseed's main claim to fame is the ability to easily adjust areas using a system known as "control points."
Control points only affect the specific area or colour and you can widen or narrow the coverage of these control points.
All in all, Snapseed is a pretty powerful piece of software, but it is missing layer support.
Android users can rejoice, because Nik Software is in the process of producing Snapseed for Android as well.
Photoshop Touch (iOS/Android)
Not to be confused with the free version called Photoshop Express, Photoshop Touch works on iPad and Android Tablets only and costs US$9.99 (about RM30).
LAYERS: Photoshop Touch has many useful features carried over from the desktop version, including layer support, but is limited to images at a maximum resolution of 1600x1600-pixels.
Photoshop Touch (PSTouch) delivers quite a useful subset of features from the full-featured desktop PC version, including layers and many other very powerful tools.
However, the biggest drawback of PSTouch is that it only allows a maximum edit size of 1,600 x 1,600-pixels, which is reasonable for the Web, but not good enough if you're thinking of making large prints from your work.
TouchRetouch (iOS/Android)
Ever found yourself wondering if you could remove an unwanted element from a photo but don't know how to use Photoshop?
ERASE AWAY: TouchRetouch lets you easily remove unwanted elements from your photos.
Touch Retouch allows you to clone out parts of a photo and it is very simple to do so. Just load a picture you want to edit on the app, mark the area you want to remove, press start and the object will then disappear like magic.
You have several tools to aid you in selection of areas you want to edit including a lasso tool and brush for finer selections. Don't worry if you make mistakes though as you have unlimited undo and redo actions, so you can adjust your photo as much as you want until it is just right.
The app is available for just 99 cents (RM3).
Photaf Panorama Pro (Android)
Sometimes it can be difficult to capture the entirety of a city or a beautiful landscape with your smartphone's camera but with a little help from an app you can get that beautiful panorama.
Photaf lets you take seamless 360° panoramic photos and helps you know how steady the shot is using your phone's gyroscope to help keep the panorama straight.
TAKE THAT LONG SHOT: Want to take those long panoramas? Then you need Photaf Panorama Pro.
You don't need to press any buttons whatsoever as you turn the camera as it will do the snapping for you.
Once you are done, the app will automatically stitch pictures together and save it for later viewing.
For the best results you need to keep your hands steady and take pictures in consistent lighting. The app is available for Android devices only for US$3.96 (RM12).
PicsPlayPro - FX Photo Editor (Android)
Now if you really want to give your photos that extra bit of shine then FX Photo Editor is the app for you.
It comes with a plenty of options with tools to adjust your photo's exposure, colour, white balance, curves and histogram.
Other than that you can do more basic editing like rotate, crop and add borders to your photos.
If making individual adjustments just isn't your thing use one of many presets (at least 110 variations) to give your image a very different look and feel.
This comprehensive photo editor is available for Android devices for US$3.54 (RM11).
iMovie (iOS)
A powerful video editing tool for iPads and iPhones, iMovie is probably the first application you'd think of for editing on the iOS.
GOING NATIVE: iMovie works well on the new iPad and the iPad 2, although it could do with a few additions like multiple audio track support and more title options.
The app allows you to add titles, trim videos, join them together and add transitions.
With the latest update you even get to make a trailer for your videos.
It's all pretty powerful and once done you can save the video up to the maximum 1080p quality in your Camera Roll, or upload it directly to YouTube.
Grab iMovie for US$4.99 (RM15) on the App Store.
Avid Studio (iOS)
Also going for US$4.99 (RM15), Avid Studio is in many ways more powerful in a few important ways than iMovie.
While the interface looks similar to iMovie on the iPad, Avid Studio adds a Storyboard view with thumbnails of the same size to make it easier to rearrange clips in the Timeline.
SMART FEATURES: Avid Studio's interface looks a bit like iMovie, but has an additional Storyboard view for easier arranging of video clips.
Avid also has more advanced titling effects and finer control of transition effects than iMovie does, as well as frame-accurate trimming.
The only catch with Avid Studio is that it only allows you to save videos with a maximum quality of 720p.
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