New iPhone Photo App: ToonPAINT
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 10:00AM | Glyn Evans 
"ToonPAINT allows you to easily create awesome looking cartoon-paintings with your own photos."
Description from the AppStore: Even if you have never drawn or painted before, ToonPAINT sets you up for quick success by providing a "MagiSketch" that you can simply color-in. It's as easy as "paint-by-numbers", but using your own personal images. Unlike other photography apps, ToonPAINT is not just an image filter -- it's a smart-painting application that enables you to express your creativity and obtain compelling results without requiring you to take Art classes.
Simply import a photo, create an "automagic" sketch of the photo, color-in at your leisure, and you're done!
FEATURES:
- IMPORT: Import pictures from your iPhone or iPod touch, or even take a snapshot with the iPhone's built-in camera.
- MAGISKETCH: State-of-the-Art image processing algorithms process your input image to create a customizable sketch, fully automatically. You can create many exciting effects just by adjusting the basic and advanced MagiSketch settings.
- PAINTING: You can color-in the MagiSketch by painting with your finger to create amazing images within minutes.
- NAVIGATION: While you paint, you can pinch-zoom and pan to give you the most control over your painting.
- HELP/HINTS: New to painting? We've got your back! When you first use ToonPAINT, help screens instruct you about the functionality of the app. For more advanced users, we provide in-app hints and tips.
AppStore Link: ToonPAINT - Price £1.19/$1.99
Editors comments: This is a nice app that lets you turn your iPhone photos in to cartoon like images or sketches, and as my video below shows, it is easy and quick to use.
In this quick video overview, you can see me selecting and opening a photo from the camera roll, and have the app convert it to a sketch. Once loaded you can select either basic or advanced editing features and the size of the paint brush (if you decide to colour your sketch). A double tap of the colour blobs allows you to select a new colour to paint away with, whilst selecting the white blob lets you erase any colour mistakes you make and reapply, or the bomb to remove all the paint from the image. When done, simply tap the floppy disk icon to save your artwork.
I have to say I really like this app, and the way it turns your photos in to realistic looking sketches, however, it has one very BIG negative point, and that is the file output size which is a very poor and odd size of just 486 x 364.
Below is the final sketch produced during the video demo.
Below is one of my favourite conversions of an early morning shot taken with Vint B&W after an overnight snow fall.
Above: The original photo taken with Vint B&W
Above: The same shot given the ToonPAINT sketch lookSo what do I think of ToonPAINT?
Overall this is a nice app that is badly let down by it file out put size, but if combined with an app like Strip Designer [formally Lifestrips], then you could create your very own comic strips right on your iPhone.
Reader Comments (15)
I have spoken to the dev's & they are aware & have full resolution on the list !
PS... As well if you view their website I have asked them to make their Cartoon Video software to iPhone app & it too is on the schedule =)
saw it, loved it, bought it!
thanks!
Loving this App. so simple to use, and fantastic results
Bought it and am very pleased with the results. Really works as advertised
Sigh, I needed another app like I need a hole in my head but I went ahead and dropped the $2 on this one anyway. Looks slick, fun & full of good potential. I'll give it a full try when I'm done syncing.
Despite the cheesy UI, low output size, and no UNDO button, I really like this app. Why is it that some of my favorite, or at least most reliable apps, suffer from poor, downright embarassing UI's, App Icons or Cheesy add-ons (ie. Photogene's HALL OF SHAME, so unneccesary). I would love to see a higher rez output in this app, as well as an UNDO button, an eye dropper for color and possibly an optional black frame outline to really complete the cartoon effect.
THUMBS UP!
Looks not too bad. I guess it's the equivalent of Illustrators Live Trace command.
If this app had full res and an undo button then I would definitely have already purchased it. I will wait for an update before I buy.
Love this app...one of my faves. Just needs better output res., eye dropper and undo. But I wouldn't add anything after that....that would make it too complicated. I like this cause it's simple.
I've already used this app a half dozen times or so since I got it and I love the results. Will be glad when full rez comes to it. But in the meantime, I'm getting Life Strips to go with it and see what kind of fun I can create from the two of them together. Should be good for some laughs.
The app is solid, quick and has exceptional results. Everyone i show is truly amazed at how hand drawn the images look. Hopefully the full res verion comes soon, as i've photo-printed a pic i created and you can clearly see the pixels. An "undo" button ia also a must, and if the authors can leverage" some of the UI friendliness/usability of ColorSplash (another great app) then this would be a full 5 star app.
I'm also considering grabbing Life Strips and putting together some fun "comics".
Brilliant. Has wonderful power...even on a pair of shoes...check out my pic on flikr.
I've been playing with the app for several days now and it's great with a few exceptions.
Undo is all or nothing. It would be very nice to be able to undo just the last brushstroke.
I also have problems resizing and dragging the image. It seems to work sometimes but not others. When it doesn't work, instead of zooming or moving the image, I get a long streak of color where it shouldn't be. Also, since tapping the image zooms out, I often find that when I start to swipe my finger to paint, the image zooms out instead. Same thing happens sometimes when I try to reposition the image. Instead of dragging, it zooms out. It would be nice if there was a zoom lock feature, as well as a way to implement scroll bars to reposition the image, rather than moving the canvas with paintbrushes.
I just bought Photoshop Elements 8 for my computer, yet it's the $2 apps on my iPhone that I use more. It's a weird world.
Awesome app! I agree that the zoom and dragging is odd - I too get the color instead of zoom or drag.
What would be helpful is a color on/off toggle to allow you to drag and resize then turn on the color tools.
Very cool app however.
Maybe add the ability to add comic book style speech bubbles and captions?