App Review: FX Photo Studio HD for iPad

Many of you are already familiar with FX Photo Studio for the iPhone. But Macphun LLC, the designers of FX Photo Studio, have just released FX Photo Studio HD for the iPad. Like FX Photo Studio, FX Photo Studio HD provides a good variety of special effect filters that can be applied to your pictures, such as pencil paint, glowing edges, b&w magazine, etc. In addition to the filters, you can rotate and flip the picture that you’re working on, perform gamma correction, and crop the photo. When cropping the photo, you can do a freehand crop, assign a fixed ratio to the crop, and can even perform a crop at a rotated angle in increments of 1 and 5 degrees.
 
And if the set of filters that you have available isn’t enough for you, you can purchase sets of additional filters in app.

Overall, I found the app to be extremely responsive and the interface to be pretty intuitive. You’re afforded a preview of the filter effect before fully applying it, thus saving you some processing time if you don’t like what you see, and pictures can be saved at a resolution of up to 2048 x 2048. There are also options to undo or redo any given effect if you’ve already applied it to the photo. You also have the option to e-mail or post your picture directly to Facebook and Twitter if you don’t want to save the photo to the iPad.
 
There are, however, a few downsides. First, the filters aren’t customizable. You can’t scale how much or how intense of an effect you wish to apply. You’re also stuck working in landscape orientation, which for some people (including myself) isn’t too much of an issue. If you wish to buy the add-on filters, there’s no way of knowing the price of the add-ons before clicking “purchase”, which makes me feel a little uneasy. I usually like to know the price of something before I confirm that I want it. And finally, this is an app that needs to be repurchased for the iPad. So if you’ve bought the iPhone version of the app, you need to separately purchase the iPad one.
 
In summary, this is a good app with a clean interface that’s very responsive if not particularly customizable. I give it 3 and a half stars.
 
AppStore Link: FX Photo Studio - Price: $2.99/£1.79

Additional filter packs are available in app for $0.99/£0.59

Comments

[SCW]

I personally have had enough of this money sucking developer. He use release good apps some of which he's even removed from the AppStore after buying so no chance of an update. Then he started releasing some better apps... Then flooded the AppStore with lots of individual apps. After he got your money he'd release a combo app of all the ones you already bought. After he descovered in-app purchases as his new best money sucking friend. So every lame to useless update fed into his in-app purchase $$$ pocket filling ways. Well after just updating FX Photo Studio for iPhone with a minimal "free four filters" he's included over a handful of in-app purchases per filter set. Well that's the last straw for me! I have deleted every app from MacPhun & will never support such a narrow minded, money sucking, douchebag approach to app development ever again!

I do NOT suggest anyone else buys his iPhone or iPad apps.

His photography & video editing apps are all going in the trash, MacPhun that's the last time you take my money! Negative AppStore reviews to out you will possibly follow as a warning to other buyers.

SCW