Create Diptych or Triptych photos on your iPhone or iPad with Diptic
Monday, July 12, 2010 at 11:00AM | Glyn Evans What is it? Diptic is an app that lets you quickly and easily combine two or three of your photos to create a new image.
Who is it for? People who want to tell a story with their photos. With Diptic you can quickly and easily:
- Create a before-and-after sequence
- Produce a photographic series
- Juxtapose contrasting images
- Create photo collages
How does it work? Just choose a layout, select your photos, place the photos in position and save to your camera roll or email to a friend.
OK, so that's what the developer has to say about Diptic, but what is it really like?
Diptic is a universal app, which means it can run on either the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, with all three devices sharing the same user interface (UI), letting you create Diptych or Triptych photos.
What is Diptych photography?
A diptych is a photograph that uses two different or identical images side by side to form one single image. The two images can be in contact with each other, or separated by a border or frame.
What is a Triptych photography?
Above: The meaning of Diptych
Just like Diptych photography consists of two images side by side to form a single image, so Triptych photography is a photograph that uses three different or identical images side by side to form one single image, and just as with Diptych, the three images can be in contact with each other, or separated by a border or frame.
The app
To use Diptic, launch the app and select 1 of the 5 Diptych layouts, then tap each of the square/rectangled areas and load a photo to that area. Do this for all quares/rectangles, using your fingers to pinch to zoom and position each photo with in their frames. If after positioning your images you need/want to flip them or rotate them 90 degrees, then select "Transform" from the menu options found across the bottom of the screen...
...and tap on the photo in question to flip/mirror or rotate. When this stage is complete you can change the colour and thickness of the Diptic/Diptych border by 
selecting the "Effects" option at the bottom of the screen, followed by the "Border" option found in the top right. From here you can make the necessary adjustments by using the sliders, but here you will find adjusting the border thickness crops the photos. Once complete, simply tap "Export" and then either save to the camera roll/photo album, or send as an email, and that's Diptic.
So what do I think of Diptic?
I really like the simplicity and ease of use of this app, with only 2 negative things to say. The first is the output resolution is only 1024 x 1024, which whilst perfect for online use, is not good enough for printing (if that's something you want to do), and the other thing, is, I would like to see some more layout options.
Diptic does exactly what it says on the tin, and apart from the 2 small issues, I can find nothing else to complain about, and so give Diptic 5 stars, recommending it to anyone who wants to create Diptych or Triptych photos.
AppStore Link: Diptic - Price: £1.19/$1.99
Diptic, Diptych, Triptych, iPad, iPhone in iPad App Review, iPhone App Review
Reader Comments (17)
I agree it's great! I bought it instantly.
As well I do know that both complaints are being fixed in a future update.
SCW
Fantastic app! I agree with you - more layouts would make this a really invaluable tool.
I have considered getting this but I reckon apps like Strip Designer and Comic Twist serve similar functions. This group of apps are ultimately limited by the number and types of templates they come with. For this reason, I'd urge people to take a look at Montage that has the definite advantage of not having preset layouts and also saves at a higher resolution.
NB. I have no links with Montage other than the fact that I have bought it yesterday.
@ psikat
Yes Montage is nice & has it's place... But 1. it's iPhone only & Diptic is iPhone/iPad all in one.
2. Montage has a variety of save resolutions but they are ALL upscaling aka enlarging your collage. You add a handful of full res images, tweak, rotate etc & then select your saved output... It is not a true full resolution & even the sizes are ridiculously high. You can get the same output selection of "High Res" sizes wether you used a handful of 320x480 photos or 1536x2048 so that right there is a red flag that you are not getting the saved results you might want if quality high resolution is your end goal.
SCW
@SCW
Thanks for pointing out the point about Montage's resolution. I didn't realise that it allows low res images to be blown up.
@ psikat N/p =)
Yeah once you manipulate your image in any app with "Pinch & Zoom" functions, then even add in you are making a collage (adding more images to the pile) You will never ever get full resolution saves... No matter what the app says, you are getting enlargements at best.
SCW
I agree, great app, but the resolution is miserable (that's total resolution, folks!) and the meager 5 templates don't even include square formats. This means no easy way to comp shakeitphoto images, for instance. Not sure it deserves 5 stars at this stage, but if they are working on resolution and template options, certainly.
Great app, but I agree that resolution and number of templates needs to be improved. As-is I'd rate it 4 stars - but with said improvements I wouldn't hesitate to give it a top rating.
Update: Diptic bug???
Just a question for 3G users (if you're still out there) and for 3GS and iPhone 4 users:
Have your saved Diptic app photos corrupted or caused anything wrong to your camera roll (on your iPhone)?
After processing and saving some Diptic pics to my camera roll (on my 3G), an entire section of my photo browsing area (the part you flick up and down to view your thumbs) was blacked out, as if they were unreadable or too large to display.
Selecting one sometimes opens the picture. Luckily I had already imported them to iPhoto.
Well, that's an update on Diptic. I'll be sending a bug report to Diptic shortly. Still like the app.
Cheers
Len
I love this app. Full res needs to come now!!!!
@ Len No problemstilling here. 3GS running iOS4.
@Len Yes, I've had the same problem on my 3G and was completely baffled by it. Just suddenly a whole section of photo roll shows up blank. Fortunately, I also sync my phone regularly so nothing lost.
Len, Tania: sounds like a memory/resource issue. The photos are probably just fine. Did you try a restart?
@Jarle Aasland I've restarted my phone several times since it happened, and the photo thumbnails remain black to this day. The photos are, as you say, fine. Just the thumbnails disappeared into an iPhone black hole after I used Diptic. Photos taken after the incident show up fine, thumbnails and all. I haven't used Diptic since it happened, too bad cause I really do like it.
@Tania: if you're using ios4, try closing the apps manually. Sometimes even after a hard reboot, the apps haven't been shut down. Am I making sense? What I mean is double click home so that all of your open apps in multitasking mode are made visible. Hold down an icon until they get the shimmy shakes and a negative/minus symbol appears. By pressing that - symbol you are manually closing the program from the phones system resources (but not deleting it). I do this once a night, usually at bed time. I do it throughout the day is something on my phone gets squirrelly. I hope this helps!
You're making perfect sense. I guess I'll have to change the setting for my double click, right now it opens the iPhone's default camera. LOL! I'll try that and see if it helps.
@Tania: I've noticed that Camera+ can be very susceptible to low memory issues, even on my phone. I hope you tried doing a manual close of the multitasking applications you had open before you completely removed and replaced the app on your phone!