New iPhone Photo App: PicTools
Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 2:33PM | Glyn Evans 
From the developer of picfx and PicFrame, comes PicTools. PicTools gives you an easy to use interface to access a set of tools to manipulate your photos. You may create your own effects by adjusting the RGB curves and overlaying another image with a blend mode of your choice. Among other things PicTools also offers crop and transform controls as well as the ability to save your image into a square format with white or black padding.
Curves
- Adjust the color of your image with an easy to use curves interface with presets that you can tweak. The curves updates the image in real time.
Overlays
- Besides being able to use your own images as overlays PicTools provides a preset of great overlays ready to go.
Saving
- You can save your image to the popular square format while preserving ratio, resize your image or just save the full original sized image. You can also share the image via Facebook.
More!
- Crop your image with the ability to use common preset ratios, rotate or mirror the image. You may also add a border to your image.
Features
- Real time color curves adjustment
- Preset curves that can be tweaked
- Overlays to give your photos texture
- Use your own photos as an overlay and set the blending mode and opacity
- Crop your photo with preset ratios or free form
- Rotate and mirror your photo
- Antique black & white and sepia effects
- Quick mode will combine effects when you don't have time to tweak it yourself
- Keep adding as many overlays and effects as you want
- A selection of borders to choose from to give the photo a perfect finish
- Save at full resolution
- Optionally resize your photos
- Save your photo to square format with black or white padding to keep the original ratio, this means you don't need to crop your image for Instagram etc.
- Post your photos to Facebook
- Undo any change you make right back to the original photo
App Store Link: PicTools; Price: £0.59/$0.99/€0.79
Please note: The above information has been extracted from the App Store description and developers website, and is not a review. I have yet to try this app, but if any of you have, or do, then please let us know what you think of it.
PicFrame, PicTools, picfx in New iPhone Photo Apps
Reader Comments (6)
I don't have image blender or the superimpose app, so i thought i could do away with just buying pictools. but this app has a long way to go...
- the entire canvas is in the Photoshop transparency checkerboard pattern, and no image pan or zoom, its kinda distracting and will not be helpful when working with dark tone images
- the crop tool is fine, except that it has only one corner handle at the lower right, so its a kind of weird play, pull, push, move the crop boundary so on and so forth till we can get it right! i dunno what the idea behind this was... it's a huge time waster
- Transform mode is just that 4 options total, Flips and 90 deg. rotates no fine control
- The Overlay mode: the overall effects are ok with a mix of scratch, streaks, dirt, light leaks etc. with an overall effect amount control like in camera+
now comes my main gripe! the custom overlay mode! you have no control after you import an image other than to change blending modes and opacity, you can't scale, move or rotate the overlay at all, plus depending on the aspect ratio of the base, the overlaid image is either squashed / stretched. so import an image with the similar ratio and orientation.
- effects tab: two modes, antique and color each with a handful of effects with no names at all for reference. antique mode has different options of b/w and sepia and monotone effects. Color mode has a bunch of color effects and the curves option. the curves editor just has control of R,G & B with buttons to add or remove points, no luminance etc. and has an effect amount slider like the rest of the effects
quick mode is similar to random modes like in other apps, and borders with the usual pick, but no control of any kind other than to select one!
Overall this first release version of the app feels like an early Beta, looks as the user interface is incomplete and feature crippled...
I hope the developer does his best to give pictools the same attention and affection he has given to picframe and picfx!
The UI is perfect! crisp, clean, smooth, easy to navigate & user friendly!
@ rajkumar
you don't have image blender or any super impose apps, yet your main "gripe" with PicTools is the custom overlay mode... Hmm well if you had ever used DXP, Backgroundz, Image Blender etc etc you'd know that none of the apps scale & move. But they all do rotate & so does this app, rotate your photo before to the same ratio as the custom overlay you want to use. And with ALL blending overlay apps, it's just common sense that you'd use an image of the same ratio, orientation & resolution. Or you'll end up with squashed, stretched & ultimately a low resolution resulting image.
So do a little research first & instead of it being a "gripe" maybe add it as a developer request to add the ability to scale & move the custom selected photo prior to blending. As I think it would be a very welcomed addition to PicTools.
The transparency of the app once you've loaded your image is a excellent visually appealling to me, a nice change from standard apps. I would implement the ability for tap to zoom & pinch to zoom style functionalities for a even more user friendly experience dealing with image detail throughout all editing stages.
The UI for rotation is fantastic, cropping takes a second to get but is still easy to use, I suggest changing the white image outline for crop to a bright red, blue, green or neon color so it isn't lost in photos that are very light or white. Keeping the grid a separate color to differentiate the two. That is minor & can be easily changed in an update.
I would change that tab name of "Transform to Rotate/Rotation"
The number preset selection of overlays & filter effects is good, I look forward to the addition of even more in the future.
The curves & tweaking functionality in PicTools is really wonderful & something you don't find in many apps. Definitely a highlight here.
And just for those interested you will be pleasantly surprised by the future updates & evolution of PicTools in the near future as is becomes a user friendly power house photo editing app!
PicTools offers something for everyone here & is highly recommended in my opinion.
Yes, probably I should have tried image blender or superimpose before comparing it with pic tools, that's my fault! It didn't strike me to rotate the image before overlaying, dumb of me, and thanks for the tip!
The UI as you said is minimal and neat, but like I said, the canvas is bright and it distracts a bit, at least for me! There should be an option to toggle the BG..
One of the best features I like is in any of the effects modules, you can just tap and hold the image to see the original version b4 the effects was applied.
Yes I absolutely agree, the tap/hold function used to reveal original & compare photos once you've added a texture, filter effect etc is a great feature. Something that is very useful, user friendly & not commonly found in most photo apps.
If you were interested in the differences of blending styled apps used mostly for double or multiple exposures...?
DXP is the original iPhone app of choice & does this extremely well & saves full resolution. Along with Masking, but only in a blending way, but no erase/reveal tools.
Backgroundz is another & is also very nice & easy to use, full resolution saves too.
Image Blender is another newer app that does the same, yet I personally would be either of the other two or both over Image Blender.
Superimpose how ever is different it is a combination of Juxaposer & the others mentioned above. But unlike Juxaposer Superimpose saved the composite image in full resolution & Juxaposer is slightly less. Adding the fact you can erase, reveal, blend, mask, save masked image overlay with the other & combine its erased transparent portion with the background/base image. So far I really enjoy Superimpose.
Now add in PicTools Overlay feature & functionality it is right on par with DXP & Backgroundz apps. But with the additional features, functions, crop/resize, rotate, filters, textures & borders PicTools offers a nice variety of bang for it's buck in version 1.0, while future update releases will bring even more to the table. So I think PicTools is a great purchase & add to that buying the Superimpose app, you'll have a nice array of useful editing tools.
Cheers