Yesterday saw the launch of ColorCanvas from Big Canvas Inc. ColorCanvas is an app similar to ColorSplash, in that it takes a photo from your album, converts it to Black and White, and then like ColorSplash you bring the colour back to areas of your choice.
Launch ColorCanvas and you are presented with a black screen with an i and a + symbol across the top of the screen, and an Images, Draw and Action icon across the bottom. The i con stands for information, and you will need this to find out how to use the app, as not all the icons do what you expect. For example touching Images does not give you the option to load a photo, to do this you need to touch the + symbol!!
Anyway having done that and selected your photo you can now get down to colouring your photo. Select the Draw icon and the icons across the top of the screen will change, and you will now see a pallett icon which allows you to adjust the Brush Size and Opacity, and 2 arrows that allow you to undo/redo your brush strokes.
To use the app and begin applying colour back in to the areas of your choice, you first have to select the Draw icon, and then use 2 fingers to Pinch and Zoom to the selected area of the photo, and then as with ColorSplash use your finger to paint the colour back in to the photo. Whilst painting the colour back in, the area you are painting with your finger will show as magenta until you remove your finger from the screen, which I personally found very off-putting.
When you have re-coloured the selected area, you then need to use 2 fingers to drag the photo around to get to the next area you want to colour, but this feature is poorly implemented, and the movement at times is very jerky. There were times when using 2 fingers to move the photo around resulted in accidental zooming, and even on one occasion loosing the photo all together as it slid of the side of the screen and I could not drag it back. Fortunately touching the Images icon resizes the photo and snaps the it back to the center of the screen.
When you have finished re-colouring your photo, touch the Action icon and across the top of the screen a fresh set of icons will appear, Save, Share (this allows you to share via the PhotoShare website), Gallery and a trash bin.
...When you save your edited photo, you will be surprised just how quick this process is (I was), however you will soon discover why. All saved photo are a poor 360 x 480 pixels, and if your original photo was taken in landscape mode, it will be saved in portrait with large white boarders top and bottom, as per photo below.
Above: Saved image 360 x 480 pixels with white boarderLike's
Dislike's
- No Erase option
- Poor out put, only 360 x 480 pixels
- Landscape photo's saved in portrait, with large white area top and bottom
- Pinch & Zoom poorly implemented
- Poor interface
I don't normally like writing such bad reviews, but as this app was so similar to ColorSplash, and was free, I just had to try it out, and any app I try, I will write a review, good or bad. The good news for Hendrik Kueck (the developer of ColorSplash) is that ColorCanvas is not a patch on ColorSplash, and so unless ColorCanvas has some major improvements it's not going to challenge ColorSplash any time soon.
If you haven't read my review of ColorSplash, then check it out.
AppStore Link: ColorCanvas - Price FREE (introductory price)
AppStore Link: ColorSplash - Price £1.19 ($1.99)
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 11:00AM | 
On my flight to PMA 2010 I took several photos as the plane began to descend in to LAX. As you can imaging trying to keep the iPhone level was impossible, and so the following photo was the result.
Then I used ColorSplash, bringing back the colour of the Union Jack on the wing tip of the Virgin Atlantic flight, before finally processing it in CameraBag, using the Colorcross filter.
And so that's how I created my photo, so if you would like to share your photo with the rest of us, then send me an email and I'll reply with details on how to submit.
