App Review - Photogene 1.62

Updated with corrections

Photogene is one of my most used editors on the iPhone, so i’ll just get straight to it’s features.

1. Welcome screen. The continue last session option is a great feature if you get interrupted & want to come back to it
2. A well documented information page with links to contact them or visit their website has also been included

3. The range of editing tools is located in a thin pallet on the left.
4. Crop tool. Now with the addition of Ratio crops eg. 1:1, 3:4, 4:3, 3:2. I really like this new feature & find it easy to just duck into Photogene & crop something before uploading it to the web

5. Rotate Straighten & Flip tools. Future versions will have straighten guides apparently
6. Sharpen. My least favourite tool, because almost any sharpening tends to degrade the image rather than improve it. I’d like to see it work more like an unsharp mask with threshold & to combine it with noise reduction, blur or smooth tools (one similar to photoshops surface blur would be good)

7. Levels. The Histogram / levels feature is a great addition & as far as I’m aware unique to Photogene. This new version has added mid point adjustment (gamma) allowing you to make the image lighter or darker without loosing any of the detail. The Auto does a good job of finding the right levels & enhancing the image.
8. Colours - Allows you to adjust the saturation & colour temperature (warmer or cooler) I think the saturation tends to posterise the image to quickly.

Effects / Filters - Basically, it includes 3 filters but if Photogene perfected these filters & added more, they could almost corner the whole iPhography editing app market. Add black & white, polaroid, lomo, holga etc & you would only need to dive into one app to pull out the iPhograph you wished for.

9. Effects / Filters - Sepia (brown antique style)
10. Effects / Filters Night Vision (like the green army goggles you see in movies)

11. Effects / Filters - Heat Map (like the psychedelic alien vision in the predator movie)
12. Captions. Add shapes or speech bubbles with text & different colour combinations. A simple cute feature that has some practical uses as well, like circling a person to email to your wife & ask “do you remember who this person is?” (I swear I have never done it, I remember all of the wonderful people I meet… Honest!) One glitch is that you can’t add return spaces & because the text is formatted automatically it can cut words in half.

13. Captions Options - By touching the almost invisible arrow at the bottom of captions you can change the outline, fill & text colours as well as select a font (I missed this in my first version of my review)
14. Frames. Another excellent feature but the quality needs improvement. Some of the frames look a bit amateur like someone’s gone mad on the bevel embossed tool in their first version of photoshop. I’d also like more frames eg. water colour, brushed edges, torn, aged etc etc

15. Frames option - once again taping the small arrow at the bottom brings up background options
16. The save edit or go back page. Saving is not painful & only takes a few seconds.

17. Original iPhograph

18. Finished edit - Note I didn’t add any sharpening as it degrades the image to much.

Almost any form of editing will introduce more grain, posterisation & jpeg artifacts. You will obviously be best served using a desktop editor such as iPhoto or Photoshop etc to get great iPhographs. But for a portable solution on a device with limited processing power, it’s a great way to quickly improve or edit your pics to send or upload while out & about.

Updates come fairly quickly. I wrote a detailed review on the app store & the developer (Omer Shoor) has included almost everything suggested for previous versions. You really get the feeling that they’re listening, interested in what you have to say & wish the product to be the best it can.

I will definitely give this a Highly Recommended with the caveat that posterisation & noise need to be improved.

Photogene has the potential to become the Photoshop of the iPhone & I for one am looking forward to it. Best of luck