Omer Shoore’s Photogene is currently in second place in iTunes’ Top Paid Apps Photography category and it only takes minutes of playing with it to find out why. This is a rather full-featured photo editor that is certainly worth its price of $2.99.
As with any other photo editor, I first check whether it supports the way I typically edit. There, Photogene actually scores rather high:
- Straigtening out a picture: Check
- Cropping (free or fixed-ration ration): Check
- Noise reduction: No
- Exposure adjustment: Check
- Levels: Check
- Curves: No
- Mid-tone adjustment (”Clarity”): No
- Masking and Editing masked areas of the photo: No
- Sharpening: Yes
Additional functions that are targeted towards the casual photo editor are applying different shapes of frames, adding word and thought bubbles and a number of effects, such as converting to a pencil drawing or color effects).
The user interface is easy to use, intuitive and thus can be learned quickly. Basically, all editing takes place through sliders or by directly applying an effect. There’s Undo, if you do not like the results. And Omer Shoore posted an extensive tutorial on his site.
Given the target audience, there’s only one major feature missing in Photogene: Noise reduction. Its absence is very obvious, since iPhone images are often noisy, esp. when photos are taken at night or in other low-light conditions. All the other missing features are more important to professional or advanced amateurs, such as the lack of histograms, no support for curves, no mid-tone adjustments, aso. However, given the target purpose (quick edits) and audience, adding all these more professional features is not really needed. If I really want to do a high-quality editing job or need to do heavy “rescue operations”, I can always upload my iPhone images into Photoshop
Obviously, Photogene is not Photoshop, but then you don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to own it. If you need a feature-rich editor to quickly edit a few pictures before uploading them to Shutterfly or posting them on Facebook, Photogene is almost impossible to beat and is deservedly ranked #2 in iTunes.
Overall verdict: Highly recommended and an easy Editor’s Pick!
Price: $2.99
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