Photogene v. PhotoForge: The fight for the best photo editor on the iPhone

Second Update: Today, we awarded Photoforge an Editor’s Pick in the iPhone Photo Editing category. Over the last weeks, I have been using it more and more for its more granular editing capabilities, esp. with curves (as a Photoshop user, I feel very comfortable with curves, although they are not everyone’s cup of tea). PhotoGene retains its Editor’s Pick award, since we still prefer it for its editing speed, but PhotoForge is the editor of choice for advanced, in-depth editing.

Update: Photoforge released a new version on July 3 that added support for resizing, cropping and rotating of images. Thanks to our reader Brian for pointing it out. Additionally, another update was released to Apple, but is not available yet in iTunes. This update will provide support for the full iPhone 3GS 3M resolution – currently you cannot save an image in Photoforge at full iPhone 3GS resolution. In my tests, the latest version of Photoforge seemed a bit sluggish and we still prefer (maybe due to familiarity) the PhotoGene interface. PhotoGene remains our Editor’s Pick. PhotoForge is still on sale for $2.99. Both will stay on my iPhone.

In one corner: PhotoGene, our current Editor’s pick for iPhone photo editing. In the other corner: PhotoForge, the challenger.

In short, PhotoForge is a photo editor’s dream. It is as close to Photoshop (OK, Photoshop Elements) as you can get on the iPhone. It supports a lot of very advanced features such as curves, RGB, CYMK and CIE Lab color spaces, many different brushes, HDR simulation, blurring and sharpening, just to name some of them. It’s pretty easy to use and the output results look great. In pure editing, it certainly outshines PhotoGene. And Photoshop’s tools are much better than PhotoForge.

But here’s my problem with PhotoForge: I don’t really do advanced photo editing on my iPhone. If I really need to do heavy-duty editing, I download the image and use Photoshop on my Mac or PC. The iPhone’s screen real estate is just to small for precise editing, at least to me.

On the other hand, PhotoGene focuses on all the basic editing task, that are needed when trying to quickly edit a photo. It includes resizing, straightening and cropping, all of which are sorely missed in PhotoForge. In fact, the lack of these features forces me to use PhotoGene anyway before I can even use PhotoForge. Thus, since I cannot use PhotoForge without PhotoGene, I might as well stay within PhotoGene.

PhotoGene also has additional features such as framing which I don’t use, but come in handy if you want to pretty up a photo before posting it online.

When I bought my current car more than 8 years ago, one of the leading car magazines ran a comparison test with 9 other cars in its class. My car came in 6th. In the story, they ran a sidebar where they asked the test drivers which car they would prefer for everyday driving. The drivers all pointed to my car. The same is true with PhotoGene. While PhotoForge outshines PhotoGene in the depth and breadth of editing tasks, only PhotoGene handles all the tasks that I need to perform during everyday photo editing, especially if I want to upload the image from my iPhone. And that makes PhotoGene retain its crown as IiPhonePhotoVideo’s Editor’s Pick for photo editing!

PhotoForge: $2.99 in iTunes (currently on Sale)
PhotoGene: $2.99 in iTunes

Did you enjoy this article? Please subscribe to iPhonePhotoVideo to receive all the updates on time and for free!

Related posts:

1. Photogene v. PhotoForge: The fight for the best photo editor on the iPhone
2. Photogene v. PhotoForge: The fight for the best photo editor on the iPhone
3. Photogene improves the genes of your photos
4. 6 great iPhone Photo Video editor’s picks!
5. Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone: An opportunity missed

Tagged as: Editor's Pick, On My iPhone, Photo Editing, PhotoForge, PhotoGene