App Review: MacPhun LLC's Photo Studio

Our favorite feature was the one that allows you to convert a photo into grayscale then highlight a certain part with color.

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hen MacPhun approached us and asked us if we'd like to check out their photo editing app, Photo Studio, we were pretty excited. The ultra-compressed PhotoShop app offers very few actual edit options, and we were hoping that Photo Studio would fill the gaps. And while we like it overall, we find that we still need to use the PhotoShop app to make up for what Photo Studio lacks.

Perhaps we expected too much out of the app—it is, after all, a studio, not editing software. That said, it gives plenty of choices for photo filters.  There are a couple hundred different filters, ones that offer way more variety than the 10-or-so filters that Instagram offers, but we have to wonder how often we'd actually use the filters, especially considering how many there are.

Photo Studio offers a few adjustment options.

Aside from the filters, it lets you crop the photos and also includes a "square" tool that cuts the picture into a perfect square. As far as the adjusting options to make your photo look brighter and sharper, there's not much to offer. You can adjust the "gamma," which to an unseasoned photographer is a confusing concept—what it does is make the photo brighter or darker. You can also adjust the brightness and contrast of the picture, and change the hue and adjust saturation.

It's slow to update your edited photo, taking about 10 seconds to get you back to the app's main screen, but while you wait it gives you an interesting fact to read (this is a feature you can turn on and off, if you like).

Our favorite feature this app has is the ability to convert a picture to black and white. You can then highlight certain parts with the original color in the photo.

Overall, the app isn't bad for $0.99, but there are a few things lacking, such as a sharpness adjuster and a blurring option. We'd also like some sort of sorting tool for the many, many filters would be nice, since there are simply too many to scroll through them every time, looking for the uniquely-named one you're trying to find.