WP App Review : Photo Shader

NOTE: This review has been updated at the bottom.

Photo Shader (Version 2.2)

Ryken Apps
$0.99

If you're a photography enthusiast like me, you'll probably want a photography app that does a bit more than the usual photo filters and basic adjustments found in most apps. Photo Shader is one of those apps. Aside from the usual brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, etc. adjustments, there are more advanced effects like glow, soften, color picker, and blur effects.

        

Once you load the app you're asked to select a photo and do an initial crop and rotate. The screenshots above show all the options currently available in the app. User interface is easy enough and applying the various effects load nice and quick so you can view how the edited photo looks. Once you're done, you back out and have the choice of keeping the effect or not and you can continue to keep adding effects to your desire.

Some of the effects such as tilt-shift have detailed adjustments so that you can process your photo more precisely to your liking. With the amount of adjustments you can make through Photo Shader you may find yourself applying more than a few effects. After playing around with some of my photos I have noticed that with certain adjustments, the photo quality slightly degrades. But if you're going for more of a creative style, the slight photo degradation may not be more noticeable. One note is that the final output of the photo is not the full size.

Generally speaking, the app is a great tool to have to add a bit more advanced effects to your photos. Although the rendering while applying effects is nice and quick, the final rendering when you're saving the photo is a tad slow as it does a final application of each effect which you've added. Still, if you enjoy having the option of adding a large amount of adjustments and effects, it might be worth giving Photo Shader a try.

Update Version 2.2

With the newest update, the app feels a lot more solid; although it was already solid from the beginning. Overall final renders are nice and quick, with the only slow render being the tiltshift options. But this is probably due to the more CPU intensive effect. The final image output quality is a whole better now as well.

For the photo below, a bit of temperature, contrast, vignetting, and lomography effect was done. The final image quality gives me a better impression on this app now and the rating has been bumped up to reflect this.

Pros : Tons of adjustments/effects with lots of options, good quality output

Cons : Tilt shift rendering takes a bit longer

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