iColorama ... This is the one I use most often, although it seems to be under appreciated. I like it because there are lots of creative effects, many useful presets, and very good controls in applying the effects. It has a couple of ways to apply masks, can use the camera, and has an iPhone version. It has no undo, which is usually not a problem since you have to choose to apply the edits, and it has no layers, although it can combine two different images in various ways.
Very strong distortion options and texture effects.

Photoshop Express (PS Express) ... This is not a big editor, but it has all the basics, is easy to use, very stable, and it's free. I use this one most if I'm just adjusting colors or cropping or other simple operations. It does have some filters.

Photoshop Touch (PS Touch) ... Now that the output resolution is larger, (max size 4000 X 3000, one of the best,) this is a very good app. Also one of the most expensive, but at $9.99, it is still a huge bargain compared to the desktop version. It has most of the core features that I use, and a good amount of filters and special effects. The layers and selection tools are very strong. There are tutorials included, (and many more online,) as well as Google image search and camera functions. No iPhone app.

Laminar Pro ... Excellent color and lighting controls, including dodge and burn brushes, very useful. Can open from clipboard, which is very handy. Strong layer functions, good masking, provides size info. Very strong control of color information, including levels, curves and channels.

Perfect Image ... This one is geared more toward scrapbooking and such. It has very easy intuitive collage functions and loads of stamps and borders and text options. It can do basic functions such as crop and color adjustment, and provides size info under the crop function. It has camera functions and an iPhone version. No layers.

Top Five Artists Paint and Draw Apps
Artists have some excellent choices in the painting and drawing app category. These are full artists studios, with multiple media and serious controls. Most also have iPhone apps, and can use the camera or clipboard. Many have control over things like taper and drop-off on the strokes. All of these are very strong, and it would be difficult to pick a favorite.

My top five favorites in alphabetical order are:

ArtStudio ... ArtStudio is a hybrid, with both paint and image processing functions, and is the most like Photoshop of any so far. In addition to traditional and some digital media, it also has text, clone, heal, blur and sharpen, dodge and burn. It also has strong basic editing and color adjustment functions, multiple filters, and very good selection tools. It can paste from the clipboard or import from several sources, (it will resize images that are too large) and all the usual export options. The iPhone version seems to be as large as the iPad. Very large, well designed.


Procreate ... Procreate has tradiational and digital brushes and media, and places to make sets of your favorites. The smudge and erase functions use the same controls as the brushes. It has very good layer tools, which can be resized, rotated, and flipped. The global color manipulations can be found in the l;ayer tools. It has great smudging and good pastels, and can record the actions.





SketchBook Pro ... Sketchbook Pro also has both traditional and digital media, with many, many preset brushes or you can make your own. It has excellent controls for most options, and some fun special effects. It has text, layers, and symmetry functions, but no filters or selection tools. It also has the capability to time-lapse record your actions.




Sketch Club ... Sketch Club, also with some traditional and digital media brushes, has symmetry options and an assortment of shapes and abstract brushes.. The global color controls can be found under the layer control options. It can record, has some resizing options, and can work with Pogo and other pressure sensitive styluses. No camera function.

Percolator
Playing on the idea of brewing coffee, this entertaining app mostly makes circles. Using three different variables, each of which has three sub-variables (each of which has many different options), it turns an image into a field of circles, from fine to coarse. There are some nice effects in the mix, and some excellent animations as it does it's work. I've used it in many of my  finished digital images.

Popsicolor
Made by the same team that made Percolator, Popsicolor does a quite credible job of turning an image into a loose, impressionist two-tone watercolor. I sometimes use it to essentially posterize a complex subject to isolate different value areas, which it does in fine style.

Goomifier
This app was probably made primarily to turn your face (or your friends' faces) into rubber, which it does very well. However, it can also come in very handy with abstracts, or even for curving or straightening parts of any kind of picture. Its underlying mesh is quite robust, and can produce extreme distortions without losing the original information. (You may not be able to see the details, but they're still there.) Many photo-booth type apps are similar in effect, some with more kinds of pre-made effects, but without the fine control. Much fun.

Fluid FX

Made by Autodesk, this excellent app has many effects that you can use. Most of them, although fun and entertaining, are not often very useful for producing art. However, there are some very good liquid effects, and a few that will stay put as you develop other parts of the composition. I've spent many happy hours with this one. 

Color Lake

If you need some watery reflections, this app does an amazing job. With a good range of controls, it produces excellent screen saver types of images where the reflection portion stays in motion. You can send a finished image to the Camera Roll, but a screen grab generally looks more natural, although the resolution is lower.

ART SPECIALISTS

Here are the Art Specialists that I use. Some are iPad only, some are for both iPad and iPhone. Many of these apps are free, or come in a free version to try out. I get the paid version whenever possible, though, for several reasons.
- They may have more tools, or better controls, or be able to work at higher resolutions
- They cost very little anyway. Amazingly little in fact. I don't understand how Apps can be so inexpensive. Some are not worth it even if they are free, but many are amazing tools.
- I don't like the ads cluttering up the limited screen
- I want these software designers to continue to improve their product, and they need material support to do it.

Fun Art and Paint Apps

These are some Apps that I've collected that are fun or entertaining or meditative. They generally don't have enough control to produce real art with, but might be able to be used for special effects, or are just fun to play with.

Click on the pictures to get the full list

"Approaching Light  III"

Taken on a beautiful clear blue sky day, this is one of an ongoing series of headlights and taillights. It's always a  challenge to keep myself out of all the reflections and refractions. Accepted for exhibition. It won an Award of Excellence in a large juried show in Washington DC, juried by Christopher With.

Subject: Mercedes SL 500  headlight
Camera: iPhone 4S
Apps: a touch of Percolator, 
a bit of  photoshop

Rag Box
9th & D St SE

These distribution boxes are scattered throughout the Capitol Hill area, and are a very distinctive color. The  sample magazine was nicely askew, and the cover had a marvelous painting, done by Kathleen Walsh,  of a fancy  lady with square shoulders and great colors.

Click the image for larger view.

The other Hill Quilt panels are pretty straight forward in form, with no obvious distortions, so I did a straightforward version of this one too.

However, the image was intriguing on many levels, with strong colors and geometric shapes, so I did an iColorama distortion filter exploration, making another "quilt".

I especially like the iColorama interface, with it's many ways of controling the effects. As you can see I had a lot of fun with this one.

This is a straight picture of the Mouse Couple, two funny little rusty metal sculptures, One of them has a bow-tie, which you can see in  the first panel of the quilt. I liked the way they seemed to be relating to each other with several different moods. The picture file for the matrix is large, so it might take a while to load. However, it's cut way down for this blog from the original humongous file.

PowerCam in Action

This is a matrix of photos taken with the PowerCam app, which shows the filter or special effect in action as you take the picture. This is quite helpful in composing the shot, which I generally do by squinting at the screen until all I can see is the value pattern. Since many filters affect the color values, they can influence the balance  and compositional choices. Each filter seemed to call for a slightly different approach to framing the shot.

The app is easy to understand and navigate, and has a nice selection of effects. Most are color based, but a few are distortion of various kinds. You can zoom as you compose, turn the flash on or off, and touch focus, but there were no controls for the effects. The filters also work while in video mode, which is very exciting.

This is a great start, well designed, and I look forward to the upgrades. On my wish list would be higher resolution, and some kind of controls for the effects.

The Mouse Couple at Home uses many, but not all of the filters, so it's a sort of sampler. Of course, I also wanted to create real art, so although I tried out all the filters, I chose images that worked well together compositionally and psychologically. I did use two of the more colorful effects twice, for balance, and flow, and because I'm a color freak. The finished quilt is very large, and will make a dandy poster. At least I think it's finished ... I may shuffle a few of them around more a bit more,  for fine tuning. It was composited on my desktop Photoshop because of the much larger real estate.