Nice and Toasty iPics

PhotoToaster

by East Coast Pixels, Inc.

With many of the photo apps I have tested on my iPhone and iPad, they tend to be overly-complicated and convoluted or overly-simplistic and lacking.  PhotoToaster pulls off a nice balance of presets to make “toasting” your photos easy and settings which you can access and fine-tune.  The interface is clean and clear and the response and rendering is fast.  This app has many high-quality features such as multiple undo, non-destructive editing, live slider updates, high-resolution output, and many options for exporting and sharing.

You can edit your photo with a global preset or choose each setting of each effect. These settings can be saved as a user-defined preset for use on future photos.

PhotoToaster is not just a filter program. It gives the user controls for cropping, rotation, and straightening.  With eight megapixel quality, there is plenty of room for cropping. PhotoToaster also has multi-core support to make fast application of filters and tools, allowing the user to quickly try different looks.

PhotoToaster opens to the standard East Coast Pixels, Inc. menu screen.  From this screen, you can choose a photo from your library or stream, open the camera app to take a photo, or choose a photo from Facebook. The Facebook feature is nice, because you can choose from your own galleries or your friends’ galleries.  This gives me, for example, the ability to grab photos of my nieces and nephews and work them more to my liking for my own library without having to go download the photo and move it to my Photo Stream first.

The menu screen also gives the user options for emailing support, watching video tutorials, getting tips, finding out about other East Coast Pixels, Inc. apps, and a link to their Facebook fan page.

Once you have selected a photo to edit, the app takes you into the main editing screen. This is the area where you will do all of your work on the photo. There is a bar at the top and the bottom where all controls and menus are contained.  The top bar is for app-related functions, like back, save, share, etc, while the bottom bar contains buttons for the different effects and presets.

The global presets option on the left side of the bottom bar allows you to choose from presets which have multiple effects layered and ready to be applied instantly.  The effects seem to apply within a second of selecting them on my iPad 2, so it is easy to go through and find one best-suited for your photo. The presets are divided into four sections; Basic, Deluxe, Supreme, and My Presets. Each offers a slightly different variety of styles to choose from, obviously differing in complexity.

The part of this app that I became fond of quickly, was the ability to fine tune any look.  If you choose a preset, you can close out the global preset pop-up and go directly into each level of the effect using the five buttons on the bottom menu bar.  Each of these buttons controls a different aspect of the overall look of the photo.  The first button (which looks like a brightness and contrast icon) controls lighting effects and contrast effects. The second (marked FX) gives options for different film effects such as black and white, cross-process, technicolor, sharpening, and more. The third button (with three stars) controls vignettes and mattes.  The fourth (looks like a checkerboard) allows you to choose textures and overlays.  The last of the central five (a rectangle) allows you to add borders to your photo.

Each of these five buttons slide up a filmstrip with live previews of what your photo would look like with the effect or tool applied.  You can slide the filmstrip side-to-side to see more effects or you can touch one that you like to apply it to your photo.  If, however, you do not like an aspect of the effect you have chosen, you can further fine-tune it.  At the top left of the filmstrip, there is a button which will replace the filmstrip with control sliders.  These sliders directly control the effect you have applied and allow you to alter the appearance, level, and other details about the effect.  In this manner, you can use any global preset or other single effect as a starting point and make it exactly how you would like it.

If you are particularly pleased with the effects that you have created, you can then save them as a global preset for use on later photos.  When you have the effects as you like them, click on the global preset button.  Then, choose My Presets on the dial on the bottom left corner. Click on the “Add New…” button and type in a name for your new preset.  The ease in which you can create presets is a valuable part of this app.

On the top menu bar, there is a button with a wrench on it which allows you to crop, rotate, and straighten your photos. There is also an undo button, a tips button and a share button on the top menu bar.

On the bottom menu bar, there are two buttons which I have not covered yet. One button (second from right) is a reset button. With one click your photo reverts to its original state.  The second button (far right corner) is a shuffle button. Using this button will apply random settings and presets to your photo.  This is a fun way to find new looks which you may not find by trial and error.

Once you are satisfied with your edited photo, PhotoToaster offers many ways to share, save, or continue editing in another app.  The share button on the right of the top menu bar gives several options for you to move your photo out of the app.  You can save your photo to your library, email the photo, send it to Facebook, upload it to Flickr or Tumblr, MMS your photo to a cell phone, share it on twitter, copy it to the clipboard, or send it to another app for sharing or editing, such as Instagram.

All in all, I am incredibly impressed the the flexibility that East Coast gave to PhotoToaster.  It is a very well-rounded app which they obviously put a lot of thought into designing.  This is well-worth the download to add a little powerhouse to your iPhoneography toolbox.  The images it creates are unique and interesting.

Rating: ★★★★★

Cost: $1.99 in the iTunes App Store

–David Pringle