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Old 10-19-2008, 06:37 PM
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Default Review: iFXMagic

Given the lack of iPhone tools for camera or picture editing (you don't even have some basic filters on the camera!), I saw this program and was pretty excited. It is advertised as a way to add filters to your pictures, including many filters that are commonly found on major software editing packages. So I decided to pick this up and take a look to see what it offered.

The program is easy to use. After you get by the splash screen, you can select a picture on your phone (either from the camera roll, or some other picture folder you have).When you choose a picture, you can choose one of four buttons at the buttom. The camera button allows you to take another picture. The save button allows the modified picture. The book icon lets you choose another pictures from your library. And the "FX" button allows you to apply a image effect.

Simple, huh.

So I jumped right in, choose a picture (one of the spin art pictures my daughter made), and started to look at the filter.

Some of the filters are really cool, the kind you would expect to see in a graphics editing program: mosiac, cubism, cartoon, emboss, oilify, etc. But some of the filters were not simply static things you could do the the picture - they involved a changing image. Like the "matrix" filter changed you picture into the cascading green numbers from the matrix movie.

These "action" filters (as I called them) don't really make a lot of sense to me. You can't save them, so the only real purpose they serve is to allow you to look at them within the program. If you could save it as an animated gif or something, well, that would be cool. But saving it only saves the current 'snapshot' regardless of what the action scene is doing.

The actual image filter are nice, and you can save those. However, there were three problems with those. First, unless you apply a filter, save the picture, load the picture, then apply another filter, there is no way to combine multiple filters. Second, you couldn't change any of the settings on the filter. For example, the pixelize filter - you can't control the size of the pixels. There are no settings for anything. Lastly, some obvious filters (black and white, sepia) aren't included.

The filters they did include are nice, and can certainly make pictures more interesting, but it seemed to me that the problems listed above are a serious short coming in this program.

Just to note, a lot of people have complained about the program crashing. I haven't experienced that, but who knows.

Pros: Nice filters to enhance or add creative flair to your pictures
Cons: The motion filters don't seem to serve much of a purpose, some basic filter options are missing.

All in all, for $2.99, this program can serve up some fun. But if they added a few more filters and options, you could really have a kick ass program on your hands. 3 out of 5 stars.

Chris
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Old 10-20-2008, 02:39 PM
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very interesting..i need to learn more..
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Old 10-20-2008, 03:55 PM
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There is a free version, which has 3 filters on it. There is also a $.99 version with 6 (I think) filters. However, if you buy the $.99 version, I am not sure if they cost can be applied to the regular version - so if you are leaning towards buying it, I would go with the $2.99 version flat out.

Chris
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Old 10-20-2008, 04:26 PM
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Welcome cjvitek (Chris!), one of our brand new, inaugural TiPb Forum Reviewer! We'll have more reviews, and more Forum Reviewers announced soon!

Details and first review bump:

Forum Review: iFXMagic for the iPhone | The iPhone Blog
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Old 10-20-2008, 06:57 PM
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Is it possible to have a searchable or sortable database of all reviews?

Chris
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Old 10-21-2008, 04:20 AM
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Chris, that's a good question. I have been keeping a list on the ones in this board so far, so I don't accidently post a review you have already done.
Here they are:


Air Mouse
Ambiance
aSleep
Aurora Feint

Ballpark Sound FX
BeatMaker
Bee Cells
Bloom
Brain Challenge
BubbleWrap

Cannon Game
Car Care
Cram Test Prep
Cribbage Partner
Cubes

Dobot Todos
Datacase

Earthscape
Epocrates

Fire Drop
Flo-verload
Fuzzyshot

The Game of Life
GoceryIQ

Hurricane Info

iBlueSky
iFXMagic
IM+
iPTrader

Koi Pond
Kooaba

Mobile Fotos
Muddled

Nanosaur 2

Pandora
PapiJump
Recorder
PhoneFlix
PocketMoney

ReMoven(free)
Real Deal Slots
Runkeeper

Solitaire City Deluxe
Spin Art

Tangrams
Texas Hold’em
Truphone
Twinkle

Units
Units (other)

Voice Dialer

What’s On
WikiPanion
WootOn!

X-Plane 9

Zenbe Lists

1Password
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