Swipe N Clean: A low-cost and efficient iOS photo editor
Swipe N Clean (US$0.99) is a new full-featured photo editor for iOS that is easy to use and can be a one-stop app for many iOS photographers.
The app contains 75 filters, tools for cropping, adding text and emoticons, and basic controls for brightness, contrast and saturation. One tool I don't see often in similar apps is a resize tool that scales up or down. This app will resize photos, and it works reasonably well.
Some controls are handled with swipes. Swipe left to add photos to the delete queue, or right to keep them in your camera roll. If you delete something, the app preserves the trashed photos should you change your mind. From the main menu, you can go into edit mode or sharing mode which lets you send your finished photo to family and friends.
Adding filters is enabled with a single tap on the filter preview you like. You can go back if you don't like it. Swipe N Clean also features the ability to paint color onto an photo using what it calls the Splash tool. The first step is to make your color photo monochrome, then you use your finger to paint over areas you would like to have re-appear in color. The brush size is adjustable for detailed work, but often your finger covers the area you are painting so you can't always get an exact result. Some apps offset the viewer from your finger, which would be a good idea for a future update of Swipe N Clean.
Adding text is easy, but it is hard to reposition the text block after you've typed it in. That's a pretty easy fix too -- the operation is not straightforward the first time you use it and want to move the text. It works, you just have to experiment to understand the workflow.
I'd love to see more editing features in the app. Selective color enhancement to particular parts of the image, removing people or objects smoothly, and perhaps the ability to blend two photos.
Still, as it is, Swipe N Clean is a capable editor with a lot of tools to enhance your photos. At under a dollar, it is a good value.
Swipe N Clean requires iOS 8 or later. It's optimized for the iPhone 5, but not yet for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. The app is not universal, so it's not really suited for the iPad resolutions.
