BlurStudio
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Daily iPhone App: Blur Studio lets you add a touch of blur to personalize your wallpapers
Blur Studio from Taphive is a wallpaper-creating app that uses a blur filter as its primary design tool. It generates creative home screen designs that match the look and feel of iOS 7. Blur is photo-based and allows you to either take a new photo or import one from your camera roll. Once you have a photo on your canvas, you can adjust the blur strength within a range that allows you to apply no blur or so much blur the entire image is a mixture of hazy colors. You can also change the tint of the blur to match your phone, your case or even your mood. One of the handiest features of Blur is the preview mode, which allows you to test out your new home screen while you are still tweaking its look. This Home Screen Test Mode supports Apple's parallax effect so you get a realistic look at your wallpaper before you finalize all your changes. Once you are done with your design, you can tap the "checkmark" button and export the wallpaper to your camera roll. Once it is in with your photos, you can select the exported wallpaper, tap the share button and choose "Use as a Wallpaper" to assign it as your new home screen. The wallpapers are saved at the correct size for the parallax effect in iOS 7. Blur allows you to easily and quickly create new wallpapers. It has an intuitive UI that's easy to master in just a few minutes. My only critique is the lack of basic photo-editing tools. It doesn't have a crop tool or a move tool that would allow you to pick a section of your photo for your wallpaper. For example, I have a nice shot of my daughter holding a turtle and would love to use the colorful painted turtle as the focus point of the blurred wallpaper. Unfortunately, the turtle is on the right side of the photo and it gets pushed off the wallpaper. It would be helpful if I could move the photo a bit to the left and put the turtle in the center. This is a new app, so hopefully this feature will be added in future updates. Despite this drawback, Blur Studio is still worth checking out. It is available in the iOS App Store for US$1.99.
