JuicyBitsSoftware
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Layout app adds framing style to images on the iPad
JuicyBits Software is well known for some innovative iOS apps, including Halftone and 3D Camera. Now the company has released a new app that's perfect for arranging, annotating, framing, and sharing any image you can view on your iPad. Layout (US$2.99) is an iPad app that makes it child's play to create an attractive, framed arrangement of your favorite images and then share it with friends. I had the pleasure of testing Layout over the last week, and I found it to be both easy to use and just plain fun. The app currently supports the iPad (2nd generation or later), but will be available soon in an iPhone-compatible Universal version (free upgrade). Upon launching Layout, you're welcomed with a blank gray screen. That's your palette for creating a photo arrangement. You can add framed windows by simply swiping a finger horizontally or vertically, then drag the edges between windows with a finger. You can save your own window arrangements, or use one of the pre-defined arrangements. %Gallery-159695% When you tap on a window, a radial menu control appears. This control is completely unique to Layout, and is used to perform all functions from adding images, touching up photos or applying effects, adding captions, and sharing. Adding images is easy. The images initially come from just your camera roll, but if you wish you can have the app go out to Instagram, Flickr, or Facebook and bring in your photos. Coming from those sites, the captions are automatically grabbed as well. Captions can also be added to any image, and if there's EXIF information included, it will let you automatically add the date with the touch of a button. The photo effects engine is powered by Aviary, and is very full-featured. If you want to enhance a photo, add effects, put stickers (like mustaches or hats) on people, change the orientation of an image, crop a photo, change the brightness, contrast, saturation or sharpness, or do human touchups (redeye correction, whiten teeth, or remove blemishes), it's possible. The sharing button lets you email your layout, save it to the camera roll, or share with Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr. I was unable to get the Twitter sharing to work properly, but Facebook sharing worked very well, creating a Layout Photos album. As with Halftone, Layout has found a permanent place on my iPad. It looks like the perfect tool for putting together "postcards" to email to friends and relatives when I'm on a trip. Take a look at the video below for a better idea of how the app works.
Halftone iPhone app gives your photos that old-time newspaper look
Halftone (currently US$0.99), a new iOS photo app from Juicy Bits Software, wants to be the app that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a photographic time machine. Juicy Bits is the company that created the cool 3D Camera Studio for iPad ($3.99) and 3D Camera ($1.99) apps that provide a way to create 3D anaglyph, stereogram and "wigglegram" images. A Short History of Halftones Back in the ancient, pre-digital days, there used to be a way of consuming news, entertainment and sports content called "reading the newspaper." Whenever there was a major news event -- the Kennedy assassination, the Apollo moon landings, and so forth -- many people would grab the newspapers to stash them away for posterity. Looking at old newspapers now, it's amazing how crude the photos look. The halftones used to print pictures, coupled with the sepia tone that the papers have taken on through aging, have a distinctive look that is associated with an era that began to disappear in the late 1970s and early 80s when digital imagesetters made their entrance. Click "Read More" to read the review of Halftone. %Gallery-117464%
