PhotoDirecotr
Latest
PhotoDirector: Impressive new iOS photo editing app
PhotoDirector (free with one in-app purchase) is new to iOS but the company that created it, CyberLink, has an impressive product line that features photo editors for Mac and Windows. The app debuts with some impressive editing features including smart object removal, which is similar to content aware fill in Photoshop. It's great to have that in an iOS app, and there are plenty of other powerful features as well. PhotoDirector has the usual array of cropping, hue/saturation tools, and an abundance of filters. It allow selective adjustments by color, which is a nice idea. Want to enhance the trees? Click on a sample shade, and then the saturation tool works only on the greens. The app also has adjustments for smoothing skin. I was especially interested in the smart object removal tool, and it worked quite well. You select an object and the app intelligently creates an offset magnified view of where you are painting with your finger, which makes for faster masking. When you tap the apply button the object is gone ... or at least mostly gone. As with Photoshop, you might have to clean up a few remnants of the original image. I used the tool to remove people, electric poles, words, and a barn from photos, and the tool performed very well. You can see an example below. The filters are OK. The HDR filter worked about as well as most similar features in other apps -- in other words, not very well without having an actual HDR image. Used sparingly, it could be effective. I think the best tool of its type is the HDR filter in Snapseed. You can take photos from directly within the app, but there is no compelling reason to do so. There are sharing tools for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more. I thought the only thing missing was a sharpening tool. If that feature was there, I'd consider PhotoDirector a complete editing solution. I hope they add it. PhotoDirector should also be universal so the iPad can use it at the proper resolution. As a first iOS product, PhotoDirector is really a very able editor. It's ad supported, but the ads are not intrusive. An in-app purchase of US$4.99 removes the ads, increases the resolution of saved photos, and offers unlimited object removal. I think the purchase is worth it just because this is such a capable editor, but you can certainly do a lot with the free version and see if it fits you. PhotoDirector requires iOS 6 or later. It ran fine under iOS 8, and on my iPhone 6 I liked using it with the bigger screen as compared to my iPhone 5s. PhotoDirector should be on your short list of editing apps in iOS, so grab it if you are in the market for a solid tool. The smart object removal is particularly well done and impressive.
