pics

Review: PicsPlay provides standard photo editing features

PicsPlay offers a large number of photo editing tools in a relatively easy-to-navigate interface that works well on the iPhone. For a free app with few restrictions, PicsPlay is a very solid, well-designed, and ultimately very useful photo editor. It gets crowded by the rampant competition on the App Store, but on its merits alone, it deserves to be one of the top free options available.

PicsPlay manages to get everything you'll need onto one screen for easy access, but keeps it from being overcrowded. Once you load an image (either from your phone or camera), you can crop … Read more

Review: InstaSplitPic takes two pictures in one and even adds neat filters

Not many apps stitch two photos together the way InstaSplitPic does. It creates a cool image that you can then filter just like you would in Instagram or any similar app. It's missing a few landmark features, as well as any user guidance, but it's definitely a great app that most smartphone photographers should have in their toolkit.

Since the app doesn't have a tutorial, you have to wing it to figure out how to take the best shot. When you first load it, it shows you four styles of shot you can take with the app. … Read more

Pics.io to bring Lightroom-like software to browsers

At startup Pics.io, a Ukrainian trio thinks it's time for the Web browser to take on a computing task that thus far has resisted the inexorable shift toward cloud computing: raw photo editing.

Eager for higher quality and flexibility, photography enthusiasts and pros have gravitated toward raw photos formats, which record cameras' image data directly without processing into a more convenient but limited JPEG. But handling raw photos is a processor-intensive task -- the kind of thing that Web-based software historically hasn't been good at and the kind of thing that people buy specialized software such as … Read more

Review: PicsArt Photo Studio offers a streamlined editing experience for iOS

PicsArt Photo Studio doesn't offer many features that other photo editing tools don't already, but it is well crafted, smartly designed, and filled with options. When combined, these options allow you to do everything from frame and text-tag your images to filter and add masks and effects to photos.

What PicsArt Studio has done is combine many of the most common features provided in other free photo editing apps into a single interface. In many cases, this would have led to a messy, convoluted design, but it works here, even with the text labels on each of the … Read more

Review: Open Pics accesses digital libraries to search copyright-free images

Open Pics provides an invaluable service, searching through millions of open-licensed pictures on digital libraries from New York City, the Library of Congress, "LIFE" Magazine, and more. With the tap of a button you can find and use images from throughout the last two centuries from the streamlined interface of this very useful iPad app.

The app is designed to be as minimalistic as possible. Open it and you're presented with a black screen and a white search box. Type in your query and choose the library in which you want to search, and then press "… Read more

Review: MyWeatherPic combines weather obsession with photo sharing

MyWeatherPic takes the everyday urge to talk about the weather and helps you share the exact conditions wherever you are with custom images. Using many familiar photo editing and sharing features combined with weather-tracking integration, the app is a unique and fun tool.

MyWeatherPic, at its core, is a camera. You open the app and the camera will activate in the upper half of the screen. Over the top of the camera's viewfinder is an overlay of the current weather and your location. Weather is in degrees Celsius to start but you can change to Fahrenheit or you can … Read more

Review: Pic Maker is a feature-rich photo editing app that doesn't quite stand out

Pic Maker, while finely made and easy to use, doesn't quite reach must-download status due to its lack of innovation. Combining many of the category's most popular features, it supplies a good all around experience, making it an app most will enjoy using.

The purpose of Pic Maker is exactly as it sounds. Choose a style, take a photo, and edit it with captions, additional images, or cutouts. There are quite a few filters here, and most of them work quite well; but the subtlety of many and the relatively limited sharing options (compared to other apps), make … Read more

Review: Take a visual city tour with PicsAround

PicsAround is a unique app that lets you explore an area of town using pictures. We were skeptical of what it could produce, but were pleasantly surprised by the historical landmarks it found.

Unsurprisingly, PicsAround needs to use your current location data to pull up pictures. Once we allowed the app to pull our data, it went to work finding fun places. We were actually out of town when we tested the app, and not in the most vibrant part of the city. We were curious to see what the app could find, and were surprised to find that it … Read more

Top social photo sites for browsing and sharing

With high-quality digital cameras on every smartphone and apps that make your pictures even better, just about anyone can be an accomplished photographer. Sure, you may not be an accomplished photographer in any serious sense, but you can certainly upload your images to photo-sharing sites to get them out to the public and receive feedback to make your shots even better.

As most people know, there are a number of popular services already out there that let you take your shot, add effects and other enhancements, then upload it for all to see. But the other thing that's great … Read more

Review: Send pictures to your local Walgreens using PicDrop - Scrapbooking Friend

PicDrop - Scrapbooking Friend solves the photo printing problem by enabling users to wirelessly send pictures right to a local Walgreens to get processed. This is one application that scrapbooking users must have.

After a virtually instant download users will observe one of the most easy-to-navigate user interfaces. It features large, easy-to-read icons and a bright colorful scheme. There is a minor setup procedure that requires inputting some information regarding Dropbox, Facebook, and other Web sites that may be used in conjunction with this app. To get started using PicDrop - Scrapbooking Friend, the user must first select photographs that … Read more