Review: iPhoto for iOS

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

iPhoto iOS for the iPad represents a shift in direction for tablet computing and what users can do with mobile apps. In terms of range of features, functionality and ease of use, iPhoto makes the iPad a standalone platform for content capture, image editing and sharing.

At $4.99, its easy to dismiss iPhoto as one of those apps that adds novel features but limited functionality to the iPad (or iPhone 4), specially since it's closest competitor, the much awaited Adobe Photoshop Touch costs almost double.

Don't be fooled by its low price, iPhoto on the iPad is as close to a complete mobile image editing solution for most users.

Even advanced users will be surprised at what they can achieve with iPhoto. 

With this app one can choose from a variety of preset adjustments for everything from contrast, brightness, saturation without any drop down menus. 

Adjustments and edits take place real time and are rendered as quickly as you can move your finger across the screen. Dragging and pinching are the key gestures to accomplish edits in this application and users will feel that they are interacting directly with the images.

Working in tandem with the built-in camera as well as iCloud's PhotoStream, iPhoto can easily access recent pictures.  

While iPhoto isn't a replacement for a desktop image editing application, it does a fine job giving users a wide range of control.

The iPad variant even has a Tool Tips feature which gives users helpful hints on what the different settings can achieve.

Leave it to Apple to figure out innovative new interfaces that make it easy for users to figure out what they are doing.

iPhoto has no manual or tutorial but you can easily jump in and play around with your photos. This is non-destructive editing as well which means the original images will remain accessible even if you mess up your edit.

The only catch here really is that it is clearly a consumer app (same as iPhoto for OS X) so RAW images support is non existent and will not likely be made available anytime soon.

This is fine since  80 per cent of the population, JPEGs are perfectly acceptable and iPhoto can manage these splendidly.

Import your photo or image and you can change the white balance simply by pressing through a variety of icons which most intermediate photographers will be familiar with.

For certain adjustments and effects, these are layed out in rolls of film with the photo you are working on already edited so you can compare the different effects and adjustments side by side before making a selection.

I like how the cropping feature allows for free-form cropping as well as for various presets for popular sizes such as 8 x10, 16 x 9, 3 x2 and others.

The more one plays with iPhoto for iOS, the more it becomes evident that this is a multifacted app that goes leaps and bounds above what we've learned to accept from mobile apps.

As a photography enthusiast, the combination of the new iPad, the iPad Camera Connection kit and iPhoto for iOS makes it quite possible to have a decent portable photo editing and storage solution ideal for travelling.

Not only can you edit and adjust photos taken from the iPad of from a digital camera, you can quickly share these  in a number of ways.

iPhoto even allows peer-to-peer sharing or "beaming" of photo files between iPhones and iPads that have the app installed which means you can take a nice image with the iPhone 4S' 8 megapixel camera, "beam" it to your iPad and edit and adjust the image right there.

I feel that iPhoto for iOS is the first of the more advanced apps that will expand the functionality of the iPad and inspire developers to really explore the possibility of creating  mobile apps that can rival PC software in terms of functionality.

For $4.99, iPhoto for the iPad is a great bargain specially for people who love to play with images or who like to tinker with their photos. The range of functionality is robust and the level of control is granular enough to satisfy most quick edits.

We threw 12 megapixel image files at iPhoto and it chewed through them without a problem even for more complex edits. This is partly because of the new iPad's quad core graphics but also because iPhoto is such a capable and well executed app.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5