iOS – TOUCHLOOK HD – Review
Developer: COLORTIVE
Price: $0.99/£0.69/download here
Version: 1.0
Released: February 29, 2012
Size: 7.7 MB
App reviewed on: iPad 2
Compatibility: iPad 2 only, requires iOS 4.3 or later
Rated: 4+
Our Ratings
Graphics/Sound: 3 out of 5 stars
User Interface: 2 out of 5 stars
Gameplay: N/A
Re-use/re-play value: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
What Is It?
A photo editing tool for use with the iPad 2.
Is It Easy To Use?
Not really, we actually found it quite awkward to use and not terribly intuitive. Essentially, you start work on an image, either that you have taken with the iPad 2 itself or one that you have opened from your camera roll. With the image uploaded into the app you then have three color control modes to select. HSL Mode controls hue, saturation and lightness, RGB Mode controls the red, blue, green primary colors and BMW Mode to control blacks, mid-tone and white.
There are three control points and each control mode consists of three circular controllers. One circle controller applies a different effect on a mode by dragging the point. In HSL mode you can select and turn the controller to adjust Saturation and Lightness together.
There’s also a Before and After icon allowing you to check the color correction on/off. You can also adjust the Sensitivity of the controllers too, either to increase or decrease the sensitivity. If you like the Vignette effect, there’s an icon to switch that filter on/off too.
Somewhat strangely there does not appear to be a simple crop tool, we’re not sure why.
Is It Fun?
No, we would not describe this as fun. If you do become confused and go to the Help section the whole app seems to lock up and you cannot go back to your editing. It is actually quite frustrating. We had to reinstall and uninstall this app several times as it kept locking up.
Is It Pretty?
No, it’s not going to win any design awards, the developers have tried to be creative and we value that but it just doesn’t reach the high standards of its competitors.
Should You Download It?
We would not recommend you download this app, this is a very tough market, there are a stack of notably excellent photo editing apps and this one is just not good enough, at the moment. With the release of iPhoto by Apple and Adobe’s Photoshop Touch, this app has a lot to live up to and sadly it doesn’t. Hopefully the developers can pull out all the stops and step this up by adding some more features as it does have good potential.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter BA (Hons), ARPS is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator, and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.She holds a First Class Honours degree in Photography and is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS).Her journalism, criticism and editorial work have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography and NikonPro, among other international publications.Through TheAppWhisperer, she brings together academic knowledge, professional photographic expertise and more than 17 years of specialist editorial experience to examine contemporary photography, mobile imaging, computational photography, photographic applications and emerging imaging technologies.
