Repix – Review/Tutorial Of This Brand New iOS Photography App

Opening Repix, I was greeted with this screen. As always when looking at a new app for the first time is…what are these icons for??? So…I just started pushing them. I’ll save you some time and tell you what I found.

The icons at the top (A) proved to be the main control panel for the app and I’ll take you through those in a minute. The bottom icons (B) that look like stylus pens are Repix brushes that allow you to selectively paint its effects on your image. I counted 21 different effects plus 1 pen called “Undoer” and another called “Eraser”. I won’t be covering all 21 pens in this review…but I will show you what a couple will do. (I also say a bit more on how the pens work later on.)

Let’s do a quick run through of the top control panel. Clicking on the icon at the top left corner (A) opens this pop-up screen. Here you can access your images from the shown sources. To return to the main screen, just click on “Editor”. I would also recommend spending a little time with the “Guide” (C).

The Guide that I viewed was rather brief in its descriptions so I’m hoping that they add more meat to this in the future…but it will get you started. I will have to admit that I didn’t view the Vimeo guide so maybe there’s more there. In any case, after you’re done with the Guide, click on the icon at the top left to return to the last screen…and from there back to the main screen.

Clicking on the center icon at the top (A) will open this control panel that gives you access to the shown tools. Each of the tools, as you will discover, are control by a slider and give you percentages as you slide back and forth. I found these very easy to use! To close this panel, just click on the icon. The arrows (B) are the effects undo/redo buttons. These will undo/redo one “layer” of effects at a time…or if you hold down the undo button, you will be asked if you want to reset to original.

The final icon at the top right corner opens your share options.

I thought it would be fun to bring in one of my images to use as the “source image” for the rest of this discussion. This would be a good time to point out that Repix lets you zoom in and reposition your image using the usual two-finger pinch controls. Talk about being able to get up close and personal!!

Many of the brushes have “hidden” controls associated with them that, depending on the brush, allow you to set their brightness, roughness, or size. To access these controls, first click on a brush (A), then tap on the brush, hold and slide your finger upwards (B). This will open the control panel at the top (C). Sliding your finger across the screen left or right will adjust, in this case, the brightness of the “Hollywood” effect. Once done, just tap on the screen to close. Pretty nifty if you ask me!!

Play time. I chose “Van Gogh” and then zoomed into my flower image using the finger pinch technique. I then used my finger tip…couldn’t find my stylus…and painted in this effect on different parts of the flower. (Here’s something I noticed as I painted…the effects are cumulative meaning that the more you paint, the more of the effect you build on top of the image. Play around with this…you can get some great “depth” effects in this manner!)

You don’t have to save or click on an icon to add another layer, just pick another effect and continue building! Switching over to “Daubs”, I painted over my last layer…

Two effects are never enough when you can go for three…so I added a bit of “Posterize”!

One last touch. I Clicked on the top center icon bringing up the tools panel. From here, I picked “Saturation” and hyped the colors a bit. Well…more than a bit…

Here’s the final image…so far.

I wanted to show you a couple of the effects that I found to be a hoot to use! The first one is “Drips” which paints a drip pattern all over your image as you drag your fingertip on the screen.

Another one is “Flares” which puts down those bright circles you see in this screen shot. There are bunches more like “Dotter”, “Spray”, “Hatching”…you just have to play with them all!

Don’t you just love the mess I created! Wow!!

Okay. Maybe a little much. This is when the brush “Undoer” came in handy. Using it across my image allowed me to “tone down” the intensity of my last layers vs. clicking on the “Undo” arrow, which would have removed it all. I really like this feature!

Hopefully from this screen shot, you can see the difference in the image after I used the “Undoer”.

One last effect…the “Eraser”! This removes everything…all your effects, your image, everything…giving you a clean slate to add in effects or if use in the beginning, take away parts of the image you don’t want. Another great tool to have.

So there you have it…my quick look at this brand new app. I would definitely say this is one you need to add to your bag of tricks when it comes out. Lots of fun effects in an app whose interface is very user-friendly!

As David explained above this was the beta version of Repix that he tested and very often with beta versions, the developers add additional items to the final version. This is what has happened with Repix on launch today. The following list below, details the additional brushes available with this version today:

We are offering a great giveaway today of $5 for several of our readers. This will enable you to unlock the complete Masters Collection via in-app purchase – don’t miss that – go here to enter.

FREE:
1. Cartoonize
2. Charcoal
3. Edger
4. Dotter
5. Flares
6. Drips
7. Posterize
8. Silk
9. Bleach
10. Undoer (not a real brush)
11. Eraser

PAID:

COLOR BRUSHES (set €1.79/$1.99/£1.49)

1. Sepia

2. Hollywood

3. Vintage

4. Freshen

ARTISTIC BRUSHES (set €1.79/$1.99/£1.49)

1. Hatching

2. Daubs

3.Van Gogh

4. Spray

LIGHT BRUSHES (set €1.79/$1.99/£1.49)

1. Glow Smoke

2. Stars

3. Sparkler

4. Glow Line

OR UNLOCK EVERYTHING WITH MASTER’S COLLECTION FOR €4.49/$4.99/£3.99