photo fx ultra

We are delighted to publish Jerry Jobe’s latest mobile photography/art video tutorial for our  viewing pleasure. This time Jobe takes a look at the app Photo FX Ultra. Take it away Jerry…(foreword by Joanne Carter).

Photo fx Ultra retails for $2.29/£1.49 and you can download it here

“When I decided to write iDevice app tutorials, I realised very quickly that I could never cover every app out there. Hundreds of new ones are released every year, on top of the thousands that already existed when I started writing in November of 2012. Even though I’ve covered over 140 different apps, I still have some that I haven’t touched. Today’s app, Photo FX Ultra (and its companion on the iPhone, regular Photo FX) by Tiffen, is multi-featured, requiring a lot of explanation. That makes covering it a daunting task, but I thought it was time to buckle down and try to tell you more about this filter app.

Tiffen has been in the photographic business for decades, making filters for lenses. It seems that when companies who start in other areas branch out to iDevice apps, they quickly lose interest. One of my favorite B&W apps, Perfect B&W, was released by onOne Software, and then was removed from the App Store a year or so later. They didn’t want to expend the effort supporting it. PhotoFX Ultra has not been updated since October 2014, and it seems as though Tiffen may be treating it the same way as onOne’s offering.

As one might expect from a company that makes glass filters, Photo FX Ultra is not an editor, but a filtering app. It looks like an editor, but lacks certain basic controls that an editor app needs, like Brightness and Contrast, Shadow and Highlight. Changes to these basic characteristics are available as part of some of the filters, but not by themselves. Their promotional material states: “In Photo fx Ultra, you can choose from 77 exciting filters containing 934 presets organised in 8 different filter groups.”Definitely a filtering app”.