Gadgetory

everybody it's Michael Fisher with pocketnow.com here to bring you a quick comparison of two photo editing applications for Apple's iPad Adobe's Photoshop Touch and Apple's own iPhoto for iPad I'll do a quick overview of each one and let you know which one I would buy if I had to choose just one it's pocket now now everyone it's usually at this point where I say something like I've been using these applications for years and I know what I'm talking about but really this is weird considering I'm a tech editor I have not used any advanced photo editing applications I've really used basic stuff like orphan View and I even build stuff in preview on iOS so this was a first-time experience for me on any platform let alone just a tablet so I'm gonna make plenty of mistakes and so forth but if you're a first-time user of this software as well this comparison will be perfect for you so let's dive in so let's go ahead and start with iPhoto we're gonna be just doing some edits on a pretty scenic photo I took with the iPads own camera in New York State in the United States you notice iPhoto is run with these icons that run along the bottom of the display they have no labels to them unless you call up the help screen which we'll discuss later so you kind of just have to feel your way through if you're running it for the first time and you don't run the help screen which most people do it's like reading the manual not a lot of people do it so you can kind of tap around and discover what the app has to offer in that way you're not gonna hurt too many things and you can always undo which we'll talk about again firstly you can change the orientation using a pretty helpful little dial on the bottom of the screen there if you're not used to any kind of photo editing applications you can use some sliders down at the bottom there that interact with each other to control brightness contrast it takes a little getting used to but you get the hang of it eventually once you figure out exactly how that interface paradigm works yet more unlabeled controls along the bottom of the display appear if you pull up the color palette these are just things like flesh tone and green and blue levels in the photo not exactly self-explanatory but you get the hang of that pretty quickly now tapping the brushes icon brings up an array of you guessed it paintbrushes which lets you do things like saturate desaturate lighten darken etc look I just unintentionally created a burned through area on the photo but you can probably do better than I the final button on the left there is a bunch of pre-built effects that you can use to apply to the photo poor-man's filters getting a little bit more comfortable with cozy up to the rest of the application here or at least try to but we're not doing too well with the control interface so there's a handy little question mark up in the upper left hand corner of the screen you go ahead and tap that and you get a fairly standard how-to menu which includes some nice things like screenshots and labels and things of that sort if you're looking for inline help while you're using the app you can tap another button up top and that gives you labels for all the buttons which would be great if they were there to begin with but what are you gonna do in the end we have a fairly oversaturated contrast II blown out photo that looks nothing like real life but which I could definitely improve on if I spent more time with it let's see how Photoshop is different first thing you'll notice is that Photoshop launches in landscape as opposed to portrait mode and your mileage may vary but personally I prefer this it's a lot easier to work on photos in landscape mode as I tend to take more landscape photos if you take a lot of vertically oriented photos that might be different for you or if you just prefer working in portrait that might be different and the next thing you notice is that you're given the option to begin a tutorial or begin a project now as I mentioned before many people seem averse to tutorials and manuals and help screens and all that and I am no exception I went ahead and created a project and I bumbled around for about five minutes and created a masterpiece of ridiculous nonsense which was fun but it yielded unimpressive results so I went back a step and swallowed my pride and began the tutorial and what I found was unexpectedly delightful Adobe has really put a lot of effort into making a tutorial that is easy to use for each individual effect that it wants to teach you steps will appear in sequence on the bottom bar you can advance or go back using buttons on the right it's a very self-explanatory system occasionally tips will appear via a pop-up dialog that manages not to be intrusive because they're usually relevant and useful tips and they usually address a question that you are just about to ask aloud to yourself also handy call-outs pop up in smaller windows to show you where to tap and what to do now tutorials exist for applying a lot of different effects to photos and they're all pretty uniformly helpful and fairly easy I was surprised at how quickly I could apply effects to certain photos now more advanced uses like carving out this woman from this photo and putting her onto a separate background proved to be a little bit more daunting partially because of the difficulty in using the iPad instead of a mouse and pointer or a Wacom tablet or some such and also because of my beginners ineptitude fortunately there's always an undo button available just like in iPhoto when I get tired of being inept at carving out the woman from the background I decided to change the color of this sky with another tutorial which is something I would have done before and preview by changing the color balance of the entire photo but with layers and with fading you can change just the color of the sky it's just one of many things you can do until eventually you end up with a masterpiece like this you too can be a real artist someday if you try hard I'm just joking of course it's junk but just like my overexposed photo before wasn't I photos fault this isn't Adobe's fault it's just me being a beginner playing around and I'll get better I promise more importantly I want to get better because using this application is a lot of fun so what do they have in common they're both apps that offer a lot more functionality to help you get a lot more from your photos but they also each have a pretty steep learning curve if you're a first-time user a Photoshop Touch might be a little more complex but its tutorial features are amazing and really helped me feel comfortable with the software after only about a half-hour plus it's a more powerful application letting you work with layers something not many other apps give you the power to do finally once you get used to photo shops user interface you then have a solid foundation for Photoshop on the desktop in case you ever decide to upgrade to desktop class photo editing between the two the price difference is notable Photoshop is $9.99 and double the cost of iPhoto at $4.99 but look either way you're spending at least $5 on an app so if it were me I'd spring for the extra fiver get a much more fully featured app for my money in Photoshop but that said if you can get both do so they're each convenient fun and useful in their own way in different circumstances we hope you enjoyed this quick overview of iPhoto for iPad and Adobe's Photoshop Touch if you have a comment something to contribute if you're an advanced user or a beginner user if you saw something that needs correction or something that you just liked or didn't like drop us a comment thanks for watching michael fisher with pocket now we'll see you next week