Filterstorm Neue: An Old Favorite Gets A Total Rewrite

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filterstorm neue

Before I got lazy and did everything in Snapseed and Instagram, Filterstorm was one of my favorite iOS apps, and now it’s back, bigger, faster and, uh, neuer than before. Developer Tai Shimizu started over and came up with a whole new take on his powerful photo-editing app, which is appropriately called Filterstorm Neue.

The app will be familiar to those of you who have been using the old mobile Photoshop replacement. It offers the same mix of edits and export options, only its now a lot faster and cleaner. Tai decided to ditch hard-to-understand icons in favor of text on transparent labels (his early concept designs predate iOS 7), and also to add a few new features: one is the ability to switch back and forth between the masking tool and the effect that it masks.

Previously you would choose an effect (a blur, a color tweak and so on) and then choose where to apply it afterwards. This let you actually brush the effect into place, but if you wanted to tweak the color shift or filter again, you were screwed. Now you can.

Speaking of masks, you can now offset the brush used for masking the image, so your finger doesn’t cover up what you’re working on. Just tap the screen to make the brush appear with a handle, then use this handle to move the brush around.

But al this wouldn’t be worth a new name and a brand-new purchase, right? Don’t worry, I save the best ’til last (aka “burying the lede.”) Filterstorm Neue has been rewritten to use the GPU instead of the CPU, making it way faster than the old version.

Want it? If you’re an existing Filterstorm user then the will surely be less, in which case you’ll love the $0.99 asking price (rising to $4 at the end of November). It’s even a universal app.

Source: Filterstorm Blog

Source: iTunes

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