One thing that apps like Instagram and VSCO have mastered is making photo retouching on a mobile device (e.g. smartphone, ipad, etc.) a breeze. Simple sliders grouped in easily understandable categories and real-time results make the editing process a snap. It’s fun and easy to dial in the overall look of an image on your phone’s screen! However, with that convenience, comes limitations. For instance, if you want anything more precise than a slider you’ll have to open up a professional application like Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture.
Using Macphun’s Creative Kit — a suite of six image editing apps wrapped into a single bundle — shows where the sweet middle between consumer easy of use and professional quality lays in playing with photos.
The award-winning apps in Creative Kit break down along six basic functions:
- Intensify – an image retouching app for adding sharpness and detail, balancing color, and making the overall image pop
- Tonality – a powerful toolkit for monochromatic images packed with a wide range parameters and presets
- Snapheal – for cloning and erasing anything from small details to major elements in an image
- FX Photo Studio – a grabbag of coloristic and textural effects for enhancing or transforming a photo
- Focus – a wide array of tools for adding a dimension of depth and lens effects
- Noiseless – amazingly effective at removing the digital grain that comes from low-light shots
There are over 500 separate tools and 250+ presets total in Creative Kit, all accessible as standalone apps. Furthermore, each of them integrate as plugins with software like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, and even Apple’s new Photos for Mac. This means that practically anywhere you find yourself editing photos, the Macphun tools are right at your fingertips.
As an example, let’s take a fast, easy workflow in Photoshop: Drop any photo — JPG, TIFF or even RAW — straight into Adobe’s flagship software. From the Filter menu, any of the apps in Creative Kit can be selected to help quickly retouch the photo. Want to add more detail? Tap into the powerful controls of Intensify. Need to remove something annoying like a sign or telephone wire? Fire up Snapheal. Apply a cool texture? Use FX Photo Studio. In fact, all of the Macphun apps even include one-click presets that allow you to explore many different looks for your photos with the press of a button.
Once you apply the change, the photo seamlessly moves back into Photoshop, ready for the next enhancement or export. Nothing could be simpler.
Rather than master a whole vocabulary of specialized tools and keyboard shortcuts, frankly most of us just want to intuitively manipulate an image until it looks great and then get on with our lives. With Creative Kit, that’s totally possible.
It’s basically an ideal marriage of intuitive controls and powerful photo processing that leaves no user out and satisfies everyone. If you’re interested in making more out of your photos without having to go to postproduction school, take Macphun’s Creative Kit for a spin with a free trial.
