Photogene 4: Full-Resolution RAW Editing On iOS

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photogene 4

Photogene has long been one of the top photo-editing apps on iOS, beating out Photoshop Touch in so many ways it’s not funny (not funny for Adobe anyway – it’s still pretty funny for me, and I laugh about it every time I use something by Adobe and am forced to wonder if they hired chimps to write their installers).

Anyhow, now Photogene 4 is out, and it’s a big update. To begin with, it’s now universal (previously there were separate apps for iPhone and iPad), and it works with full-res RAW images.

The app also has a clean new interface, ready for iOS7, and the previous “Pro” add-on is now included for all users (there are still in-app purchases for various templates and picture frames). You can still edit in layers, save your own edits as preset “filters,” use the custom image picker to organize yourself and generally enjoy an intuitive, stable and powerful app.

The sharing options (if you can think of it, it’s in there) embarrass Adobe’s pathetic effort, and now you can choose which photo set you send your pictures to in Flickr.

But the real big news here is the enhanced RAW support. I haven;t yet tested this as I gave up on RAW for most pictures when I started shooting with the Fujifilm X100S, which makes JPGs so good I can;t really improve on them with any amount of editing, but if you do shoot RAW, you can now see your photos at full-resolution instead of having to rely on embedded JPG previews like you have to in most iOS apps.

You can also export XMP sidecar files. This means that you can send your edits along with your photos. In practice this will be most useful for metadata, as XMP metadata is almost universal, so you’ll be able to add keywords to your pictures and have that info show up in Lightroom and other desktop apps.

Amazingly, the app is a free update for existing users, so if you were holding out on the iPhone version you now essentially have it for free. For new users, the app is just $1. Crazy.

Source: App Store

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