The latest iPhone photo app to grab my attention and that of a handful of Flickr users is Phototropedelic.
It’s a fun little app that takes any photo you have stored on your iPhone and turns it into a psychedelic playground. It colorizes the primary features and adds a pile more, including starburst background, extra stars and bubbles.
You can get some pretty nice effects, and it does a great job of turning the darkest of moody images into something more jolly:
In use, I found it a bit slow. It has a lot of work to do. And in its defence, it does more than just create a jpg image on your Camera Roll – in addition, it saves high-quality PNG and PDF versions which you can download to your Mac via a built-in web server. So there’s quite a lot packed in.
It’s a pity, though, that you can’t easily email images out of the app and on to the web. It’s also very frustrating that the app adds a “phototropodelic.com” watermark to your images – I’d expect that from a free app, but not one I’ve paid for.
All that said, it’s good value for $2 and good fun to play with. A worthy and different photo toy to have on your iPhone.
UPDATE: Reader Bob White just alerted me to the fact that Phototropedelic’s author has removed the watermark in the next update, which is awaiting approval from Apple. Hooray!
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
