By Graham K. Rogers

There are examples of desktop apps creeping across to the iOS platform, with a couple of notable examples, such as CameraBag making the leap the other way: starting on the iPhone or iPad and being recreated for the Mac.

Background

Diptic

A user is able to work on input for each of the panels separately. Clicking on an image panel, changes the left side tools display to show a set of sliders allowing adjustment of any image selected: Scale, Rotate, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue. There is also a checkbox option for Flip: Horizontal or Vertical. A box beside each slider also allows a numerical value to be entered.

As the image panel is clicked, a Finder panel is opened and an image from the desktop or from Media (Photos) can be selected. It is an idea to make this panel larger (using the cursor) as the number of images that can be displayed can make selection difficult unless you know exactly which image is wanted.

In that case, I usually export a version to the desktop and can access it more directly. An image brought into a panel can be adjusted using the sliders and may be moved around within the panel by using the cursor (plus a mouse key or a trackpad click).

When we are happy with what is in the panels, a Finish panel in the sidebar reveals Border options (Colors, Width, Rounded corners - inside or out) just like the iOS app. The Effects sliders are also available here but are applied to all images displayed. The final adjustment available is a slider for Aspect Ratio.

Export

There was also a JPEG option for exporting, and a slider beneath this allowed me to push the image up to a size for export of 3072 x 3072. A small icon at the bottom left, like a tray with an arrow, begins the export.

When the first image I exported (at the largest size) in PNG was opened in Graphic Converter, the size was shown as 42.667" x 42.667" which was a couple of decimal points less than the iOS app had produced (just over 43" x 43") but I am not going to quibble about this minor difference, especially at $0.99. The file size was some 6 MB.

While working on an image, we may also save the file in a DPTC format which is a proprietary format that allows for saving of projects so that we may come back to them later.

Comments

Like the iOS app, this one has me smiling over its ease of use and speed. The slowest things about it were access and selection of files to use and some sliders (Hue, Saturation) had a slight lag when making changes. Both of these could be caused by hesitations in OS X as I have many apps already open, but did not give me any major delays.

For ease of use, cost and basic simplicity this scores highly and is much recommended.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.