Colorize Your Photos With Color Splash For iPhone

Color Splash for iPhone allows you to colorize your images, your way. You will be able to highlight important elements in photographs by colorizing only specific areas of interest. The result is some amazingly stunning photographs, that up until only a few years ago, was the domain of high end software and very skilled individuals.

An example of a finished colorized photograph.

Features

  • A short video tutorial explains the use of all features and will have you editing your photographs in minutes.
  • Choose photos to edit from your iPhone photo library or from Facebook, Instagram or Flickr.
  • Share your edited images on Facebook, Flickr or Twitter.
  • Save multiple sessions to resume your work later.
  • Undo any number of accidental brush strokes.
  • An alternative view mode highlights the regions that will remain in color with a red tint. This makes it easier to see and adjust the boundaries between color and black & white regions.
  • Choose from four different brushes (hard or soft edged, opaque or transparent) and adjust the brush size.
  • Hide the toolbars in full screen mode.

Using Color Splash

The first thing you will notice after launching Color Splash is the four minute tutorial video that takes you through the complete workings of the app. Whilst the app is incredibly easy to learn, the information included will be of assistance to anyone wanting to get up and running immediately.

After being shown the techniques, you will want to load and start coloring specific areas of your own photographs.

Color Splash allows the loading of a photograph from the Camera Roll and Photo Stream, but also load photographs directly from Facebook, Flickr and Instagram accounts from within the app.

Inital look as the color is painted onto the photograph.

Upon loading your photograph, it will be presented in black and white. By touching and moving your finger around the display, you will notice the color aspects in the original photograph will be painted. This causes a separation from the background and other visual distractions.

If you color the wrong area, you can always tap the, easy to access, Undo button. For fine detail work the developer allows you to switch from color to grayscale. A red mask is also available and will assist in highlighting the correct areas.

Masking mode for higher accuracy and fine detail work.

If you have anything less than an iPhone 5, you may feel a little restricted when it comes to screen real estate. Thankfully, pinch and zoom gestures are available allowing you to zoom in all the way down to the pixel level in either portrait or landscape modes. Tapping twice with two fingers will remove you from the current zoomed state and showcases the complete photograph on display.

You can also use two fingers to quickly and easily pan around your photograph.

If you want to switch between color and grayscale painting modes, simply double tap on the display with a single finger.

It is wonderful to see the developer fully embracing touch and gesture controls as much as possible. During testing, I did not come across a single problem with any gesture controls.

In an app like this, precision is essential. The developer has added a series of brush sizes with various levels of opacity, and the ability to customize the thickness in order to assist the user with accuracy. The opaque brush will bring back all the color for a specific region of the photograph, whilst the transparent brush will bring back a smaller amount upon each brush stroke. The transparent brush has a more textured and water painted look that is likely to appeal to the artist in you.

By default, no visible pen tip will be presented on the display. Through an option in the Settings, you can turn this functionality on. The result is a bright white circular light that matches the size and style of the brush you have selected. It is useful but, when using small brush sizes, this visual guide will disappear underneath your finger.

Brush and image clarity options.

Color Splash also includes basic brightness, contrast, saturation, color temperature, and gray tinting options. These are useful and a welcome edition, but if you are looking for color accuracy, you may want to undertake these adjustments within an app that offers color calibration.

Within the Menu area you can easily tap the Invert Color button to reverse the color and black and white components.

When you have finished making your adjustments and are happy with the outcome, there are a plethora of save and export functions to choose from. You can save the current session, thereby being able to return and finalize any unfinished work to the photograph at a later date. You are also able to save the finalized photograph back to the Camera Roll. This process will not overwrite the original.

Via the Menu area, the share options will allow you to upload a completed photograph to Facebook, Flickr, or post to Twitter. You can also email the photograph or send as a postcard. The postcard functionality requires you to be signed up with a Sincerely.com account.

You can also send the edited photograph to other compatible apps on your device. If none are available, you can simply tap the More Apps button. Doing so will present a range of compatible apps, by other developers.

Print to AirPrint compatible printers is also available, as is the ability to copy the photograph to the clipboard and add it to a Pages document for example.

What I Did Like

The import and export options are vast and cover the main requirements most users will have.

The instructional video is well presented and informative. Users will learn all the essential elements of the app in a mere four minutes.

The ability to pinch and zoom, then pan around the image is a perfect solution for the small screen of the iPhone.

The touch controls and gestures are superb. They deliver immediate responses and allow users to have complete control over how the app is performing and editing their photographs.

The masking features, and reversal between grayscale and color photographs, ensure users maintain a high level of accuracy when editing their photographs.

What I Didn’t Like

No universal app support.

Summary

Color Splash is nothing short of an amazing app. For US$0.99, you can edit photographs that only a few years ago were the forte of professional photographers and artists.

The application performs as advertised. The features and controls will ensure that you have enough flexibility to apply a mixture of color and black and white to almost any photograph.

The only disappointment was in it not being a universal app. If you are after the iPad version you will need to pay an additional US$1.99. Whilst the app is certainly worth this additional cost, I would have preferred to see a universal option at a slightly higher price.

If you are still skeptical about the usage you could get from Color Splash, the developer does have a free version in the App Store. The free version will allow users to colorize specific areas of photographs, but the functionality and fine detail control is significantly limited in comparison to the paid version.

After you have wet your whistle on the free version, I am confident you will agree the additional functionality is worth the small investment to obtain the full version.

Product: Color Splash For iPhone

Company: Pocket Pixels Inc.

List Price: US$0.99

Rating:

Pros:

Excellent import and export options, informative how-to video, pinch, zoom, and pan functionality, very responsive touch screen controls, and masking options to assist with accurate editing. 

Cons:

No universal app support.