By Graham K. Rogers

A few days ago I wrote about a useful grid-making image application for iOS that had become available for the Mac. This sometimes works the other way and a recent download is Color Splash Studio which I have used on the Mac for a while.

Background

On Friday, I wrote about a useful iOS app that had appeared as an application for the Mac, Diptic, a few days after I had been pleased by the iOS app.

One of the applications I have been using for a while on the Mac is Color Splash Studio ($1.99): a useful graphics utility that uses a monochrome version of an image. The user then adds colour back into the image with cursor strokes. When I saw that this had now been made available for the iPhone, and for the low, low price of $0.99, I downloaded it immediately.

Color Splash Studio

When an image has been selected there is an option to crop to a square before use. The image may be resized using the 2-finger "pinch". In the working panel there are several tool icons at the top of the screen. From left to right these are Done, Undo, Brush, FX, Adjust and More Tools.

The Brush can be adjusted for diameter, opacity and softness. There are four quick selectors in the panel. Choosing one of these cleverly changes the slider positions and the style can be fine-tuned. FX reveals a panel to enable the user to make some fine adjustments to an image, while Adjust reveals sliders for Saturation and Hue. The More Tools icon gives us a panel with a number of tools (Show Mask, Show Brush Outline Zoom Preview, Clear Mask and Invert Mask). Each of these panels is nicely designed with rounded edges and a greyish finish.

At the bottom of the screen are three other icons: Pan & Zoom, Color, and Grayscale. With Pan & Zoom we may adjust the size or position of the image and select a specific area to work on. Touching Color fixes the image, so that it does not move while adjustments are made and puts color back into the black and white image. Grayscale removes any color that is put back in (like an eraser).

Export Methods

Pressing any of these brings up a screen that shows a progress bar. While this is taking place, a random fact is shown. I was familiar with most of the export options, but not Postcard, although there are specific apps for this. Posterino used to do this until Swiss Post stopped the service. The option in Color Splash Studio offers to create a 4 x 6 card that will be printed and shipped. As the original photo I used for this was too small to zoom, a 6 x 4 dotted line was displayed and I was able to slide the image around for the best version before cropping.

A message box is available and text can be typed in. It appears on the display, showing that a fairly lengthy communication could be typed. I was asked to create an account. In the data entry panels the developers had provided extra fields for those not in the USA: this had been well thought-out. A similar set-up was available for the recipient name and address.

Once done, the payment due ($1.99) was completed by entering credit card details. I was told the card would be "shipped" and a confirming email sent. Email confirming receipt arrived within a minute, so is an automated process. Another email had already been received for account activation. I was asked to enter a password on a browser page and when I had done this, my postcard image was shown: a nice touch. Clicking on the image showed a status report and a link for reporting lost or damaged postcards.

Sending an image by email was simple and I was offered the usual four options: small, medium, large and "Actual Size" which was shown as 2.0 MB. The other options were shown as 59.5 KB, 217 KB and 789 KB respectively.

I viewed images saved in the Camera Roll in Aperture using PhotoStream and one of these was shown as 2448 x 2448 (6 MP) with a file size of 2.02 MB. Another was 1639 x 1639 (some cropping had been needed initially) with a file size of 1.49 MB. Exporting the latter as an 8-bit TIFF image, gave me a (slightly grainy) image of just under 23" x 23" with a file size of 8.1 MB.

Comments

Color Splash Studio is the full name -- displayed in the opening panel -- although the short name, Splash Studio, appears in the list of apps on the iPhone. The app is not optimised for the iPad, so appears in the x1 and x2 display format.

The developers, MacPhun, have other apps that I have already downloaded: Cartoonatic, Silent Film Director and ArtCamera. I have been really happy with each of these and their features as I have been with the desktop version of Color Splash Studio. They have several more apps available.

Color Splash Studio has a good range of tools that allow more than simple colour adjustments. The finished product can be carefully fine-tuned to create unusual effects. The range of export options gives users a good flexibility in output use. For the low price of $0.99 this is highly 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.