Photo Toaster Review

Good, but not fresh.

by Pu on June 20, 2011

You maybe like your bread toasted well and quickly. And maybe you like your photos edited well and quickly as well. Photo Toaster is a newly released iPhone photo app, allowing at the same time fast and efficient photo editing: for newbies or casual users looking for the right look without having to sweat over it and also for those wanting quick results without forgetting about a certain degree of customization.

Main Features

  • Full resolution available;
  • 13 adjustable lighting scenes;
  • 16 adjustable effects;
  • 14 adjustable vignetting styles;
  • 17 borders;
  • 38 presets;
  • In-app guide;
  • Zoom in/out;
  • Shake to random effects;
  • Crop;
  • Undo/redo;
  • Send via email and SMS or share on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.

Appotography Opinion

Photo Toaster works both with built-in camera and with photos stored in your Camera Roll. From the main work area, you can access all the necessary tools controlling the photo editing process: Global Settings, Lighting, FX, Vignette and Borders at the bottom of the screen, plus Crop and share options on top.

Photo Toaster for iPhone

Global Settings contains a collection of ready-to-use presets, particularly useful when you need one-tap editing. The presets are arranged into groups (Basic, Deluxe and Supreme) and they cover a variety of styles, from simple black and white to Lomo. You can also add all the presets you create in a new category.

Differently from Global Settings, the categories Lighting, FX, Vignette and Borders offer more specialized instruments to adjust individual parameters. For each category, you can choose the degree and type of effects applied by scrolling a thumbnail list; if you need more control, you can switch to Full Control mode, which relies on adjustment sliders.

Lighting controls exposure, brightness and contrast, temperature and tint of your photo. With FX you can sharpen, control general saturation  of the image or add colored filters. There are also special features to apply cross process and technicolor effects.Vignetting is also customizable: you can set size, brightness and softness. Unlike vignetting, borders are not adjustable. It’s also possible to crop images according to different standard formats. The crop tool is not very flexible though.

By combining together all the different elements, you can create a fair collection of personalized presets to use on your photos.

Photo Toaster is especially good for quick edit. The UI is polished enough and it works smoothly. Processing times are also great. However, one thing I don’t get is the “fresh approach to mobile photo edit” aspect that was clearly emphasized by developers as a huge point in favor to the app. As far as I know, many other apps give you a combination of presets and more specific tools to use during the editing process. Not only this. Several apps grant the ability to restore the original photo or undo during editing. Some apps plainly offer more tools and customization and have more sophisticated features than Photo Toaster, like PhotoForge2 with its History feature or King Camera with its the Photo Desk, just to name a couple of excellent examples. I don’t get why some developers, even when they have good material, should not resist the temptation to spoil everything with misleading or inaccurate descriptions. Photo Toaster gives iPhone users nothing new, fresh or groundbreaking: the app is good and it does its work well and this alone can suffice to justify the purchase.

Overall

Name: Photo Toaster
Developer: East Coast Pixels, Inc.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 4.0 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 4/5

PhotoToaster - East Coast Pixels, Inc.

Nox Dineen June 21, 2011 at 4:42 pm

After using Photo Toaster my iPhone’s battery has been sucked dry super, super fast. I find I have to force close it, since leaving it sitting running in the background seems to continue demanding some significant juice. I wonder if there’s a memory leak or the GPS is being left on?

Other than that it does look like a nice although not terribly innovative photo app.

didi.piliang April 22, 2012 at 1:19 am

its oke

didi.piliang April 22, 2012 at 1:20 am

its oke.

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