If it’s one factor that most Android devices need to have a little help with, it’s in the camera department. That’s why I wanted to let you guys know about Amazon’s free paid app of the day, Photo Boost Pro. This photo editing app permits you to improve and tweak your photos by boosting colors, growing detail, even applying an HDR impact and exports your photos in full resolution. I was surprised at how this was surely 1 of the far more user friendly photo editing apps I’ve come across.

Usually the app is $ 5 in the Android Marketplace but you can download it for Totally free in the Amazon Appstore. Don’t forget to leave a comment following giving it a spin and if you recommend something else, let us know as nicely. Cheers!

[MarketLink]

Android Phone Fans

Cyberlink is greatest known for its video editing tools, including PowerDVD and PowerDirector. It’s now turned its attention to photo editing with PhotoDirector 2011.

Will it be able to stand out in such a crowded marketplace, and can Cyberlink apply its successful video editing formula to a new type of media?

When you start off the software program you will find it looks similar to Cyberlink’s video editor, with an attractive interface that assists you get started straight away. When we began utilizing PhotoDirector 2011, the only photos imported were the example photos that came with the program.

Our own pictures didn’t take lengthy to find and import though, and we were impressed by how quickly they had been added considering how numerous of them had been taken at high resolutions.

You can browse imported photos in the Library, and search by way of them by the date they were imported, the number of stars you have awarded them, their folder, album or the tags that you have given them. You can also see metadata, which includes info like GPS location and camera model.

So far so great, but all these capabilities can be located in free of charge image sorting and editing software like Windows Live Photo Gallery. Once you start editing your pictures, PhotoDirector proves its worth.

Slide show

You can make adjustments to your photos via several sliders. As you move these, the photo is updated to show the effect. Every setting, like sharpness or saturation, is grouped with comparable ones for ease of use.

This suite utilizes non-destructive editing, which means that no matter how significantly you tweak your pictures, the original shot is constantly kept. A log of adjustments lets you evaluation each alter you have produced to the photo in depth. You can also see side-by-side comparisons of your photo prior to and after editing, which gives you a excellent sense of how the photo is evolving.

We also appreciated the multi-monitor support, which lets you to view and edit pictures over two screens.

We were pleased to see that 1 of PowerDirector’s best features, the on-line DirectorZone that lets users share effects and presets, is included in PhotoDirector.

In some ways the DirectorZone works greater for PhotoDirector, as the effects seem to be of a significantly higher standard. There are hundreds, if not thousands of these obtainable, with a lot more uploaded every single day. Hovering over the thumbnail of an effect provides you an example of a photo before and after it is applied.

Microsoft’s totally free Windows Live Photo Gallery can now handle RAW files, so has PhotoDirector 2011 been made redundant so soon soon after getting launched? Having spent some time with the program, we’d say no – this is a great product for people who are acquiring to grips with editing their pictures.

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As a photo addict, I’m usually on the hunt for iPhone photo apps. The latest and greatest is title="Color Range" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color-range/id443150747?mt=8&amppartnerId=30&ampsiteID=saW0nB/fQ6o" target="_blank">Color Range, an iOS app that specializes in adding title="Selective Color" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_color" target="_blank">selective color effects to pics in your iPhone or iPad Photo Library. The developer promises this to be a revolutionary tool that can read the color range of a photo, automatically choose and highlight colors all in actual time.

Straight out of the box, you’ll notice that Color Range has a lot of bells and whistles and appears to be very robust in its creative abilities. And it is, particularly with its latest two. update that has entirely rewritten it with a new graphics engine, which makes it possible for the app to show a actual-time preview of all adjustments to your photo masterpiece. This saves a mountain of time and makes all the other title="Selective Color Apps for iPhone" href="http://www.appcraver.com/tag/selective-color/">selective color apps that have to render photo effects shake in their boots.Continue reading href="http://www.appcraver.com/color-range/">Color Range is Next Generation Photo Editing App for iOS or visit our website for more fantastic href="http://www.appcraver.com/">iphone apps.

AppCraver.com, 2011. | href="http://www.appcraver.com/picks">Finest iOS Applications | href="http://www.appcraver.com/top-free-apps/">Free of charge iPhone Apps

Sooner or later, everyone wants to do more with their photos than iPhoto allows. FX Photo Studio Pro is potentially the next step, offering editing tools as well as 159 special effects.

FX Photo Studio Pro’s interface is simple, easy to use – but also fun. Just drag and drop an image onto it and the program will give you a scrolling set of effects. Click on one to see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ versions next to each other and a palette offering you customisation options. Click on the green ‘Apply’ button to apply it, then continue adding as many effects as you want.

There are also tools for cropping and rotating the image that are just as easy, if not easier to use as iPhoto’s.

And there’s an Adjust section for changing colour balance, levels, sharpness, noise, shadows and highlights, as well as the usual brightness, contrast, and so on.

You can save the image in formats including raw, JPG, TIFF and CR2, or share the image on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or Flickr. You can also share a combination of effects you’ve used as a ‘Preset’ – a simple code to type in to recreate the complete set.

FX Photo Studio Pro is a fun, easy tool to use. Many of its 159 effects feel like they’re there to bolster the set, rather than because anyone would use them. But there are some decent ones in there.

Still, at nearly £25, it’s an expensive app that’s halfway to the price tag of Adobe Photoshop Elements. While it’s worth considering, do so carefully.

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Remember the HTC Knight (aka Evo Shift 4G or Speedy), that’s headed for Sprint? Well, we’ve discovered another photo that gives us a good look at the keyboard on the Knight. Someone in the SprintUser forums posted the above picture of the device with the keyboard out, and it does look pretty nice. It’s a staggered QWERTY keyboard with what looks like rubberized or perhaps plastic keys, and a D-pad. We think it’s about as big as the G2′s keyboard, to give you an idea of the size. Along with the keyboard, which I think we’ve talked about enough, the Knight is rumored  have:

• 1GHz Snapdragon processor
• 8MP camera
• 3.7-inch Super LCD screen with 800×480 resolution
• WiMax
• and Froyo

The screen size is worth mentioning twice, because it may be that “sweet spot” between 3.2-inch and 4.3-inch screens. 3.2 is just too small for most people, but not everyone wants a small tablet in their pocket with a 4.3-inch device.

The Knight/Evo Shift 4G/Speedy doesn’t have an official release date as of yet, but January 6th is what we’ve been hearing for awhile. We’ll keep you in the loop if any more news on this device comes to light.

Thanks to our friends over at AndroidAndMe for the tip.

New Photo Shows HTC Knight Keyboard originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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A stickler for tradition, Epson’s PX720WD resists the temptation of settling for five inks, as found in the likes of the Canon PIXMA MG5150 and HP Photosmart Premium C309G. So instead of getting both dye-based and pigment-based black inks as a compromise between document and photo printing, the Epson goes for the full 6-ink monty.

Billed as an all-in-one for photo enthusiasts, it serves up the conventional mix of CMYK dye-based inks, along with additional light cyan and light magenta inks, boasting an enhanced colour range for truly photo-realistic output. At least, that’s the theory.

Running on Epson’s latest generation of Claria inks, each in individually replaceable cartridges, the PX720WD runs true to form with a 5760dpi resolution that’s typical of Epson printers, joined at the hip to a high-resolution 4800dpi scanner that enables mono or colour photocopying as well as scanning. Indeed, these and most other specifications are identical to the PX710W that we’ve reviewed previously.

For example, you get USB, Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, along with a wide range of media card slots that include compatibility with CF, SD, SDHC, MMC, MS and xD formats. But there are a couple of notable differences too.

One of our criticisms of the PX710W was that it had a barrage of buttons cluttering the front panel, making standalone use a little counter-intuitive. That’s now been replaced by a touch-sensitive panel in which individual icons are only illuminated as and when they’re active, somewhat simplifying the process.

It’s not as slick as the full-colour touch-screen LCDs of printers like the Lexmark Interact S605 or the HP Photosmart Premium C309G, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction, and overall the menu system is quite intuitive.

The other new attraction compared with the older PX710W is that the PX720WD sprouts a bulbous auto duplex unit on its rear end, adding about 7cm to the overall depth of the printer

It’s a little strange to find an auto duplex on a printer that’s designed for photo output rather than document printing, but considering the PX720WD lacks a pigment-based black ink, mono text is reasonably crisp and solid-looking, at least compared with the feint grey that’s often associated with photo printers. Other extras include a neat CD/DVD tray for direct printing onto white-faced discs.

Print speeds are very respectable in standard photo quality mode, with 6×4-inch prints taking about 20 seconds a piece. Top quality mode drags the speed down to about three minutes per borderless A4 print, but that’s quicker than with some of Epson’s photo printers, like the P50.

When it comes to image quality there’s plenty of contrast, and colour rendition is good, although skin tones aren’t particularly flattering. Photo prints tend to look very punchy, but sometimes at the expense of a slight loss of detail in highlights and lowlights. Running costs are slightly lower than average, which is a bonus considering there are six cartridges under the bonnet, rather than just four or five.

The PX720WD is a marked improvement over Epson’s preceding PX710W in terms of intuitive ease of use, and the auto duplex unit is nice to have for double-sided printing if and when you need it. In all other respects, the two printers are virtually identical, so it’s a case of evolution rather than revolution.

We liked

The touch-sensitive panel makes it easier to engage standalone printing and photocopying modes, and there’s a wide range of media card slots. Built predominantly for photo output, the addition of a CompactFlash slot is an advantage to those with posh D-SLRs, as this is lacking on many of the latest all-in-one printers.

Photo print quality is particularly punchy and vibrant, and the addition of a secondary paper input tray for postcard prints of up to 7×5 inches reduces the need for continual swapping between plain paper and photo paper in the main tray.

We disliked

Photo print quality isn’t noticeably better than from Canon’s 5-ink printers like the MG5150, and the latter produces stronger mono text with its pigment-based black ink. Another plus point for the Canon is that the secondary input tray can accommodate full A4 photo paper.

Epson’s touch-panel interface isn’t quite on a par with full-colour touch-screen LCDs, as fitted to the Lexmark Interact S605 or the HP Photosmart Premium C309G.

Verdict

One of the most expensive A4 all-in-one printers on the market, the Epson PX720WD goes a long way to justify its price tag and running costs are pretty reasonable. Ultimately, however, the 6-ink system doesn’t really deliver noticeably better photo quality than some of Canon’s cheaper 5-ink printers.

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Western Digital introduced a new Android app- WD Photos.  The Android application enables users to view all the photos stored on their WD home NAS servers, including the My Book Live, My Book World Edition, and WD ShareSpace, from anywhere in the world as long as the phone has an internet connection.  In order for sharing to work, apart from just having the app, you will also need to activate the NAS server’s MioNet remote access feature, which is a quick and easy process.

The WD Photos Photo Viewer Droid app’s features include:

• Automatic photo resizing: Photos are resized to fit on the phone’s screen, leaving originals on the NAS server.
• Smart filtering: Display photos by album, folder, or all images and search by date, folder name, or file name;
• Offline access: Photos previously viewed can be accessed even when the phone is disconnected from the Internet.
• Social network integration: You can share photos via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, and other social Web sites
• Phone integration: You can assign photos to contacts, save them to the phone’s gallery, and view them as a sideshow

Western Digital says that the Android app is compatible with the most popular Android OS-based smartphones, including, but not limited to, the Droid by Motorola, Droid Incredible by HTC, the Nexus One, and the HTC EVO 4G. The app requires the device to run Android 2.1 or later.

It is now available at the Android Market as a free download. Or get it from App Brain here
l

Western Digital Releases Photo Share App originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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Budding photographers who are looking for some readily accessible tips would do well to download Photo Caddy HD for iPad.

It functions like a social strategy guide, with a collection of advice and strategies for improving photography in multiple locations. While generally you are better off getting longer-form reading materials through iBooks or the Kindle app, Photo Caddy HD does a nice job of offering photo-centric tips that are easy to follow. (…)
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This iPad app lets you quickly add captions, frames and graphics to your photos, or even create greeting cards and collages. It’s easy to use, and the results could tickle your funny bone.

View full post on Macworld

You have the option to either take a new photo right from the application, or grab an existing image.  The interface is pretty self explanatory, simply select the size you want to reduce to, and push “done”. Nothing too elaborate here, but nevertheless, this is a handy little tool for quickly resizing images for email or text.

View full post on Google Android News Android Forums

Give digital photos the charm of old Kodachrome photos and toy cameras. These three low-cost applications give you a number of easy ways to imitate the film look on your Mac.

View full post on Macworld

Magix Photo Premium 9 is one of the most expensive image-editing suites, but the price is justified by the number of tools on offer.

Along with the core image editing tools, you’ll also find options to draw images, as well as create animated banners and even use basic HTML web-editing tools.

When you load the application you’re presented with a tabbed menu allowing you to choose which tool you need. However, these tools are all independent, so you won’t be readily able to simply switch between them at will.

Opting for Photo Editing, you’ll need to decide what you’re trying to do before you even load your images. This is because the menu choice offers a basic ‘Fast’ editor, an ‘Edit photos in detail’ option, or even more specific tools, ranging from ‘artistically distort photos’ to ‘face re-touching’.

Old-fashioned interface

The interface has quite an old-fashioned look to it. There is a large main area for viewing your images, with the main controls running along the top. Down the left-hand side you’ll find image-editing tools better suited to those looking to add special effects, such as 3D (which looks amazing), text or shapes.

However, making simple edits to your photos can be quite tricky and we found that this is a suite aimed more at the high-end user.

For quick retouching of photos, where professional tools are not needed, an ‘Optimise photos fast’ option lets you perform basic editing tasks, such as adjusting brightness, contrast and focus, and quickly removing red-eye from photos.

Magix Photo Premium 9 is a rather odd package that offers a whole host of fun and powerful tools, but at the same time manages to hide the basic editing functions away.

Experienced photo editors will like the speed at which you can manipulate images and create new projects, but the novice user may find it a little too complicated and tricky to get to grips with.

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Why just go large when you can go wide as well? The Epson R2880′s standout feature is that it comes complete with a paper roll feeder, which attaches to the printer for creating large format panoramic pictures.

Indeed, stitch enough photos together in a program such as recent editions of Photoshop Elements, and the Epson can produce a single print that’s an astonishing 11 metres long, with a height of 329mm.

Even sticking to the still generous constraints of regular A3+ printing, with 483 x 329mm (19 x 13-inch) output, the R2880 has plenty to offer, especially for fans of film noir.

Beneath the fairly bland and boxy exterior of the R2880 lies a heart of vivid magenta. At least, ‘vivid magenta’ is one of the colours that makes up the range of eight Epson UltraChrome K3 pigment-based inks, designed with professional photographers in mind.

On closer inspection, you’ll find that three of the inks are given over to black, or rather various shades of grey, including Photo Black, Light Black and Light Light Black.

As such, the R2880 lays out its credentials as a super-serious black and white photographic printer. In our tests, it did a fabulous job of reproducing the subtlest nuances and tonal variations, from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights, producing spectacular monochrome prints.

You can also swap out the Photo Black cartridge for a Matte Black option, which you need to do every time you switch between glossy and matte photo paper.

Excellence in image quality is guaranteed, but we found it quite frustrating because the printer takes about five minutes to sort itself out after each cartridge swap, and seems to waste a fair bit of ink recharging the print head.

By contrast, some competing pigment-based A3+ printers, such as the Canon Pro9500 Mark II and HP Photosmart Pro B8550, have full-time inclusions of both regular and matte black inks, so there’s no need to swap.

Despite only having five different colour cartridges, apart from all the black inks, the R2880 can nevertheless deliver seriously strong colour output, with great fidelity over a very wide gamut.

Colour reproduction is particularly punchy on matte photographic papers but, as with other pigment-based printers, photo prints lose a little of their sheen on glossy paper stock. For this, dye-based printers like the Canon Pro9000 Mark II and Epson’s own Stylus Photo 1400 do a better job.

Another bit of bad news is that, as well as being pricey to buy, the R2880 has running costs that are among the highest in its class.

Combined ink and paper costs for A4 and A3+ photo prints work out to around £2.30 and £5 respectively.

Print speeds are also a little sluggish, taking about five minutes for a normal quality A4 photo and nearly nine minutes for an A3 photo print in top quality mode.

With its three black inks, as well as the option of swapping between regular and matte black inks depending on what type of photo paper you’re using, the R2880 is a bit of a black and white specialist, but still manages excellent colour rendition with very high all-round print quality on matte papers.

We liked

The panoramic print facility works a treat and adds (or at least extends) an extra dimension to large-format printing.

Black and white photo printing quality is absolutely outstanding.

We disliked

It’s a time-consuming chore having to swap the regular and matte black ink cartridges every time you switch between glossy and matte photo papers.

Along with a high purchase price, running costs are particularly expensive and print output is a little on the slow side.

Verdict

If you like black and white photo printing, you’ll love the R2880 because it’s simply unbeatable in mono mode.

Colour rendition is vibrant too, and the pigment-based ink system is ideally suited to matte and semi-gloss photo papers.

It’s just a shame about the cartridge-swapping niggles and the high running costs.

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Everyone carries digital cameras, but not everyone’s discovered the importance of editing and managing the hundreds of pictures they can hold. That’s where Live Photo Gallery comes in, giving you a one-stop shop for managing, editing and uploading.

It lets you do some very impressive tricks indeed, especially for a free download. Many of the Wave 4 features are familiar from the earlier Essentials releases (and from the original Vista Windows Gallery), with the new version gaining a new look and feel thanks to the Windows 7 iteration of Microsoft’s ribbon user interface.

Every section has seen a massive improvement, however, starting with management. Managing images is all about search, and while images aren’t the easiest of things to index, Microsoft has made it a lot easier to add captions and tags to them.

One option lets you quickly geo-tag pictures, typing the place name to add where you took the picture to the image metadata (although sadly not in a way that’s supported by popular photo-sharing site Flickr).

There’s a big improvement to the way Live Photo Gallery tags people too, with a new face-detection tool.

Ready and correct

The image-editing features are the most exciting part of the app. To start with, most of the basic editing features are available in the gallery itself. You can auto-correct, tweak colours and exposure and apply basic image effects without opening images, something that speeds up basic image processing workflow.

Once you open an image and move to the Edit tab, you’ll find more image-processing tools, including red eye removal and a Retouch tool that helps to remove blemishes. Unlike other retouch tools, this isn’t a healing brush and so it doesn’t need you to create an accurate outline around what you want to remove. All you need to do is drag a rectangle around the area you want to change, and let Live Photo Gallery do the rest.

Photo Fuse is another of the brand-new features in this version. If you’ve taken several photos of a group of people only to find that someone’s blinking in each one, you can use this to collect all the open eyes and bring them into one final version.

Select the images and Live Photo Gallery will align them, giving you one base image to work with. Once you’ve selected the area to edit (typically a head) you’ll be shown the alternative content from the other images. You can then drop the section of image you want into place.

Photo Fuse capably blends the images, leaving you with the photo you wanted to take in the first place. It’s a surprisingly useful tool and one that gives you effective results for very little effort.

One feature of Live Photo Gallery that often gets overlooked is its ability to launch other image editing tools, like Photosynth and Microsoft Research’s advanced image stitching and collage tools. Use the ‘More Tools’ option in the Create tab to download plug-ins, launch installed applications and open the currently selected images in any other image-editing tools you might have installed on your PC.

Microsoft has also added new upload plug-ins, with support for sharing images on Facebook and videos on YouTube, as well as storing files on its own Windows Live SkyDrive service. The upload tools have had a makeover, so it’s now easier to add tags and deliver images to the right online groups and galleries.

Despite its powerful new image editing tools, Live Photo Gallery isn’t a replacement for high-end software like Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop. What it is, however, is a replacement for budget image cataloguing and-editing tools like Photoshop Elements and Corel’s Paint Shop Photo Express.

It does the basics well, and at that most compelling of price points: free.

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With the release of the Droid X we are finding all types of interesting new features added to the device. Now Droid X users have the ability to print their beloved pictures to retailers such as Wallgreens, CVS and other quick photo shops ready in no time. With the 8MP camera who wouldn’t want to print off those beauties. No info on whether this is only Droid X specific or if we will be seeing it on other devices, such as the Incredible which has the same 8MP camera.

Never the less this is a feature we love and hope it is something we can all take advantage of soon

[via everything android]

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Mobile photo printing feature giving the Droid X a media edge

View full post on Google Android News Android Forums

Most iPad owners own iPhones. So, it stands to reason that they also have photos that need work—and 10.7 inches of screen on which to do it. But why get elbows deep in photo editing to develop a cool effect? Here are 7 iPhone and iPad apps that can quickly add cool effects to your photos.

Fancy photo edges, slimming image makeovers, or artistic color selections, use these photo apps for a quick infusion of fun. Check out our article from last week if you’re looking to do more powerful photo editing on your iPad.

CameraBag for iPad ($2.99, Nevercenter Ltd. Co) Camerabag won’t appeal to everyone, but will instantly hook those who “get” the addiction of playing with camera styles from bygone eras. The iPad version introduces the “Vary” button, applying the same filter somewhat differently. It’s not a thrill-a-minute gee-whiz ride; it’s an endless stroll through the annals of photography. If that’s where you want to go, you may find yourself there for hours with CameraBag. Read our original CameraBag app review. You can also download CameraBag for iPhone.

FotoEdges HD ($2.99, App Ventures LLC) The toughest thing to accept about photos in the digital age may be that you can’t get away from the digital part. Your photos are in your screen, so nothing’s torn, distressed, or blurred – unless you have FotoEdges. You make the aesthetic decisions about edges, cropping, color, and backgrounds, and FotoEdges add a little artistic flair, freeing your photos from their rectangular prisons. Same pictures, but—ahem—edgier. You can also download FotoEdges for iPhone. (…)
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Photo sharing website Flickr has announced a new Facebook integration tool that syncs you Flickr photos to your Facebook account. Flickr’s sync tools are built on top of parent company Yahoo’s Updates platform, and will push photo thumbnails, titles and descriptions to your Facebook feed.

Of course, Facebook also offers way to pull in your Flickr images via RSS, as well as about a dozen third-party photo syncing apps that let you post to both services at once. If you use any of those tools, make sure you disable them before turning on Flickr’s new features, otherwise you’ll end up with duplicate photos in your new feed.

The integration of the two services is the result of a new partnership between Yahoo and Facebook announced this week. Yahoo will continue to let its visitors consume Facebook feeds on various Yahoo properties and post to the social network from its pages. Once users link their Yahoo and Facebook accounts, they’ll see news feeds from their Facebook friends on the Yahoo homepage, the web’s most popular news page, and in their inboxes in Yahoo Mail, the web’s most popular webmail service. Flickr, a powerful social network in its own right, is the next testing ground for this integration. Yahoo plans to integrate other social networks, like Twitter, this summer.

To enable the new Flickr-Facebook integration, head over to Flickr and turn on the Facebook Updates feature. Once that’s done, any new photos you post will be pushed on to Facebook. By default only photos marked public will be sent, though you can tweak the privacy settings on your Yahoo Pulse page (bet you didn’t know you had one of those, did you?)

The new Facebook support certainly makes it easy for fans of both sites to get the best of both worlds, but we’re hoping this doesn’t signal a mad rush to add dozens of sharing tools to Flickr.

Flickr, which helped popularize social photo sharing when it launched in 2004, has long been something of a lone wolf on the social web — the “Share This” tool on its photo pages is admirably spartan. But it’s also a great reminder that, before the isolated model of Facebook gained popularity, there was just the open web. To that end, anyone clamoring for more sharing tools on Flickr are missing the obvious — all your photos and photo collections have a unique URL attached, and you can share that anywhere you like.

See Also:

• Flickr Launches a New Website Dedicated to Developers
• Flickr Adds People-Tagging for Finding Friends in Photos
• Using the Flickr API

View full post on Webmonkey

Photo Editing Apps range from fully featured to simplistic, from innovative to prosaic. Fortunately, so do the needs of their users. If you crave every feature imaginable? Check. Want a fun new intuitive touchy-feely experience? That’s available too. Technically deep pro photo touchup, hold the kid stuff? No problem. Photo Editing apps on the iPad are six kinds of awesome, as illustrated – no pun intended – below.

Photogene for iPad $3.99, Omer Shoor. Photogene does the expected (professional) stuff effortlessly, and adds a level of “play” appropriate to mobile photo editing. Edit photo files, or edit directly on your clipboard, then output to e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or your iPad photo library. You can crop, straighten, sharpen, adjust saturation and curves, resize, apply a variety of effects, and set macros to apply a combination of commands. Multiple undo/redo levels keep the experience fluid. Photogene even throws in cartoon text bubbles. Amateur shutterbugs and Photoshop pros alike have raved about Photogene’s iPhone cousin for well over a year; now they’ve got a full-size version.

PhotoForge for iPad $2.99, GhostBird Software. Another immigrant from the iPhone, PhotoForge packages a limited suite of Photoshop-like editing and painting capabilities for your iPad. Without breaking much new ground, PF delivers lots of functionality in an intuitive and familiar package: A good smattering of filters, brushes, and technical-minded photo editing commands makes this perfect for touchups on the go. PF offers unlimited undo/redo capability, but nothing frivolous. This is not a “social” photo app – it is all business, if a fun business. Output sizes are limited to four distinct options. (…)
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Epson has always bucked the inkjet printing trend, using cool-running piezo-electric print heads to get the ink onto the paper, instead of boiling it in the conventional thermal fashion.

The company claims this gives greater freedom when it comes to formulating inks, as the consideration of a rapid boiling and cooling cycle is taken out of the equation.

The latest in a long line of dedicated photo printers, the PX710W uses Epson’s most recent generation of ‘hummingbird’ Claria dye based inks, and there are six individually replaceable cartridges in the conventional photo-friendly line-up of cyan, magenta, yellow and black, plus light cyan and light magenta, intending to extend the colour gamut for greater photographic accuracy.

All six of the PX710W’s inks are dye-based, enabling a premium finish on glossy photo papers. With the lack of a pigment-based black ink, or a resin-based DuraBrite black ink, as used in Epson’s SX600FW printer, the creation of high-quality mono text is a challenge for the PX710W.

However, while it can’t compete with printers like the Canon MP640 and HP C309G on this front, black text is still reasonably crisp, suffering less from a faint greyish affair than with some of Epson’s older photo printers, making it more viable as an all-rounder.

Mono text pages are fairly cheap to create as well, despite the lack of a high-capacity mono cartridge.

There’s certainly no shortage of connection options, the PX710W boasting both Ethernet and Wi-Fi, along with USB 2.0, PictBridge and a wide range of media card slots including CompactFlash, SD, SDHC, MMC, MS and xD.

Epson’s usual 5760 x 1440dpi print engine is coupled with a high-resolution 2400 x 4800dpi scanner with standalone functions like photocopying and direct printing from memory cards being brought together by a, frankly, huge control panel.

It lacks the more adventurous touchscreen option featured by the likes of the Lexmark S605 and HP C309G but the 6.3cm colour LCD is bright and clear, and the plethora of buttons sprouting from the front panel keeps things fairly intuitive, even if it does put your dexterity to the test.

Switching between plain and photo paper is a bit of a chore and, while there’s a secondary input tray, this can only accommodate small-format photo paper rather than full A4 sheets. Automatic double-sided printing is also off the menu, unless you buy Epson’s optional Auto Duplex unit.

Photo print speed is very quick in normal quality photo mode, with 6 x 4-inch prints taking around 20 seconds to produce.

Previous Epson models like the Stylus Photo P50 basic printer and PX650 all-in-one were notorious for their tardiness in top quality photo print modes, making you wait for about five minutes while they served up a borderless A4 print.

The PX710W proved considerably quicker in our tests, at just under three minutes, which is on a par with the HP C309G but still rather slower than the Canon MP640 or Lexmark S605, which do the same job in under two minutes.

The bottom line for any dedicated photo printer is the actual quality of photo prints. The PX710W is a bit of a mixed bag in this respect, because while photos are typically very bright and vibrant, contrast can be artificially high and some of our test shots lost detail in shadowy areas of scenes as a result.

Meanwhile, skin tones can be a little on the cool side and rather less flattering than with the Canon MP640.

A smart-looking piece of kit, the contrasting shiny and matte black surfaces of the PX710W combine well to give the impression of quality and this is reflected in a broad range of impressive features and up-market specifications.

We liked

There’s a wide choice of wired and wireless connection options as well as a full complement of media card slots, making it easy to print photos from just about any source, whether it’s a PC, Mac, camera or memory card.

Compared with touchscreen printers, the vast expanse of buttons can look a little daunting at first but the control system is nevertheless quick and easy to use in standalone modes.

There are some nice little extras, like a secondary input tray for postcard sized photo paper, and a neat CD tray for printing directly onto compatible CD/DVD discs, as also featured in the Canon MP640.

We disliked

As a dedicated photo printer running six dye-based inks, the PX710W makes a surprisingly good job of mono text printing but print quality is less than perfect where you need it most – in photo output.

We often found that fine detail got lost in lowlight areas and that contrast was a little high, while skin tones were sometimes cool and less than flattering.

Another problem was that the Epson seemed more prone than other printers to print head blockages in the ink nozzles, requiring greater frequency in cleaning cycles, which is not only an inconvenience but also wastes ink.

Verdict

The PX710W is one of Epson’s best photo printers to date but speed and quality could still be better, even in comparison to more general purpose printers like the Canon MP640.

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The Epson Photo Stylus P50 is a striking printer that comes with something of an art deco feel and looks as though it’s been designed with an eye on looking great in any modern home.

Compared to many printers on the market, you won’t readily want to hide the P50 away once you’ve finished using it, adding to its overall value and appeal. The high-gloss black finish and simple clean lines are mirrored by the basic control functions on display.

Connecting to your laptop via a USB cable, this is an easy printer to set up. You’ll find three buttons on the front of the printer, but little else, so no PictBridge port or LED control panel.

This is a dedicated photo printer that uses six ink cartridges, five individual colours and black. With so many cartridges, setting up takes a little time, but it’s a fairly standard routine.

We found that while the P50 installed easily on a Windows Vista laptop, we needed to download new drivers from the Epson website before it would work on a Windows 7 machine. This is a 19MB download and details on downloading it are found in the box, along with those on getting the latest drivers for use with Apple Mac OS X, letting MacBook owners get in on the act too.

Quiet operator

Printing is an incredibly quiet affair, with the shunting of paper associated with most printing kept to a minimum.

This isn’t the fastest machine, however and we found that our test 4 x 6-inch glossy photos took well over a minute to print. Thankfully the results are truly stunning and compensate greatly.

The Epson Photo Stylus P50 sits at the upper end of the price bracket in terms of entry-level photo printers, but it is incredibly easy to use and looks great. With six ink cartridges to consider, each costing around £10 (inc. VAT), running costs can be expensive, but if you’re serious about getting great results from your images, then it is well worth the investment.

As a result, we have no qualms in recommending this printer with our highest accolade.

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