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PhotoStudio HD is a collection of 187 effects that you can easily apply to the images in your iPad’s Photos album. The effects are akin to those you would find in an image editor such as Photoshop or Corel Photo-Paint, without the other image editing capabilities and pulled out as an iPad app. The effects come in a variety of styles that include Art, Blur, Color Fantasy, Color Temperature, Cross Processed, Distortion, Frames, Glow, Groovy Lo-Fi, Grunge, Hue, Image Contrast, Overlay, Photo Styles, SFX, Sketch, Symmetry, Texturize, Vignettes, and Vintage. In app purchases are available for Art Frames, Color Lenses, Color Strokes, Hollywood FX, and Classic Frames. These categories are $0.99 each.

Filters

Options

Once finished adding effects, you can export the images out to a variety of places, including social media sites such as Flickr and Facebook

The app offers a range of tools that make it easy to work with your images. You can crop, rotate and resize, undo and redo, and print. You can preview the effects in low quality, normal, and high quality before saving the effect, as well as hide those effects that you don’t often use. You can also turn the “Amazing Facts” feature off or on. These factoids appear when you apply an effect to the image, during the processing of the effect. You can also save effects as favorites, so you don’t have to scroll through all the 10 categories or down the entire list of 187 effects. Once you apply an effect, you can further adjust the effect via sliders. Usually you can tweak the amount of effect you want applied (denoted with negative and positive signs in the slider),  distortion or frequency, gamma dispersion, brightness. All these parameters are dependent on what effect you are applying. Some have multiple sliders while others only require a single slider.

Pencil Sketch effect in FX Photo Studio HD

Old Sketch effect in FX Photo Studio HD

Noir Red effect in FX Photo Studio HD

PhotoStudio HD has no save as function per se. The way to save an image with an effect applied is to apply the effect, make the adjustments, and then save the image to your Photos. Go back to PhotoStudio and then press the undo icon. This will revert your image to the original. You cannot, however, rename the file in PhotoStudio HD. What I’ve done to get around this is to send the image file as an email and then use the subject to name the file, such as Crosspro1 or Dirty Picture 1, which corresponds to the name(s) of the PhotoStudio HD effects applied to that image.

Memoirs effect in FX Photo Studio HD

Night Vision effect in FX Photo Studio HD

Steamy Window effect in FX Photo Studio HD

PhotoStudio HD is a classic example of an iPad app that enables you to actually create new content from existing content. It offers a whole bunch of free effects that are easy to apply to your images. And when applied, you can save your new creations to your iPad’s Photo Album, to the Documents folder, clipboard, straight to email, or to social networking sites such as Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter. It is a straightforward application that works and offers some nifty effects.

FX PhotoStudio HD
$2.99
http://www.macphun.com/
Direct Link to iTunes