PhotoPal and Digital Image Post-Processing

I've had my iPad for a few months now and I'm still finding more and more uses for it.  So far it's been a great mobile way for me to socially network, browse the internet, watch movies, shop, do homework, and of course play games.  I don't have that many apps for it as I'm trying to keep it pretty clean... I only really have apps that I use daily.


One app, however, that's gotten neglected is PhotoPal (developed by MacPhun LLC)... mostly because I haven't bought the camera adapter for the iPad yet.  If I were to say I wasn't using it because of its functionality, I'd be lying through my teeth.  PhotoPal is well worth the $2.99 price tag.  It's a fully functioned digital photography post-processing tool.


It has functions for controlling; brightness & contrast, color balance, temperature, exposure, gamma, hue/saturation, and even levels (which some other post-processors for iPad seem to be missing).  Some other convenient features are the ability to; denoise, sharpen, add shadows, add highlights, flip & rotate, and crop.  It also has "filter" effects; posterize, bloom (like a dream effect), black & white, color invert, pencil drawing, and vintage (sepia tone).  Lastly it supports undo/redo/revert, saving (of course), and sharing through email, facebook, twitter, and the iPad clipboard.


To convey to you the true power of this app, here's an example of something I did literally in a matter of minutes.  This could not have been done any faster or better (in my opinion) on a desktop version of Photoshop.


I took this from my iPhone 3G through the dirty window of the 9:43 from Penn to Port Washington after the Rangers/Red Wings game on 9/29/2010.  I don't remember which train is in the shot, but I think it's an east bound train.

Penn Station, 2010

I liked the composition of the shot, but as we all know, the iPhone 3G camera is mediocre at best.  Just for fun, I saved the pic onto my iPad and opened it in PhotoPal.  I did some normal tweaking (brightness, contrast, levels... the usual) and then decided to see how it would look in black and white.  I did some more tweaking of the levels and such, played with the exposure a little as well, and what I wound 
up with was this.

Penn Station, 1945?

I worked with the levels and the exposure to make the blacks very rich and the whites very bright.  Along with the grain that the iPhone 3G camera quality caused, what I was left with was a dynamic black and white image that looks like it shot on film in the 40's or 50's.  The novelty factor of the image left me no choice but to fall 

in love with it.

Now, could you have done this in Photoshop on your PC or Laptop?  Of course, but the purpose of this post was to also review the PhotoPal app for iPad and to express the amazing functionality of the device through the developers and their apps.