perfectphotoAt the top of the Utilities section of the App Store is a powerful photo editor that gives Photogene and Photoforge a run for their money.

PerfectPhoto by MacPhun has been around almost as long as those two venerable photo apps and boasts a feature set that compares favorably to both — along with some great features of its own. MacPhun is also the developer of FX Photo Studio, a very good filter app. The Perfect Photo 2.0 update is now available and while it doesn’t add many new features to this already powerful app, it has several new features in particular that I think are pretty cool.

PerfectPhoto has always been a powerful image editor since its release. It features a full set of image adjusting tools — color, hue, saturation, brightness and contrast, gamma. You can straighten images in 1° increments and while you can’t do so with increments of less than a degree, the slider is responsive and pretty much stays where you set it.

The new user interface has been redone button-style and is very user friendly and very easy to maneuver through. Previews are great. The screen previews draw fairly quickly on an iPhone 4. Nearly all of the adjustments and effects support pinch and zoom for more precise previews.

There are two new tools that are well done. The Red Eye Removal tool does an excellent job of removing flash-related red eye from photos and it’s one of the better red eye removal tools available on the iPhone. The brush size is adjustable and there are none of the artifacts that are found in some other red eye removal utilities.

PerfectPhoto's Red Eye Reduction tool

The Spot Healing tool is similar to Photoshop’s Healing Brush tool. It’s supposed to fix small spots or flicks in an image, filling them in by averaging and blurring the surrounding pixels. This feature had problems with textures and often worked unpredictably for me. When it worked, it worked very well in my test images. It didn’t work well for me on larger areas, but often did a good job cleaning up smaller, high contrast spots in an image. When it worked, it seemed to work best on small, high contrast flecks in a smooth area. This tool is probably best for cleaning up specks in an image and possibly cleaning up skin blemishes — much like you would do in Photoshop. I realize it’s an iPhone and not Photoshop, but the spot Healing tool has potential and I hope it’s improved in future updates.

I think they hit a home run with the new Red Eye tool, but I was disappointed with the new Spot Healing tool.

PerfectPhoto has a good help system in the app. And, of course, it has MacPhun’s signature Amazing Facts, random trivia which show up onscreen while the app processes. I never knew that about apples….

If you’re looking for a Photoshop-like image editor for iPhone, PerfectPhoto certainly has more than enough power and features to warrant a look.

PerfectPhoto is old iPhone-friendly and still supports any iDevice using iOS 3.0 or newer.

MacPhun is also the developer of FX Photo Studio, a very good filter app that was also recently updated.

PerfectPhoto is on sale for a limited time for only 99¢ before it goes back up to its regular price of $2.99. It’s a steal at the sale price. Even if you have another photo editor, PerfectPhoto is worth adding to your camera bag for its powerful feature set, ease of use, and its new tools and interface.

Perfect Photo - MacPhun LLC

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