Image MashUp
Version 1.0
Bottom Line: Frustrating to use and low-res output. Not worth it.
Image Mash-up by Gu.Dist brings Photoshop-style Layers editing to the iPhone. It’s a noble effort and a big undertaking to bring this type of editing to the iPhone. Unfortunately, Image Mash-up falls way short on many levels. The execution is difficult and frustrating and the output is super low resolution, 320×480 pixels.
The concept is pretty straightforward. A base image is first opened within the app. Next, you open then manipulate other images to form a composite image. The interface is simple once you figure it out. Once you place your additional images, you can resize and place your image over the base. One finger moves the image, two finger gestures resize it. Resizing a layer was very frustrating because there’s no way to constrain the resize and the image often distorted horizontally or vertically. Resizing was not precise at all for me in my tests and eventually I’d just give up when I got close — I felt lucky when I could do so without distortion.
There’s a choice of two brushes to use to erase parts of the additional images to clip them out for composite — a brush that you can move around the screen with your finger and an “arc” (not really an arc, it’s a larger circle) that is used to dab larger areas away. There’s no way to resize the brush size of either. I felt the brush to be a little unresponsive and found myself going over areas more than once before they’d erase. I’m not sure how they got their sample, but without the ability to zoom in on your work, you can’t clip images to the precise edges they show in the image. Maybe they don’t drink as much coffee as I do.
Apart from being clunky to use, the app saves your images at the super low resolution of 320×480 pixels — unusable for anything other than mobile-to-mobile MMS. Also, if you start with a landscape base image, there’s no way to reposition your image within ImageMash-up. You’re at the mercy of how the app places your image. There’s no way to crop, resize or move any base image. With the low resolution, it’s not like there’s extra pixels to play with here.
The app is ad-supported and it implies that you can only edit a limited number of images before the app quits. There’s an in-app option to buy an unlimited, ad-free upgrade which currently sells for $0.99 USD. Not worth it.
I’d love to see some sort of Photoshop Layers-type editing on the iPhone. Image Mash-up has a lot to fix before it’s the solution.
App Store link: Image Mash-up
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