Monotone screenshots
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Monotone
Version 1.0
Price $1.99
Bottom Line: The monotones are nice across all colors at default saturation — among the nicest I’ve seen.
Monotone is a new from Hiraoki Sato that converts your images to tinted monotones or black & white monochrome images. It’s a universal app that works on iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
Initially, I was going to pass on this one. At first, the functionality and the description didn’t really grab me. The MonoPhix apps and FILM LAB do the bulk of my monochrome conversion and Live FX is an excellent app to create monotones. But, then I read Glyn Evans’ very positive iPad-focused review of Monotone on the iPhoneography blog, had a quick email exchange with him about the app, and bought it. My thoughts on the app after the jump.
I was surprised — I like it! It works great on my iPhone 4. It’s fast and solid. The controls are responsive and work well even with my big fingers on a small screen.
The monotones are nice across all colors at default saturation — among the nicest I’ve seen. I like the sliders to control and adjust many aspects of the monotone conversion. In addition to more precise color, saturation, brightness and contrast control, the adjustable sliders let you to create monotone conversions with nicer, more subtle midtones. I think it produces better monotones than Live FX.
The black & white monochromes it produces are good — on par with MonoPhix Lite with more control. Monotone has separate control for color saturation, contrast and brightness. But for full control of monochrome conversions in the shadows and highlights, you’ll probably want to stick with the full version of MonoPhix.
I didn’t like the vignette feature. The amount of blur is just too great for my tastes. A lighter vignette looks more like murk in the image. I like a little more definition. I’d also like to see some sort of settings reset button — something that takes the app back to just-installed default settings, which were pretty nice.
Monotone supports full resolution of whatever device it’s on, including 5MP on an iPhone 4. It’s a nice combination of good implementation, ease of use and pleasing results. It makes it easy to create really nice monotones of varying colors, tonal qualities and contrast. This one’s a keeper.
App Store link: Monotone
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