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Magic Selection
Version 1.0
Price $0.99
Bottom Line: Clunky toolset, no online help, low-resolution output. Spend the extra dollar for Color Splash.
Magic Selection is a selective coloring app that allows you to apply color splash effects on your images or select and change the hue, brightness or saturation of an area of an image. This is an app that may be better suited for the larger screen real estate of an iPad. Selecting areas of an image for me was imprecise and frustrating.
Magic Selection allows you to highlight selected areas of a photo and convert the rest to grayscale, a technique known as “color splash”. Using the same selection technique, you can also adjust brightness and change the hue of the selected area.
The tool set is simple. There’s a toggle to switch between move and select. To select an area for editing, you use your finger as a stylus to draw on the image. This would be a good use for either a larger screen or a sponge-tipped stylus some iPhoneographers use. Drawing with a finger isn’t very precise. There is no mask mode. There is no way to adjust the feather radius of the edges. You can pinch to zoom, but I found that the selection tool didn’t always work properly when trying to draw behind the onscreen tools. The tool set is imprecise, clunky and non-responsive at times, even on an iPhone 4.
One nice feature about the selection tool is that you can select multiple areas to help with precision selection. The selecting is only one way, however, as there is no undo.
Magic Selection’s biggest issue is that it saves at a maximum of 480×480 pixels, 480x360px for 4:3 images. That’s a small image. iPhone 4’s screen resolution is greater than 480 pixels. This resolution is way too low except for the basest of online sharing and MMS. Personally, I wouldn’t want to expend that much time and frustration to create a low-res image.
A lot needs to be fixed in this app before it warrants serious consideration as a color editor. The app needs to support full-resolution. The selection tool needs to be improved and needs to work better in zoom mode. An app this imprecise needs multiple undos.
I wasn’t thrilled with this app when it was free. It’s now a dollar which is too much for this much frustration and this little output. With some major fixes, Magic Selection has potential, but right now I can’t recommend the app. For a color splash photography, spend the extra dollar and get the mack-daddy app, Color Splash.
App Store link: Magic Selection
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Related Link: Color Splash
