Two weeks after being submitted to the App Store, the PhotoForge2 version 2.0.2 update has finally been released. Hmmm…. It was sitting in the approval queue for a pretty long time.
It’s more than just a bug-fix release and actually pretty beefy for 2.0.x update. In addition to various bug fixes, including the fix for project bug introduced in the v2.0.1 update, several new features have been added. Click past the jump to find out what’s new.
I love vignettes but still haven’t found my perfect vignette editor that works in iOS 4 and offers full control over the size and shape of the vignette and has a nice, natural looking fade — not a sudden drop-off. A new feature in the FX tab, PhotoForge2’s new Vignette editor is a good start, but it doesn’t create vignettes using blur and radius tools. It lets you apply one of eight vignette overlays and adjust the intensity/opacity in the tool. iPhoneographers looking for an easy, natural-looking square vignette will like the new tool. There’s an assortment of vignette overlays to start from — round, rectangular, and others. It’s more versatile than a standard round/oval vignette tool. I like the natural analog look created by these vignette overlays. They look like they were created by a frame obstruction or by a poor-fitting lens. Adjusting the intensity does a good job of adjusting the size of the vignette. There’s no way to move the focal point of the vignettes, though.
The new Rotation Editor lets you rotate images in 90° increments. It also allows you to flip an image horizontally or vertically. It’s a good addition and makes it easier than trying to rotate images using the Crop tool, but it’s less powerful than the Rotate tool in the old version 1 of PhotoForge which also allowed you to easily rotate images in 1°increments in either direction. You can still free rotate in PhotoForge2’s Crop tool.
I love the addition of the new Color Balance editing tool. This powerful tool is identical to the Color Balance tool in Photoshop and is a tool I use often to make CYMK color moves in an RGB color space.
Although it will run on an iPad, this update doesn’t have native iPad support, which is planned for a future update. Overall, this is a very good update.
From the PhotoForge2 website, here’s what’s new in PhotoForge2 2.0.2:
- Added Rotation Editor.
- Added Vignette Editor (8 different vignette styles with full intensity control).
- Added Color Balance Adjustment Editor.
- Added Colorize Adjustment Editor.
- Added Device to Device image transfer. You can now easily transfer photos between your devices.
- Added ability to invert layer masks.
- Changed the behaviour of the shadows & highlights adjustment to give much better results.
- Greatly improved performance of crop and layer transform tools.
- Fix for projects not loading properly after update to previous version.
- Fix for graphical corruption when repeatedly cropping huge images.
- Fix for rare bug on iOS 4.2.1 that may cause app to become unresponsive when no wifi connection is available.
- Minor graphics improvements and fixes and a few minor bug fixes.
PhotoForge2 is currently priced at $2.99. PhotoForge2 requires at least iOS 4.2. It will run on any device that can install iOS 4.2 or greater. This includes iPhone 3G or newer, iPod Touch 2nd gen or newer, and all iPads.
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