Recently, several of the top monochrome conversion apps have been updated to add a feature that Photoshoppers have been using for years — color filters for black & white conversion, which is basically using that color’s channel as your grayscale source.
MonoPhix 3.1 recently hit the App Store. The update adds these features to this excellent monochrome conversion app.
Here’s what’s new with this update:
• Color filters for Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and of course default (average blending) easily accessible with one tap
• Added a small tooltip to show people how they can hide the tool overlay (this will disappear automatically after being used)
• Vignetting is now lighter by default and has a higher range
• A slider was added to the vignetting tab to allow users to correct the vignetting on the preview in case of glitches
• Fixed vignetting preview glitch on some landscape images (1936×2691)
• Fixed a few minor issues to improve reliability on iOS 4.3 and up
• Small performance adjustments to make the filters run more smoothly
NOTE: This update contains a glitch in the opening screen. This will be fixed ASAP with a 3.1.1 update and does not affect the overall functioning of the app. You can still update to 3.1 to receive the new features. A fix will arrive in about a week.
The tooltip is a great detail and is a good reminder of how to collapse the head-up tools for both new and old users of MonoPhix.
Vignetting hasn’t been improved much, I’m afraid. It’s always been my least-favorite feature of MonoPhix 3.0. The “burn†of the vignette is still pretty dark overall. I’ll still probably use other apps to add vignette. Standard vignette (blur) size and brightness sliders would be a huge improvement to this tool. Right now, the vignette tools in Monochromia and Simply B&W work much better.
The new color filters are a great addition in this update. What makes these tools even more powerful here is MonoPhix’s additional dark shade and light shade intensity controls – a tool it’s had since version 1. For excellent color-to-black & white conversions, they add even more tools to the powerful toolbox of MonoPhix.
MonoPhix saves at your device’s full resolution. MonoPhix for iPhone and iPod touch is still only $0.99. It’s still old iPhone friendly and will work on any iDevice running iOS 3.1.3 or newer.
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