Editor’s Rating:

Price: $1.99
Category: Photography
Features:

• Snap photos on the spot with an iPhone camera, or pick any photo from your camera roll and albums.
• A choice of nineteen different layouts
• Brightness, contrast and color saturation adjustment for each image
• The ability to pan, rotate, mirror and zoom individual photos
• Customizable controls for border color and width
• A simple and intuitive interface
• Option to export to email or camera roll
• Compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Okay photo geeks and genius’ alike, get geared up for a great editing/story telling app from Peak Systems. It’s called Diptic, meaning “a picture or series of pictures (as an altarpiece) painted or carved on two hinged tablets”. It is a photography app with some great editing capabilities, although those capabilities are limited. Do not rely on the Diptic app for strong editing and filters, you should edit them in another app before importing to this one. However, that is not what Diptic is about. Diptic is a different type of app, focusing more so on telling a story in pictures. Some of the most amazing shots that I have seen to date on the iPhone were edited using this very app. So without further a due, let’s get into it’s features.

Upon opening Diptic, the first screen you will see is the “Choose a Layout” screen. From this screen you have the option of 19 different layouts which can be viewed using swipe gestures, and chosen by tapping the desired layout. After choosing the layout, you are taken to the “Select Photos” screen. Simply tap the frame within your layout to open the native pop up which allows you to either “Take Photo” or “Select from Photo Albums”. I personally, select from albums due to the fact that I have usually edited a photo using another app before loading to Diptic.

Once you have successfully added a photo to the frame, you can get a little fancy. Swipe gestures work within each frame to enlarge or scale down a specific photo, an easy way of cropping. Additionally, the bottom panel of the app provides a few editing choices including “Transform” and “Effects”. We will begin by tapping “Transform” then tapping the image frame in which you wish to apply the transformation to. The options given upon doing so: “Mirror Image” (flips image horizontally) and  “Rotate 90 Degrees”. Next we can tap the “Effects” option and, again, tap the image frame in which you wish to apply the effects to. Once an image is tapped, you have three photo properties available for editing. Brightness, Contrast and Saturation. Each of which have a handy slider used to adjust the setting and you can view the adjustment to each setting in real time.

Something you may, or may not, miss is the “Border” option. It is located in the upper left corner of the app screen. It is only visible when the “Effects” tab is highlighted. Tap it to bring up your options. Here you are able to adjust the thickness of your border, select a black or white border, or play around with the RGB sliders to create your own color. Although I always open the border options with the intent on using some crazy color, I usually end up using either Black or White. To put it rather plainly, it compliments the apps elegance to keep it simple.

At any time during the editing process, if you feel the layout is not quite what you intended, you can tap “Layout” to make changes. Once a fresh layout is chosen, your photos previously chosen will display within the new frames. Another handy tip: If you are unsure what each of the options makes available to you, tap the info icon in the upper right corner. It will display a short, sweet and simple description of whichever option is highlighted currently in the menu at the bottom of your screen.

Finished editing? Tap “Export” to bring up the “Export to Photos” and “Export to Email” options. Choose one and you’re done. Simply load to your favorite social site to show off your great photography skills! May we suggest Flickr? If you answered “Why, yes you may”, check out the Diptic Flickr Group to see what others are creating with the app. You’re guaranteed to find a massive amount of inspiration. At the time of this post there are 1,710 photos in the group pool.

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