geneBlender

Developer: mcMike
Price: $3.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0

iPhone Integration [rating:4/5]
User Interface [rating:3/5]
Re-use / Replay Value [rating:3/5]

Overall Rating:

There have been a variety of applications in the store that allow you to overlay clip art onto photos. Gene Blender takes it a bit further and allows you to apply some pretty good blending to those clip art images to make them seem a little more natural.

You start by taking a picture of a person -- or animal. Or you could grab an image that you've already taken, or one from the web (via Safari save image feature). Then you can place items from the included (but too small) clip art such as animal noses, mustaches, etc. When you place the clip-art you can use the usual pinch sizing and rotating gestures to get the item placed just right.

Once you have the item placed, you then switch into mask mode via the switch in the lower left. From there you draw over the pieces to blend them into the image. This is where the real magic comes in. Using this you can blend them in to make them look more natural by feathering the edges and allowing some of the background image to show though. Oddly the pieces I placed on Mr. Rove in the sample images all seemed to fit without too much blending.

The one down side we see is that the provided clip art is rather slim. While what is there is pretty good, we'd like to see a lot more included.

This is a fun little app to play around with. Considering the very competitive pricing in the store right now, I'm not sure the price is right for this app. While it is a good app, I think most people will tire of it quickly. On the other hand, the situations where it will be fun such as parties, with kids, etc that make the price seem not too bad.