PaintMee HD Review

Our Review by Chris Nitz on November 8th, 2010
Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar :: MONET WORTHY
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PaintMee HD allows you to create interesting painted works of art without all the hours of mixing paint and setting up an easel.

Developer: Studio Mee
Price: $4.99
Version: 1.0

App Reviewed on: iPad
iPad Integration Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
User Interface Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Re-use Value Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar

Let us say you have some great photos, but you really want to take them to a new artistic level. You could always load up that cumbersome photo manipulation program on your computer and spend minutes, if not hours, playing around, yet never really getting that look you want. On the other hand, you could grab your iPad and let a simple app by the name of PaintMee HD do all the hard work for you!

PaintMee is not unlike the abundance of photo enhancing apps that turn your photographic artworks into some artist’s interpretation. The difference here is that instead of crayons, pencils, or blood, the photograph is painted on a virtual easel. However, this is just the starting point of this fun little app.

Using PaintMee HD is something so simple, even your children can create masterpieces. Firing up the app will bring you into an interface that is intuitive and easy to navigate. Some of the niceties included are several different cropping ratios besides a standard 4:9 or 16:9, different brush sizes, varying amounts of painting layers, and even the ability to tell the app just how crazy or precise you want the brush strokes to be. The amount of options is just enough to get a different piece of painted art every time you load the app or tap the repaint option. One feature that is great, yet maybe overlooked, is the save functionality. You can choose to save your artwork with a resolution as high as 8192x4536. If that is not enough, you can kick the finished product right out to Facebook.

The finished artwork itself varies depending on how you set up the app. Choosing to have just a few layers with thick paint and crazy brush strokes may have you feeling like your looking at something created by a monkey, while setting up precise brushes, precise colors, and thin paint will yield a fairly accurate interpretation of the original photo. The beauty of the finished piece will vary every time, and its attractiveness will ultimately lie in the eye of the beholder.

My only gripe comes from the visual style of the paint texture itself, or the lack of it. There are no bristle textures, nor are there any canvas textures to add to the overall finished product. The final image is fun, but without any sort of texturing, it loses some of the authenticity that you can find in other photo painting apps. Ultimately, the simulated brush strokes end up looking flat and drab where they really could have enhanced the end result.

Overall, PaintMee HD is a fun utility that puts an enjoyable spin on your photos. While there is still room to grow, what is here is a solid and intuitive experience that anyone can easily grasp right out of the starting gate. If you have an iPad, or even an iPhone, and you want to give your photos that extra bit of wow factor, this app should not fall off your radar.

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