Poly Review

There are plenty of photo apps available, but they all seem to do pretty much the same thing. Poly isn’t a typical photo app because it doesn’t come with fancy filters or Photoshop-style elements. Instead, it turns photos into polygonal art. Users who are obsessed with geometry or fanatics about triangles will most certainly enjoy the mathematics used in this application, but it’s not going to appeal to everyone.

Inspired by the Triangulation developed by mathematician Boris Delaunay, Poly allows users to render their pictures into triangles by simply tapping on the screen. It works by using the color data in photos to turn each touch into a triangle to create geometric images.

To get started, users can either import a picture from their library or take one with the iPad’s camera. Photos can be manipulated in just a few minutes, or users can take their time and put in more effort to create a masterpiece. There are different rendering styles like wireframe, point, flat and color blending for those who want to make images as detailed as possible. There are also other tools included like draw, erase and undo.

Although it’s impressive on the surface, there is some room for improvement like a zoom feature, retina support, more exporting options and even universal support. A quick update would help make Poly more user friendly, but it appears it hasn’t been updated in quite a while so users will have to wait and see what happens.

Despite a few inconveniences, this entertainment app is a dollar well spent for anyone looking to create impressive rendered images on their iPad. Since Poly doesn’t require any 3D modeling experience to use it, turning pictures into geometric works of art is fun for everyone.