The passage of time is rather hard for one to notice while it’s happening. Seasons change gradually, climate change creeps at such a slow pace many actively deny its reality – even changes to a person we are close to are hard to perceive when we see them daily. Red Hill Studios, best known for educational and health games and behind the documentary “Exploring Time“, have launched an iPad app. Painting With Time, the gives users 14 remarkable environments to explore the concept and its impact.
In the gallery are pastoral scenes, urban landscapes, even people, and we are invited by the simple GUI, to select a scene and then use a finger to paint it. The tubes in this app, however, don’t contain paint – they contain time. In minutes, days, seasons, or years users blend the effects of time right onto the image and then slice it in myriad ways to explore the juxtapositions. It’s time-lapse photography with an interactive twist.
The results can be beautiful like seasons changing in a forest, amusing like playing with facial hair growth, and some are eye-opening like the glacier retreat in the arctic. Painting With Time is an aesthetic, creative, and mind-expanding app, ideally suited to starting a new year, and it’s free.
There is a new player in the photo-morphosis game and it’s called Artifact. The app allows iPhone and iPad users to alter their photos fairly quickly as the clone stamp tool works extremely well with iOS. This is a much welcomed app since its cost of $2.99 is dwarfed by Adobe Photoshops CS5′s $699 price tag. Ok, there is a bit of a features difference between the two, but the app is a powerful tool for those photo fans who enjoy adorning their dog Skippy with a magnificent mustache or their darling newborn with a pair of angel wings.
Artifact features two useable layers, one for the original image and the other for the image the user will be taking from. As soon as the image has been pinched into place, the user simply pants the image from the second image onto the first image for a new, unique photo. The app also allows a video frame to be used, multi-touch painting support, different brush shapes and painting modes and masking tape to block off and protect parts of the image from painting. And with the latest update, the user can undo multiple times, uses less RAM, takes images from Facebook and the opacity can be customized.
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Inspire Pro – Was $7.99, now $0.99 From our review: “Inspire Pro is a spectacular painting app for the iPad, and its price makes it even more enticing. Even those with more ability to appreciate art than create it, like me, will see the enduring value of an app like Inspire.”
The Creeps! HD – Was $1.99, now FREE Our reviewer said, “I’ve played tower defense games for years. I experienced my first taste of them on Warcraft 3, with the huge variety of fan-made TDs created with Warcraft 3′s map editor. I’ve seen a ridiculous amount of features in a ridiculous amount of defense games, The Creeps! is one of the few that’s got it right.”
Incredibooth – Was $0.99, now FREE Our review said, “IncrediBooth does an amazing job of bringing those retro style photo booths straight to your phone. Using the iPhone 4′s front facing camera you can quickly take a strip of photos using one of the lenses offered.”
Bugs are universally considered pests in the gaming world. All the more so it seems when it comes to attempting to destroy historical artwork such as the great paintings located in The Louvre Museum.
This is the premise of Paint in the Bugs, a simple casual game all about wiping out bugs in order to stop them damaging the beautiful paintings within the museum. Along the way, players can take in the sights of such classic masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and more.
To do this, players must shoot their way through each level ensuring that they use the right color paint for the right creature in order to vanquish them.
Good hand to eye coordination is required, as well as a keen eye to keep track of the color variants. This looks set to be one for the high score chasing fan.
Impress is a painting app designed to let you turn your favorite pictures into paintings. Featuring zoom controls, brush, settings, and automatic color selection, with a little bit of patience and an eye for detail it allows you to make something not half bad.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Posted March 12th, 2009 by Bonnie Eisenman Our Rating: :: RECOMMENDED
In Dapple, instead of swapping blocks, you have to use your paints to blend new colors and clear clusters of four or more. It's a fun new take on the color-matching formula that requires some new strategies and makes for loads of fun. If it weren't for the price, Dapple could be a real hit.