Every week, the 148Apps reviewers sort through the latest apps, find the good ones, and write about them in depth. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Want to see what we’ve been up to this week? Take a look below for a sampling of our latest reviews. And if you want more, be sure to hit our Reviews Archive.
Photoshop Touch for phone (yes phone, not iPhone) is essentially the same app as Photoshop Touch for iPad, which Adobe released last year. Optimized for the iPhone 4S and 5, the same features are present, but the UI has been redesigned for the smaller screen. The app works well, but the small screen size is limiting, even for those of us with small fingers. Still, for Photoshop devotes, the integration of Adobe’s Creative Cloud makes it easy(ish) to start a project on one device and finish it later on another or import it – layers intact – to Photoshop proper on a PC. –Lisa Kaplan
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2013-02-27 :: Category: Photography
Console and PC/Mac gamers might recall the franchise, Mini Ninjas, the loveable if slightly too simplistic adventure game geared towards the younger end of the market. Unlike its older sibling, the iOS version doesn’t offer anywhere near as much exploration, instead focusing on a very popular genre: the endless runner. Players control Hiro, as he runs from left to right in his bid to rescue animals and survive as long as possible. Obstacles such as boulders and explosive barrels must be jumped over, while enemy ninjas must be taken out with a well timed tap of the attack button. A choice of two control methods are available, the default method involves tapping on the left hand side of the screen in order to jump, while the right hand side initiates an attack. It doesn’t feel quite as natural as it should, so I’d recommend switching to the other form which involves tapping anywhere to jump and a specific button to attack. –Jennifer Allen
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-03-05 :: Category: Games
Just when it seems like it’s time to give up on a repetitive mobile gaming template, a game like Shadow Escaper comes along and makes up for the next months’ worth of uninspired clones. It’s not a reinvention of the endless runner by any means. However, it is such a beautiful, well-executed take on the genre that players will remember why it keeps sticking around. At the beginning of the Shadow Escaper players pick a creature of the night, either a boy werewolf or girl demon, and then have to guide them through daytime chases from fascist angels and other heavenly beings. Using the silky smooth controls, they’ll seamlessly go from sliding under gates to jumping over falling barrels to running down twisting town roads to even gliding over bodies of water thanks to the occasional power-ups. Players are also encouraged to gather energy during each run because once the sun goes down the characters change into their powerful night forms and unleash whatever energy they have back at the enemy. –Jordan Minor
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-02-18 :: Category: Games
Since I’ve been playing games for the majority of my life on consoles, I’m fairly awkward and clumsy when it comes to playing them on a computer. Well, it’s mostly the action games. I just can’t adjust to the controls. This is why I never managed to play Capsized when it first came out. I tried, believe me I did, but the keyboard controls were too much for me. On the iPad, though? Much better. Even if it’s a little “floaty.” Stranded on a mysterious alien world, a lone space explorer must locate his surviving crew mates and survive long enough to get back home. Easier said than done when a decent portion of the planet is either carnivorous. Capsized+ takes all the exploration and combat of the original and reworks it to fit on the iPad. The virtual controls are similar to most twin-stick shooters with a few exceptions, so it shouldn’t take players long to acclimate to the new interface. Then they can use commendations earned through play to upgrade their arsenal, their jetpack’s fuel tank, or even unlock new suit designs. –Rob Rich
iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2013-02-12 :: Category: Games
Other 148Apps Network Sites
If you are looking for the best reviews of kids’ apps and/or Android apps, just head right over to GiggleApps and AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews these sites served up this week:
GiggleApps I Need My Monster is an interactive storybook app based on the children’s book of the same name, now also including a few extras such as a memory-styled matching game and a “Simon” styled mini-game. I know this title well, as I Need My Monster is a story that is often read out loud at our local library’s story time, and when borrowing this book, the pages are worn from being enjoyed by many children. –Amy Solomon
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-12-16 :: Category: Books
Sofia the First: Story Theatre is a delightful, interactive app based on the children’s animated series on Disney Junior. We are not familiar with Sofia the First in our home so I did not have any expectations about this book. I am happy to say that I am very pleasantly surprised with what this app has to offer. The plot of this story is both very traditional but also has a modern sensibility to it as this tale opens up with Sofia’s mom marrying into a royal family. In this blended family, at first Sofia feels very out of place by becoming newly royal as well as not being treated very well by her new siblings – especially her step-sister. –Amy Solomon
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-11 :: Category: Books
Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123 – Fun Learning Puzzle Game For Kids is a new puzzle app from GiggleUp, a wonderful developer with a hearty library of apps including a very nice selection of puzzle applications.
Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123 is a delightful collection of seven scenes with themes such as Jungle Friends, Forest Critters, Desert Folks or Snow Buddies. –Amy Solomon
iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2013-01-09 :: Category: Education
AndroidRundown
Wordsplosion from (Concrete Software) is a word guessing game that taxes the patience, gets fingernails bitten and raises blood pressure. In a good way. It was a pulse-racing game of pick five with a limited amount of tries set against a clock. To win, I had to take the opening hint (I got the first letter) and figure out the remaining four. A wrong guess or a time out counted as a try, so it kind of made sense to guess valid words with the hope of picking up a few more right letters. The correct letters were set aside even if I guessed a word that had them in the wrong position; to explain, if the correct word was “BURST” and I guessed “BRAWN” instead, the “R” was retained in a hold space above the guessing grid. In this way, it was possible to narrow down the alphabet and create a word scramble of sorts. I also got hints, and success yielded more hints. –Tre Lawrence
Platformers may be one of the oldest and simplest forms of video games; so it makes sense that they are the most widely auditioned game type on KickStarter. Even more common are the pixel art varieties because of their ease of production and popular appearance. What we have here for today’s KickStarter Spotlight is something that does not deviate too far from the formula, and yet still manages to impress. The project’s name is Another Castle, and the Mario references and similarities do not end there. The overarching plot of the game involves an intrepid, accidental explorer in a quest for some randomly chosen artifact; be it his girlfriend or a flaming sword. The game is very self-aware and makes it part of the story that it blatantly sends the player from castle to castle because, of course, the item is always “in another castle”. –Joseph Bertolini
Zach Gage’s SpellTower is a game that is a long time coming to Android; released initially in 2011 (and winner of the 2011 Best App Ever award for word games, with a 2012 runner-up finish), two years later it’s now available for Android devices. The goal is to spell words on the board by connecting a line between letters that are adjacent horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Forming a word eliminate the tiles on the board, the important thing being that the tiles will fall when a match is made. Thus, the game becomes not just about forming words, but about the interplay of the tiles as well. Thus, the game is more than just a word game, it’s a puzzle game as well. The game reportedly had its genesis in that the creators of another game, Puzzlejuice, described the game to Zach Gage and he made his interpretation of it, despite not being a fan of word games. –Carter Dotson
Posted by Jeff Scott on September 5th, 2012 iPad Only App - Designed for iPad
Adobe today released an update to their Photoshop Touch app for iPad. The update finally ads Retina display support and smooths out the navigation and animation a bit. Full details below:
Adobe Photoshop Touch 1.3 Update
Retina Display Support
Even Higher Resolution Capabilities (up to 12 MP image size)
Two new Effects: Shred and Colorize
Smoother animation and scrolling in the organizer, tutorial browser, and file picker
New three finger tap gesture to toggle 100% view and fit screen
New pixel nudging mode for precise movements
Support for Apple Photo Stream**
Various bug fixes
Adobe has released a highly-capable version of Photoshop for the iPad 2. Adobe Photoshop Touch brings more advanced image editing features than the free Adobe Photoshop Express, boasting features such as multiple image layers that are essential to powerful desktop image editors. Various image selection tools including Scribble Selection and Refine Edge, which helps to extract tricky parts of images, are here in a touch-friendly interface. The camera can be used to fill areas in layers. Google Image Search is integrated to help add images to projects. Facebook is integrated to share images directly to the service. As well, projects can be uploaded to Adobe Creative Cloud, allowing for files from Adobe Photoshop Touch to be opened directly in Photoshop CS5. The app is not designed for extrmeely high-resolution porjects, although the 1600×1600 resolution should be enough for most users. The app does require the iPad 2 specifically, leaving out iPad 1 users. The app has launched at a price point of $9.99 and is available now.
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.
Adobe has announced some new Photoshop apps for the iPad that are designed as tools for Photoshop CS5, to help extend the functionality of the computer program by using your iPad for a variety of different functions.
Adobe Eazel is a painting app, designed to let users paint on the entire iPad screen, using their fingers or a stylus to paint on there. I say the word paint specifically, as it is designed to simulate painting on an actual canvas, as the lines you paint dry on the screen, and you can paint over previous strokes, and watch as the paint bleeds and the colors mix. The app comes with a five finger user interface that is designed to let you access all the app’s features without any kind of traditional menu access. As the interface’s creator, Dan Marcolina, puts it: “We put the most commonly used tools on your most usable fingers. So you control color with your index finger, brush size with your middle finger, and opacity with your ring finger. You access settings with your pinky finger. Your thumb flicks to undo or redo, and it slides to erase.” The app allows you to export your work to Photoshop CS5 directly, or to share your work via email.
Adobe Nav is a tool for Photoshop CS5 that lets you access tools and interact with Photoshop directly from your iPad, wirelessly connected to your computer. You get an editable screen with up to 16 icons, that you can select on the iPad to then use on your computer’s version of Photoshop. You can also view and select your open documents from Adobe Nav,
Adobe Color Lava is designed for simulated color paint mixing, allowing you to mix around paint to create interesting colors in a realistic way. You can then get and modify the RGB or HSB values of he color you’ve created. Featuring wifi connectivity similar to the other 2 apps, you can use the app to change the color in your version of Photoshop CS5. As well, the app works as a dashboard of various colors, that you can use and switch to on demand.
At the Photoshop World conference on March 30th, 2011, Adobe demonstrated a new version of an iPad Photoshop app that features layers support, layering being one of the key features of advanced image editors like Photoshop. This would allow for advanced image editing on the go, as complex, layered images could be created, as well as with the new features like dragging and rotating of image objects, and a new color mixer tool. Adobe has yet to announce any details on when or how this would be released – Photoshop Express already exists for the iPad (as well as the iPhone and iPod touch as a universal app), but the features in this app Adobe demoed would be far beyond what we’ve seen from the current Photoshop Express app. A more advanced image editing app could be a major selling point on the iPad for image editors, especially with the iPad being such a portable, lightweight device. This app is a potentially major announcement, and it will be interesting to see what Adobe reveals next about this potential Photoshop app for the iPad.
iOS has brought users a great all-in-one stop shop for taking photos, manipulating them, posting them online, and composing a whole blog post over that spectacular shot. In fact, because the iPad and iPhone have such great apps, there are some pros that don’t even carry a laptop with them onto photo shoots. Everything they need for quickly getting photos to the world can easily be handled right on these magical devices. Let’s look at just a few tools that make this possible.
Shooting The Photo
The first major change is just how the iPhone takes photos. Long gone are boring, under/over exposed, bland photos. Now we have HDR embedded right in the included camera app. If this is not powerful enough for you, apps like TrueHDR and Pro HDR can take your HDR photos to higher levels than what is already available.
Maybe you like adding a bit of flair to your photos — this is where wonderful apps like Hipstamatic come into play. I use this app all the time when I am shooting fun setups with all my Lego People. The various lenses and films all add up for some fun, and unique shots that I have thought of recreating with my DSLR and Photoshop.
Processing Without Photoshop
The next part of any good shot is the post-processing step, and yes, just about any photo worth its weight in metallic paper is photoshopped in some form or another. This may be as simple as removing dust particles or increasing saturation levels, to full-blown photo manipulations in layers that a slice of Tiramisu would be jealous of.
Apps like Filterstorm, or Photoshop Express, allow for some basic photo-editing while away from your computer. Filterstorm even allows you to make adjustments in that all too familiar layer workflow so many of us are comfortable with. Are these apps going to allow you to completely avoid using Photoshop on a laptop? Of course not. However, what you do have is the ability to post process while sipping on a beer at the local pup without all the worry of dropping a pint on your precious laptop.
Uploading Those Shots
Uploading photos does have a few gotchas, as there is not one single great app to handle the huge number of uploading services. There are apps to handle some of the most popular sharing services like Facebook, Smugmug, Flickr, Twitter, and Picasa, however. Worst-case scenario is you have to email your photo to a client or a photo sharing service. This is undoubtedly one of the bigger downfalls of doing photography with the iOS devices, rather than a laptop.
Composing A Photo Blog Post
Once your photo is captured, processed, and uploaded, you just might want to quickly write up a small blog post about the photo. There are apps to allow you to do just that as well, but again, this will be limited to your choice of blog host. Some services may even support one iOS device over another device, as is the case with SquareSpace only supporting the iPhone at this time. There are applications like BlogPress and WordPress that can be used to update blogs, too. A tip here: if you can’t post from an app, type it up, email it to someone you trust, and have them add the blog posting. We all know that content is the key to keeping your viewers coming back.
iOS is not perfect, but it is getting better with every release. More companies are releasing apps that easily allow photo manipulation, sharing, and blogging for those who are constantly on the go. How has your iDevice changed your workflows while travelling? Are you one of those few who now leave your laptop at home in exchange for the lighter iOS devices?
Some apps need to be seen to be believed and CaPix is certainly one of them. This image retouching tool for iPhone has just gone live on the App Store and makes light work of any elements you don’t want included in your pictures. Simply drag your finger over the area you want removed and CaPix will extract it as if it were never there. Whether it’s a random stranger in the background of your family photo, unwanted lens flare or, as in the picture above, a can getting in the way of your lovely shot of… well, grass, CaPix can cut it out. It’s as if the app understands your pictures.
This kind of cloning tool and the algorithms behind it are not far from the powerful features found in Adobe’s Photoshop software, except Photoshop will set you back several hundred dollars. For $1.99, CaPix offers incredible results that could save an image or perfect one of your favorites.
If you don’t believe us, check out the video below.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Posted April 29th, 2009 by Billy Miller Our Rating: :: NEEDS POLISH
The attempt at previews in realtime is truly impressive and the filters within Chimera are diverse. The interface could use some work and giving the user a choice on resolution would give casual shooters an option to sacrifice quality for speed. Some of the current limitations stem from the hardware it must employ. Still, this is definitely an application to watch as it reaches maturity.
CultofMac reports that, for the next 48 hours, Calendars+ by Readdle can be downloaded for free. The app works with Google Calendar and the built-in iOS Calendar and lets you manage your work, either online or offline, with an easy to use interface to navigate through. It’s originally priced at $6.99 and will return to [...]
Wordsplosion from (Concrete Software) is a word guessing game that taxes the patience, gets fingernails bitten and raises blood pressure. In a good way. It was a pulse-racing game of pick five with a limited amount of tries set against a clock. To win, I had to take the opening hint (I got the first letter) and figure out the remaining four. A wrong guess or a time out counted as a try, so it kind of made sense to guess valid words with the hope of picking up a few more right letters. The correct letters were set aside even if I guessed a word that had them in the wrong position; to explain, if the correct word was “BURST” and I guessed “BRAWN” instead, the “R” was retained in a hold space above the guessing grid. In this way, it was possible to narrow down the alphabet and create a word scramble of sorts. I also got hints, and success yielded more hints. –Tre Lawrence
Platformers may be one of the oldest and simplest forms of video games; so it makes sense that they are the most widely auditioned game type on KickStarter. Even more common are the pixel art varieties because of their ease of production and popular appearance. What we have here for today’s KickStarter Spotlight is something that does not deviate too far from the formula, and yet still manages to impress. The project’s name is Another Castle, and the Mario references and similarities do not end there. The overarching plot of the game involves an intrepid, accidental explorer in a quest for some randomly chosen artifact; be it his girlfriend or a flaming sword. The game is very self-aware and makes it part of the story that it blatantly sends the player from castle to castle because, of course, the item is always “in another castle”. –Joseph Bertolini
Zach Gage’s SpellTower is a game that is a long time coming to Android; released initially in 2011 (and winner of the 2011 Best App Ever award for word games, with a 2012 runner-up finish), two years later it’s now available for Android devices. The goal is to spell words on the board by connecting a line between letters that are adjacent horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Forming a word eliminate the tiles on the board, the important thing being that the tiles will fall when a match is made. Thus, the game becomes not just about forming words, but about the interplay of the tiles as well. Thus, the game is more than just a word game, it’s a puzzle game as well. The game reportedly had its genesis in that the creators of another game, Puzzlejuice, described the game to Zach Gage and he made his interpretation of it, despite not being a fan of word games. –Carter Dotson
:: POWERFUL BUT LIMITED
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.
Some apps need to be seen to be believed and CaPix is certainly one of them. This image retouching tool for iPhone has just gone live on the App Store and makes light work of any elements you don’t want included in your pictures. Simply drag your finger over the area you want removed and CaPix will extract it as if it were never there. Whether it’s a random stranger in the background of your family photo, unwanted lens flare or, as in the picture above, a can getting in the way of your lovely shot of… well, grass, CaPix can cut it out. It’s as if the app understands your pictures. 
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