Artist’s Touch – Review

Artist’s Touch
Company: Artamata Inc.

$4.99
iTunes link

Recently, I reviewed a program called Artwork which turns your photos into paintings. In the past I have reviewed several other paint programs that have this feature. Well, now there is an iPhone/iPod Touch app called Artist’s Touch that does the same thing.

For $4.99 you can take a photo from your Photo library and turn it into a painting. The program does not do it for you, you have to paint it yourself. The method is very cool, and very similar to the method used in a program called ArtRage 2 (look for a review on ArtRage Deluxe coming soon).

Here’s how it works: You choose a photo from your library and the program converts it into a blue line drawing (very cool animation to watch). Once you have the line drawing you use your finger as a brush and paint the photo. This technique requires a lot of patience. The smaller you make your brush, the more detailed the painting is, but also the more time consuming it is. However, if you have the time your patience will be regarded. The final results look like a real painting.

There are a variety of options too. You can use several different materials (pastel, paint, marker, etc.), change the material you paint on (stone, canvas, etc.) and change the background color. You can also change the transparency of the media you are applying. Just like similar desktop programs the materials look like the real thing.

Artist’s Touch is a also a paint program. You can create a painting from scratch instead of painting a photo. However, I have not discovered a way to freehand on top of a photo painting. This would be a nice feature for future revisions.

So what do you do with it when you are finished? You can export the image to your photo library where it can be emailed, set as wallpaper, and used just like any other file there. I wanted to see the quality of the final image, so I emailed it to myself and printed it to 8×10 size. It looked fantastic! Not pixelated like I would have expected.

While I think Artist’s Touch is a fantastic program, and worth your money, I did have a couple of issues you should be aware of. On my first generation iPod Touch it ran a little sluggish at times, and it would also crash when I selected certain photos to paint. There is also no undo feature. This is a must in any program. There is an eraser, but an undo button would be a great addition.

Overall, (as I mentioned) I really like Artist’s Touch. It produces great results for only $4.99. It takes some practice, but with some time you can be creating some beautiful paintings with your fingers.

MyMac.com rating 4 out of 5

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