Photo editors on the iPad are intimate little buggers: you’re touching and stroking pictures and seeing them react as if they were physical objects. Problem is, a lot of them end up skimping on features and feel bare-boned. Luminance tries to do better.
What’s it do?
It’s a photo-editing app for both iPhone and iPad that focuses on more than just crop and rotate (it doesn’t even give you crop or rotate options actually). What makes Luminance stand out in the increasingly crowded space of photo editing apps is that it’s great at handling layers. Each effect — vignetting, tweaking exposure and white balance and so much more — is a layer and you can re-arrange them to see how the picture changes, delete them to see how it looks without the effect and do whatever the heck you want. It keeps your edits in an easily visible right column so you always know what you did. Better yet, you can save your favourite adjustments and apply it to the next picture.
Why do we like it?
UNLIMITED UNDO. I’m an OK photographer, some pictures look great! Others not so much. But I’m even worse at using photo editing apps, so crappy pictures say crappy. The thing with me is that I need to see what an effect actually does to a picture (as I have no idea what split toning is) before I decide to roll with it. That’s why separating each effect into a single layer is key, I get to play around with it, see if I like it, and toss it without even thinking about it if I don’t. It’s like getting access to pro tools on an amateur level.
The Best
Unlimited undos!
The Worst
Where’s the basic features?