Photo App of the Week: Pic Stitch for iOS
A look at iOS app Pic Stitch, a photo collage app.
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If you enjoy making collages of your photos and applying effects while you do it, Pic Stitch just might tickle your fancy. It's available for iOS on the App Store for free, or $0.99 for a Pro version. An iPhone 4S was used for this review, but the app is also compatible with other iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. It isn't available for Android.
What Pic Stitch Gets Right
A perennial favorite on the iTunes App Store, Pic Stitch is all about building collages. To that end it performs admirably, offering the largest number of framing options in any app we've reviewed: 32 (the previous best was 19 from Diptic). You're given a wide array of choices in building your frames, including the ability to easily switch between aspect ratios. Want the final product to be 16:9? No problem. Square? Check. They even have a preset for Facebook cover photos.
When framing your photos, you can control the border thickness and color or even round off the edges, but only with the $0.99 Pro version. Pic Stitch Pro also removes those pesky ads that live at the bottom of many pages, which are a pet peeve of ours.
When editing pictures, you have a standard selection of tools, including contrast, brightness, saturation, and so on. One thing we really get a kick out of, though, is the dial interface used to change these settings. Just spin the dial left or right and, boom, you're over-saturated. You can make your photos overflow with color in mere seconds. You can also do precise little changes, but it's just so much fun to spin the dial that it may be difficult to exercise self control.
What Pic Stitch Could Do Better
Pic Stitch has a number of great features, but it isn't perfect.
There aren't a lot of filters present by default, though you can purchase extension packs for $0.99. It's a little annoying that you have to buy those filters even when you pay for the Pro version, but this certainly isn't the first app to use that upselling strategy. What it does come with are "stickers," which are lame add-ons to put cartoonish hats, glasses, and so on into your shots. We don't think our photo of Teddy Roosevelt's statue gains much from the addition of a cartoon sombrero, but if that's your creative style, more power to you.
The interface is intuitive and easy to use, but the app doesn't always respond properly when you try to perform an action. More than once, we found ourselves tapping to insert an image without any result. That was annoying, to say the least. We also wish that, once an image is in the frame, we could pinch-zoom right in the frame to crop the image, rather than having to go to another screen. Finally, we'd prefer the ability to drag the photos between different frames, in the event that we change the frame layout and want to reorder the photos.
Worth A Download?
If you enjoy making collages of your adventures, this app offers you a lot of flexibility. However, some of the features, such as stickers, may appeal to a younger demographic. Maybe give it a try to compare to the other collage apps out there, if nothing else.