The Photoshop Touch app offers a myriad of special effects

Powerful photo-editing apps allow users to experiment with a range of effects and share the results on the Web.

NOT so many years ago, when photog¬raphers needed to adjust a photo, they would have to spend time in the dark¬room tinkering with equipment and chemi¬cals. Then along came digital imagery and the magic of Photoshop, which brought photo manipulation out of the dark. Nowadays, smartphone apps can manipulate photos in myriad ways.

The granddaddy of photo manipulation on a smartphone is Photoshop. The Photoshop Touch app is a touchscreen version of the original (US$10 or RM30 for a tablet version on iOS and Android, US$6 or RM18 for iOS and Android phones). It is powerful and can apply many of the effects you have seen in magazines and on the Web. That includes adjustments like the tilt-shift effect, which can make a townscape look like a miniature model, as well as better-known effects like

red-eye reduction.

A tutorial shows beginners how to manipu¬late sample photos, step by step. Soon you'll be experimenting on your own. Because of its complexity, however, this app is not ideal for occasional use or for sim¬ple touch-ups of your holiday snaps. Unless you take the time to make yourself familiar with it, you'll easily get lost in its hundreds of settings. You may find it hard to remember the purpose of its many icons.

A simpler app, Photoshop Express (free on iOS and Android) is ideal for quick fixes because it has only about a dozen effects, lt is great for cropping or quick brightness adjust¬ments. It has clear controls and an obvious mechanism for undoing changes, though it would be nice to be able to undo an earlier effect without changing later adjustments. You can also use it to share your tweaked photos via e-mail or over social networks like Twitter. It's a simple app, and there's little to dislike about it.

For a different, more entertaining experi¬ence, Snapseed is free on iOS and Android. It doesn't have Photoshop Touch's range of func¬tions, but Snapseed's tools are presented in an interesting, gesture-based interface.

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A simpler app, Photoshop Express (free on iOS and Android) is ideal for quick fixes because it has only about a dozen effects. It is great for cropping or quick brightness adjust-ments. It has clear controls and an obvious mechanism for undoing changes, though it You can also use it to share your tweaked photos via e-mail or over social networks like Twitter. It's a simple app, and there's little to dislike about it.

For a different, more entertaining experi¬ence, Snapseed is free on iOS and Android. It doesn't have Photoshop Touch's range of func-tions, but Snapseed's tools are presented.

After you choose a photo from you phone's library and select one of thes the app takes you to an editing page, see the image you're working on and icon bar at the bottom. In many cases adjust the selected photo effect with gestures: To crop an image you simpl finger from any corner of the image u achieve the framing you desire.

Other settings, like rotating the cro window, are controlled via the icon b can hold your finger on the Preview b to see the photo before and after you applied your chosen effect. When you isfied, click Apply.

Some of the effects are beautiful. Bi admit that, even though this is one of favourite apps and I'm practiced in its find it easy to forget which gestures d Fortunately, the app reminds you whi start work.

A great alternative US$ 1 (RM3) app is Luminance. A full-featured app, it is like Photoshop Express, but with a few effects and a slightly different interfac much more icon-driven than Snapseei a little more intuitive than Adobe's ap For example, clicking on the icon th looks like a group of slider controls br a panel where you can adjust features brightness, contrast or colour saturate moving a slider.