Photogene 2

 

While watching Scott Kelby’s video about his Photo Walk in Paris, he mentioned a lot about how his wife, Kalebra Kelby is an “iPhoneographer” and how she constantly inspired him, especially with her use of the “Ansel” filter in Camera+. After watching I cycled through my many camera apps and wondered why I don’t use Camera+ that often. The reason is that for a photo app, it just doesn’t offer me enough editing modes to satisfy me.

What app do I use the most? Photogene 2 because of it’s many “photoshop style” features. If you are a DSLR photographer and are use to editing with any sort of software, you’ll most likely know the pain of taking a nice shot on your iPhone and then watching it get murdered by a instagram-like photo app that blows out the highlights and makes it look like it was cross-processed when all you wanted to do was boost the colours a bit.

Well, Photogene 2 gives you a great interface that has every feature that you’d normally use in photoshop, on your iPhone. For me, the is the be all and end all of photo apps. Simply because it has everything that I want it to do and more.

Yes, it has the camera built in to shoot with custom filters and a stabilizer feature, but the real magic are the editing modes.  It comes stock with come pretty powerful presets that make quick basic edits. The more in depth tools are where this app shines for me. I also has the original photogene so I got the free “Pro” upgrade

Not only does it have your standard colour correction, RGB and saturation settings, but they are all fully adjustable. Not to mention it has curves and levels adjustments too.  The pro version goes even as far as RGB curves as well. It has has a decent sharpening tool and noise reduction tool as well.

If you want more customized adjustments, holy crap! it has a great set of brushes to! Including cloning and healing. Seriously, what else do you need on your phone? The beauty of this app is that it has everything, including those hokey collage makers and frames.

So if you are looking for a photoshop-like app that isn’t just putting a filter over top of your photo to make it look “retro” and is capable of doing some real editing, then Photogene 2 is for you. Also not that it has a wide range of export modes as well. I also just printed an 8×10 from it and it came out great.

Just a reminder that I don’t get paid to review these products. In cases like this app, I have used both versions and have found that they are extremely useful and great tools. No one is paying me to say nice things about them or their products.

Jason Teale 

Photographer, educator, podcaster

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Photographing Korea and the world beyond!