Dramatic Black & White App Review

My one the amazing men in my small group study was ordained this week. He was ordained to the transitional Diaconate. Deacon Michael has been on a great road to this new part of his life. What a dramatic moment, to consecrate yourself to the service of Christ in such a physical way.

Speaking of dramatic, it’s moments like these that the moment can be captured with photos. So many of us have our phone with us at all times and we take snap shots of this and that, but I would say that few of us can take stunning images with our little smart phones. I know that my little pics around the home are nothing to shake a stick at.

The app this week isn’t Catholic, at all. It isn’t trying be, so let’s get that out of the way. In my home photos serve as a reminder of our connection to family. We have lots of photos around our home.

I wanted some pictures to hang in our home, so I decided instead to experiment with Dramatic Black & White from JixiPix Software on my iPhone and iPad. It’s always a pleasure when something works out well, and the results I got with both the iPhone and iPad versions of Dramatic Black & White were seriously impressive. I was so impressed that it came from my tiny little phone.

Like most phone apps, including android apps, you can either take a new photo, or you can import a photo into the app. Once it is saved, it will go into my photo stream, which on iOS is connected with all of my devices so that I can save them, print them, or send them to be framed, or more.

For this example I am going to be importing one of my not so great shots and see what happens.

You can import a photo from your library or take one on the spot.

There are a group of buttons at the bottom of the app, that basically make it very intuitive to get to where you need to go. The furthest on the left gets you right into editing. Once you have your photo ready to go, just start with the star button. There are twelve preset settings to get you going for just regular black and white and then even more in “Dramatic B&W” and “Infrared”.

In all there are 60 preset settings to start you off, and for the most part they can all be used without changes. You can work through this area just to take it for a whirl, you can always hit the undo button at the top of the screen. An adjustable circle is there that you can move, enlarge, or turn with your fingers to get the best effect.

There are tons of preset settings to choose from, if you aren’t the creative image type

It is even more fine control when you touch the next icon. You can control the tone, contrast, brightness, and sharpness (or softness). You can take this once step further and add little bit of color, or reduce the strength of the filter by going to the next icon.

It looks like a silhouette of a person. The last icon, with the circles, is where you can add further highlights to the image, creating some really neat effects. Think of this as multiple highlights and each one can be adjusted.

You can add lots of options and make it exactly the way you want.

Go back to the home button and you can save your image. At that point you can send it to pretty much anywhere including your photo roll so that you can view and share it on any device.

Save and share your photo, of course.

This company has been working on these apps for a long time, (in tech years), and they have resolved a lot of the initial issues that people were having. Now, there are multilevel undos on the iPhone and iPad.

You can work in landscape mode on the iPad, and you can crop to any size you want. All of these things combined make for an amazing app. Really amazing.

This app produced some excellent black and white images. The color toning options and soft filters are especially good, and the full resolution output makes for a framable final product. Anyone and everyone can take their snapshots and make amazing photos. I have played around with it with some of my poorer photos so that you can see improvements.

BLACK & WHITE STYLES

• Black & White—creates a classic photo with filters for RGB refinements
• Infrared—creates a modern photo filled with extraordinary lighting
• Dramatic Black & White—creates a high definition photo for drama

DRAMATIC INCLUDES

• Three award winning black & white photography styles
• One-of-a-kind spotlight supports multiple light sources
• Control over the red, green and blue filters
• Black and white strength slider for a touch of original color
• Photo toning effect
• Soften, sharpen and contrast options
• 7 film grains
• 60 One touch settings

EVERY JIXIPIX PRODUCT FEATURES

• Support for high-resolution images and output
• Multiple undo
• Randomize button
• Quick previewing
• Customizable settings
• Superior customer service

If you were looking for a Catholic photo app, well then, you are looking for the pope selfie app. Which is going to have to have a review of it’s own! I gave it low stars for Catholicity for that reason. I also took a few stars off because it crashed a couple of times while working with it.

By the way, many of the newly ordained, and ordained friends of mine use iBreviary for their personal prayer, you can check that out as well.