<div>Many photo effect apps will let you place text on a picture. But none will do it as beautifully as TypeDrawing. In fact, you can make a whole work of art of text on an image. This $1.99 app for iOS is wonderful, not just for what it does, but how it does it: every setting and feature you’re likely to need has been put in, including the ability to save high resolution images of up to 5MB or even more. TypeDrawing gives you either a blank page (which you can set a background colour to) or lets you import a photo from your camera roll. Once you’ve got it placed on the page or have fitted it to the whole page, it’s time to get to the enjoyable part — the text. A whole set of tools is at your disposal. You type in the text in a dialog box and fix your settings, of which there are an unbelievable number — without making the app in the least complex. To get the text on the page, all you do is swipe your finger on the page where you want it. You can set font, size, direction, free flowing text, colours, rotation, outlines, shadows, and opacity. This app can do much more. Here are some of the more unusual things this app can do:</div><ul><li>Take text in any direction or curve including backwards, in which case it turns upside down</li><li>Create text with random size letters and colours</li><li>Take a setting that lets you increase or decrease size depending on speed of finger-slide</li><li>Use an eye-dropper to set text colour to match the colours of your image.</li></ul><div>These aren’t capabilities you’d easily find in a little app and that too with the final result being printable. If you’re good at creating backgrounds in other apps, you can really create beautiful text art. The images save in a gallery and you can duplicate them, clear the photo and bring in another without disturbing the text, or just clear and start all over again. <br /> </div><div><strong>A Feast Of Five Layers</strong></div><div>As the name doesn’t, in fact, suggest, Layover is an app that lets you play with image layers. It isn’t meant for pros at designing, who will have other high-end tools at their disposal and will be handling full-size files, but for casual photo effect enthusiasts. Worth $0.99 on the App Store, Layover is one of many apps that blend and superimpose photographs — it’s just that each has a slightly different way of going about it. Layover is not exactly intuitive and may need a little exploring before one figures out what to do. And then, creativity must take over because this isn’t an app that does stuff for you. <br /> </div><div>You have five possible images or layers to play with. Get them from the camera roll on your iPad or iPhone or shoot them on the spot. You can choose to work with fewer layers, of course — even a single layer with an adjustable colour background. You can also choose to resize and focus on parts of an image. Once you select an image, a row of blend possibilities will come up at the bottom of the screen and you must use the slider to see the effect of each on your layer mix. <br /> </div><div>To blend the images better, you can use the masking tool to erase and paint in between layers. The only other tool you have aside from the blend and mask features is a crop tool. <br /> </div><div>It takes an eye for design and imagery to get results out of this app, but if you have that, the look can be stunningly artistic. Almost anything can be made to look infinitely more interesting.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; ">(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 12-11-2012)</span> <br /><br /> </div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
