Written By: Daniel Scott

This next app is  a fun, but limited photo-editing app geared towards the younger crowd.

iPurikura ($2.99; Free)

Customize your photos with a unique and high quality collection of effects, borders, graphics, and freehand drawing tools. There are endless possibilities for personalization, for any skill level! iPurikura lets you easily modify your photos by freehand painting, using your finger as a brush. The brush option allows you to create any combination of transparency, size, and color, as well as use a wide assortment of stamps/designs.

My Take

I have been an iPod Touch user since it was available, knowing I would be opening myself to a boatload of useful or useless apps.  I was asked to review this one.  As much as I detest canned editing tools, meaning I have a limited amount of tools and not much to use,  I found a use for this one – for my kids.  While it’s too cheesy for me, I had a good time with my older daughter playing around with the app.  For a kid, this one is a no brainer, try the lite version if you are still in doubt.  Coloring photos and adding effects + save and email = entertaining a hyper kid and you get to watch the NBA playoffs in peace.

App Features

It’s an easy set up, perfect for the youngins to pick a picture and dress it up.  You are prompt to pick a picture from the camera roll or from your uploaded photo library (perfect for iPod touch users).   From there, you get to select from 8 preset photo effects, ranging from dreamy, black and white to sepia and more. Then, select a border, 10 this time around.  I like the “Jaws” theme, but my daughter tends to be biased of the girly fairy crap. Oh well.

Next is the best part and why kids will get hooked on this app and run your battery down…  Painting.   Good thing about this is it has a good amount of customization involved. Besides the normal paint brush/marker, there are 15 other brushes to choose from.  On a side note, I work with Adobe Creative Suite all the time, this part is a dead match to the scatter brushes in Illustrator.  Although not my favorite tool, it’s effective and quick to add some content.  Upon choosing a brush, the size, color, and transparency can be adjusted to your liking.  Just enough to gain some good replay value on a long road trip.

And what painting app isn’t complete without unlimited undo?   Thankfully that’s the case with iPurikura.  I think my left hand is fixed on command-Z at all times, so it’s a nice feature to backtrack all the way back or just hit the “X” symbol to erase all the doodling.

After you are done with your masterpiece, you can save it back into your library for future use or to add more later.  Or as I found out, to email several pictures over to her grandmother.  So much for watching the game

The Cons

It would be nice to have some more control over the 8 presets in which the photo is filtered before the borders.  I mean I get better controls on the painting end, why not with the first couple of steps?  That would make it a solid painting app. perfect for an inspiring artist or (in my case) a way to practice my handlebar mustache and goatee enhancements.

Conclusion

It’s worth checking out the lite version, only to see if it sustains a child longer than 10 minutes before making the purchase.  The painting and save features alone make this a definite buy and worth it if it buys you some time.