It's all about photo apps.

Review: TouchRetouch

What does it do?

TouchRetouch for iPhone removes unwanted elements of your photos (including shadows, errant light, dust on the lens, even people) with one click.  Most serious photographers are aware that Adobe’s Photoshop CS5 desktop software gives you this same functionality with its magical “Content-Aware Fill™” feature. This video from Gizmodo introduced the feature to us in spring 2010 and took our breath away.

Some might argue that this feature alone was worth the upgrade price of the Adobe suite when it was released. The iPhone application TouchRetouch gives us the ability to have a strikingly similar one-click feature in our pocket. 

Pros

  • Imperfections can be removed later, so you can focus on being the photographic artist now
  • The application is about performing only one feature, therefore the interface is simple and uncluttered

  • The interface includes only a lasso, a brush and an eraser to select the area for removal, a move tool to navigate around the photo, a clone stamp for cleanup and a Go! button
  • There is virtually no learning curve.  The application is as simple as
  1. Paint over the area that you want to remove 
  2. (Optional) Further refine your selection with the eraser tool and zooming for finer control
  3. Press the Go! (movie slate) icon to watch the magic happen
  4. (Optional) Use the clone tool to touch up any areas where the automatic retouch magic delivered undesirable results.

Cons

  • The application performs complex calculations so it may run slower on older devices.
  • The company created an application that is virtually the same for iPhone and iPad, but it is not a universal binary.  Although I did not mind spending $.99 on this application each for both my iPad and iPhone, I do miss the portability and manageability of having one application that works on either device.

Do you need it? 

This application is a must-have in any mobile photographer’s tool kit.  At $.99 US, I would buy it over and over again.  This price tag certainly beats the hundreds of dollars US I might have spent to upgrade Photoshop CS5 for the same feature.

Sample photos