PhotoViva - Paintings from your photos!

I’m going through my hundreds of apps to see what’s good and worth keeping, what’s useless or obsolete from Apple’s improvements and even figuring out if some of the one-trick ponies are worthwhile. I’ve been stuck in my ways for awhile: Afterlight for altering small areas (sharpen, blur, saturate, brighten, darken, lighten), Dyed and Afterlight for frames, MarkUp and Afterlight for lettering, PS Express for some enhancements, Gloomlogue for wonderful beyond-basic filter alterations and distortions, Retouch for removing & cloning, Resize for.. yeah that… What I don’t expect is that any one app will do everything. I think it’s strange when someone dings something because it doesn’t do what *they* thought it should do or that they have to pay for it. smh I don’t know how many times reviewers have complained about those. I don’t remember what I paid for PhotoViva but what I’m not paying is rent. I think that’s one reason I’m going through my apps- to find out if I can do everything I want to do now with more to discover but without paying the rent so many developers believe their app is worth. So many apps aren’t worth the expected rent especially when they promise new and glorious updates but they don’t deliver. Instead of complaining I’m celebrating developers who are decent, who let me just buy their app and don’t force me to watch endless *LOUD* ads for ad-filled apps- so thanks guys,

PhelineCatWed, Dec 13, 2023

United States

I’ve been using this app for a few years and keep coming back to it for its manipulation of color. Fun and effective! I do want better brush dynamics and integration w Apple Pencil, as well as smart masking to break images into layers. Overall awesome App!

randØmmmFri, Feb 5, 2021

United States

The painting part is fine. Unless you’re already a painter I don’t see this doing much - works like you’d expect but you’re painting on top of one of your pics... if you’re not talented then not sure if it’s merits. IMHO it’s nothing special - maybe better on an iPad? The ‘auto-paint’ is a complete waste.

E.BeagleMon, Dec 31, 2018

United States

Sorry I have to disagree with the negative posts. They just haven't learned how to properly use the features in this great app. This is my go to app for my photo fixes. Love the 3 color balance slide and the ability to airbrush photos. I also love the ability to sharpen images. I have used the 'Hue' feature to do some photo altering for cool effects. I don't really use the canvass paint part much but like I said, I use this app to correct photos and it's superb! I love it!!! Don't hesitate to get this. 👍🏼😁😁😁😁

Moon lazyWed, Jan 25, 2017

United States

This app is truly a hidden treasure. Do NOT let the extremely low price fool you... Once you've watched the demo video on the app maker's website, you will see that this app has amazing painterly effects that you will not find in ANY other paint package (including Photoshop, Fractal Design Painter / Corel Painter, and many other expensive PC-based software packages). With an easy, point-and-click UI, the app lets you choose combinations of cleverly-chosen brush shapes, angles, and color sources (including having your brush color be taken from a photo that you have loaded) that produce literally thousands of different mind-blowing effects which can be tailored to the feeling of each image. Without a lot of artistic skill, you can get Impressionist/Expressionist-like painterly effects with dots, natural brush strokes, or beautiful calligraphy-like sharp strokes, you can paint with digital blocks or swathes of color on the image to gain a modern effect, or you can apply a huge variety of image processing techniques (including HDR, blur, hue, saturation) either to your image as a whole, to a region of the image, OR simply to the color being used for the brush. The genuis of this app is how each tool feeds the next in a chain, so by combining effects you can bring out incredible imagery that probably even the app designer has never seen! Even if you are not interested in painting on your image, the app's unusually good HDR feature, in combination with an easy-to-use crop feature and tools to control image shadows, midtones, and bright areas and the sharpen/blur/hue/saturation settings make this a nice solution for beautifying less-than-stellar photos. There is also an easy feature to add a sharp or blurry rectangular frame around your image to create a nice set-off effect (with either a solid color or the original, unprocessed image in the background). You can safely ignore the reviewers who whined about the lack of a manual or help screens. On the one hand, this is not a one-trick toy app that one should expect to master in 30 seconds: its chained features are so versatile that they are worth taking time to learn. On the other hand, it's not freaking rocket science either! Watch the video on the website and you'll immediately get a sense of what's possible AND what buttons to push to get that. People who can't even be bothered to watch a few minute demo shouldn't be leaving reviews, or they should confine themselves to the games category in the App Store. Some reviewers have suggested that they want a "layers" or "text" feature in the app. I think that's kind of like suggesting that one's favorite pencil, ruler, or paintbrush should also be able to make photocopies. I think it's better to think of this app as an extremely versatile tool in an artist's workshop. You can easily export images from this app to Photoshop or other compositing tools to combine with other imagery. I think adding some really heavyweight features like layers would overcomplicate the UI. Just my opinion though. Definitely buy this app! For just a few bucks you can get unique effects that you won't even see in $800 Photoshop!

Robert I.H. JacobsWed, Dec 9, 2015

United States

Awesome! Really good app, but I don't think that it should cost money. Like, it's good, but it's not THAT good for it to cost you money.

LittleGreeneBeanFri, Oct 16, 2015

United States

An image processing app that can not add words to pics, how can it be?i bought this for add funny words to my pictures but it just do not have this function.

DddgysxSat, Jun 13, 2015

United States