Taking image editing to new heights
Oh – another photo editing app. It can be difficult to get excited about this topic when it seems like there is a new one released every day. But Darkroom puts a fresh, new spin on the mobile image editing genre with great results.
Even advanced features are easy to use
Darkroom impressed me straight away by making all my pictures available to edit immediately (after asking permission, of course). It’s important to note here, that Darkroom isn’t designed for taking photos, only for editing them.
A major plus point is that all of Darkroom’s features are very easy to use. There is no need for a tutorial as everything is self explanatory – even the more advanced options.
A quick resumé here of the main (free ) features here: 12 basic filters and the option to create your own (which can be saved for future use); brightness, contrast, saturation, temperature; vignette, and sharpness adjustments; and cropping or rotating according to an on-screen grid. These are all very effective and work without any lag or issues.
However, the main selling point of the app is that it includes curves, an advanced setting that allows you to change the shadows, highlights and the RGB color model by sliding the line of the curve up and down. This is a top-of-the-range feature, but the developer is not up front about that fact that there’s a charge to enable it.
Undo every edit in one touch
The way Darkroom works is unusual: instead of saving your edits as a new photo, it saves over your original photo. This is both great in that it saves space in your phone, but also annoying that it doesn’t even give you the option of keep both the original and the editing version. You can also share to social media, of course.
But where Darkroom excels is that it gives you the option to undo every individual edit. It has an additional section of the menu that shows you every single edit you’ve made and allows you to undo this edit with the touch of a button. This feels like an app that has been designed to take into account the real needs of the users.
The daddy of photo editing apps
Darkroom is a fantastic photo editing app that offers unique and interesting features, which makes it pretty special. Not only are these features super effective, but the app also works in an intuitive and very user friendly way. While I would like Darkroom to give me the option to save me edits as a new photo, this is only a small drawback in what is the best photo editing app I’ve seen in a while.
