iPhone+PhotoForge=Lightroom in your pocket

I was randomly browsing the Photography category on the app store the other night and came across this gem of an app called Photoforge.  The number of features and power of this app simply boggles the mind!  Obligatory screenshots:

Here’s the feature list from GhostBirdSoftware’s app site:

A D J U S T M E N T S
• Curves: Create your own filters. Edit in RGB, CMYK and CIELab color spaces.
• Sharpen & Unsharp Mask: Sharpen images to remove the softness introduced during digital photo capture.
• Noise Reduction: Digitally reduces color noise present in the photo. (Apply multiple times for more reduction)
• Simulated HDR: Produce images with greater detail by manipulating the visible range of an image’s highlights and shadows.
• Auto White Balance
• Auto Exposure
• Manual Exposure
• Manual Vibrance
• Hue, Saturation & Lightness
• Brightness & Contrast

T O O L S
• Crop tool: Crop, rotate, and flip.
• Brush tool: Experiment with 8 different brush strokes. Choose from unlimited sizes, colors, and transparency options.
• Smudge tool: Smears the pixels along the direction of the brush stroke.
• Clone Stamp tool: Sample pixels at one location in an image, and paint them in a different location.
• Eraser tool: Erase away portions of brush strokes, filters or effects applied to the image. For example, this tool will allow you to colorize black and white filtered images, among countless other uses.
• Magnify tool: Zoom in, out, and pan.
• Eye Dropper tool: Selects the color of individual pixels in an image.
• Fill tool: Fill the visible area of the image with color.

F I L T E R S
• Black & White, Dreamy, Enhanced, Lomo, Sepia, Water Color, Oil Painting, Night Vision, Heat Map, Pencil, Neon, Blur, Emboss, Sunset, Blue Sky and Television.

O T H E R  F E A T U R E S
• Load photos from your camera and your photo albums
• Start painting from a blank canvas
• Edit in portrait or landscape mode
• Hide the toolbars in full screen mode
• Resume previous sessions if interrupted
• Unlimited undo and redo options allow you to revert your editing mistakes
• Save to 4 different output sizes; 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1600×1200 (Change through settings menu)

Before & After shots

The after shot was done with basic Crop, Auto w/b, Exposure, Sharpen and Dreamy filters in just a couple of minutes with dramatic results over the original.  I’m sure far more talented artists than I could make effective use of the brushes tools to generate very artistic creations.  For $1.99 you’ve got a toolkit that can go anywhere leaving little excuse for crappy photos.