Create Stories, Paint, Draw and Have Fun with Photos on Your iPhone or iPad

Let your creativity flow! Explore iPhone and iPad apps that help you create interesting visuals. Here are a few that I’ve found to be useful or just simply entertaining.

Image Stories

Storie. Create a story using a sequence of photos and images with captions. You can tell your story as it’s happening, or import existing photos from your phone’s album or from Facebook. As you select photos for your story, you can add visual effects to the images and different boarder features. You can then share your story on storie’s website, Facebook, or Twitter; via email or text message; or embed the code in a website.

Animoto. Create a video slideshow using your photos, video clips, and music. Simply choose a style template, if you want one. Then add your own pictures and videos and arrange them in sequence. Choose music from their library or add your own. Animoto creates your video, sends you an email when its ready, and provides features to post to Facebook or YouTube, send it via email, or download it to your computer. Here’s a simple one I created using Animoto’s “Wonderland of Snow” style template. Snow Pics.

Drawing and Paint Apps

Live Sketch. Create drawings that resemble pencil drawings. Select a background and use touch to create pencil strokes in black or in color. I would have liked more brush options, but I think the constraints within the app adds to the beauty of the style of drawings it produces.

Inspire Pro. I am really looking forward to exploring possibilities with this app! It has different brushes, and you can change the size, angle, and the amount of paint on the brush. It also does a nice job of blending color. One reviewer said “it’s the joy of oil painting without all the mess and expense of the paints”.

Art Studio. Draw, paint, and edit photos. This great little app allows you to change brush settings, use different types of brushes, and add custom brushes. It also has a cloning tool and allows you to use gradients and transparent colors. Best of all, it has a layers feature where you can change the layer opacity and turn layers on and off as you work!

Photo Editing Apps

Photoshop Express. Edit and enhance your photos. This great tool that provides the most common enhancements for your photos like cropping, exposure, saturation, tint, and contrast adjustments. You can also use special effects and add boarder styles to your image.

Sketch Me. Easily convert your photos into drawings. You can choose different effects and adjust settings to customize the way your drawing looks. You can also split your image to show just half of it drawn, as I have here.

Aging Booth. This little app is fun, and scary… Just import a photo of a face or take a face photo of your friend and AgingBooth will instantly age the face. You can then share them via email, MMS, Facebook, and Twitter. I made a little animated gif from the images I made.

Fun apps

Percolator. Transform your photos into multicolor mosaics. The coffee brewing interface is clever. A blend dial gives you control over how your mosaic combines with your original picture. Enhance contrast, detail, and color with the Grind settings. Above is an image showing variations of the same photo.

Line Art. I found it to be a relaxing yet intriguing visual experience. Basically, there are thousands of particles that respond to your touch, and as they move around they leave behind a colorful lines. Over time, the particles smoothly change color, and how they react to your touches, keeping you engaged with the beautiful motion the lines create.

By the way, some of these apps are free or have been reduced in price just for the holidays. So, check them out soon and enjoy!