PicsArt - Photo Studio

Summary

There are a few types of applications I never grow tired of trying out and testing, and - great Sunday photographer that I am - photo editing apps are without a doubt top of that list. PicsArt - Photo Studio is one of my personal favourites in this category. Find out why in today's review.

Test device
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Android version: 4.0.2
Root: Yes
Modifications: None

App details
As of: Android 1.6
Apps2SD: Could not determine this on the Galaxy Nexus
Size post installation: Ca. 17 MB
Optimised for Ice Cream Sandwich: No, but runs smoothly nevertheless

There are a a few good, reliable photo editing apps on the Android Market, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich comes with an integrated photo editor, which begs the question: do we really need PicsArt - Photo Studio in our Android lives? The answer is a loud and clear yes, because PicsArt - Photo Studio has so much more to offer than the stock photo editor (and than quite a few editing apps to boot). Here's a list of the app's features:

Picture Editor
First step: select a picture from the gallery, file manager of your choice, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Dropbox or take a new photo. Once that's done you can start editing.

• Crop: different shapes, freestyle, preset, “normal”, etc.
• Speech bubbles: lots of them, different shapes, colours, designs...
• Insert text: you can even insert your own fonts; there are 60 designs to choose from within the app, and the text can be shifted on the image
• Stickers: they come in three sizes only but there are lots to choose from; more stickers can be downloaded from within the app, some are free and some are not
• Clipart: similar to stickers but you can alter the size
• Frames: a few (admittedly rather girly-ish) frames to choose from
• ...and lots more

Camera
Different effects are available including solarise, sepia, etc.

Effects
Take your pick from a number of colours or pick a lens effect such as Lomo or Vintage. There's also Gouache, Cartoonizer and Watercolor if you want your picture to look more like a drawing/painting, as well as lots of other effects to choose from.

Collage
Presets are available to which you can add your own images. Great feature—collages have never taken so little time to make!

Draw
A classic drawing tool: draw on a clean canvas or on a photo using different types of brushes/pencils. Add texts and/or shapes and change the background colour. I've tried out drawing apps that didn't pack as mighty a punch as what PicsArt - Photo Studio has to offer in this feature alone!

Export
Save your masterpieces to your device, upload them to PicsArt, Facebook, Google+ and co. You can also set up a PicsArt profile.

Bottom line:
PicsArt - Photo Studio is a wonderful photo editing app, it's that simple. It harbours a tremendous amount of great features, some of which (texts, speech bubbles) are dynamic. The only tiny things worth criticising are perhaps that there aren't more frames or stickers to choose from, but only if one were inclined to split hairs.
 

PicsArt - Photo Studio is easy to use and the design isn't bad (quite poppy), but there's something rather inconsistent about the graphics and controls on the whole. Every feature looks a bit different, and controls are different from one section to the next.

PicsArt - Photo Studio is very smooth and stable.

PicsArt - Photo Studio is free but comes with discrete ad banners.