Review: Color Splash Studio For Mac.

Jumping into the far-reaching world of photo editing can be quite overwhelming to newcomers. Copious amounts of time (and eventually money) will be needed in order to succeed. A lot of “beginner” tools we’ve seen are in fact quite complex, maybe too complex.

On the flip side, there are plenty of hobbyist photo editors who merely tweak photos for fun or on a much smaller scale than a professional, and have no plans to do it full time.

Fit either mold? That’s where MacPhun’s Color Splash Studio comes into play. Basic photo editing as well as a robust feature to add emphasis to certain colors is super simple. Hop past the break and see for yourself…

Upon starting up Color Splash Studio you’re created with a clean, very well design interface from which you can go the old route of browsing for your photo or simply drag-n-drop it into the workspace.

Once the photo is open your main focus will be around the brush tool on the far right, where you’ll have options to adjust brush size, softness, and transparency. Underneath brush tools you’ll find a few more options to dial in aspects of your picture such as brightness, contrast, blur, saturation, hue, and exposure.

Clicking off of the “Color Layer” onto the “Grayscale Layer” brings about a slightly reduced set of options for those timeless black & white photos and even a quick way to toggle on/off Sepia — which you can also adjust several aspects of.

Up to sits a menu bar with several basic features to open/save, undo/redo, and adjust image zoom. Two of the cooler features we found made editing photos really quick and easy, especially when comparing new tweaks, was the “compare” and “invert” functions. The “compare” simply brings up a split screen of the before/after images while “invert” takes whatever you have done to a picture and flips it. (Think of it as Photoshop’s inverted selection feature.)

 

Conclusion

More serious photo editors obviously need a greater number of options. But Color Splash Studio isn’t meant for them. (That’s what FX Photo Studio and FX Photo Studio Pro are for). It’s meant for people who want to jump right in to photo editing and get professional looking color effects without spending 6 hours messing with masks, filters, and layers. The biggest draw of Color Splash Studio is that it’s incredibly easy to just pick up and use. Combine the simplicity and good design with a $1.99 price tag and you’ve got yourself three very good reasons to make Color Splash part of your personal library of apps.

Gadgetsteria Rating: 9.0/10

Color Splash Studio: Download (Mac App Store)

Find more Mac and iOS apps by MacPhun at MacPhun.com.