I’m firmly of the belief that anyone has the ability to draw and paint. Far from being some mysterious, magical process that most seem to believe (and many Artists do nothing to refute), it’s a largely mechanical skill that anyone with a hand and an eye can learn. Actually, I’m pretty sure you don’t even need the hand.
Then again, it does require a little knowledge and practice – not a process everyone wants to go through. I’m the same with music. I’d love to be able to play a piano or guitar but I’m not interested enough to go through all that tedious ‘learning’ business. Impress aims to allow anyone to turn a photo into a painterly image with no artistic skill required.
On loading the app for the first time, new users will benefit from taking a minute to look through the help screens. These quickly cover everything there is to know, enabling you to dive in almost immediately. Selecting ‘New’ on the main menu leads to the familiar Photo Album screen where you pick an image to base your masterpiece on.
Once loaded, the picture is shown faded into the background as a guide. It’s then simply a case of painting in your brush strokes to pick out the subject. Once you get going, there’s the option to turn the underlying photo image off, which makes it easier to see your developing painting.
Brushes
There are five different brushes to choose from, each with adjustable size and granularity. Granularity, as used by the app, seems to refer to the frequency of the ‘dab’ of the brush, with a more granular setting, making the stroke smoother.
Zooming and Panning is easily accomplished with a pinch and two fingered drag respectively. The app lacks an undo function which leads to the occasional unwanted stroke appearing with an untidy pan or zoom attempt. Although frustrating, this rarely causes a problem as any mistakes can be fixed with more strokes. There’s an erase button which allows you to delete back to the canvas but I found I didn’t use it, preferring to fix any problems with additional strokes. Once finished, if you like the end result, there’s the option of saving it into your camera roll, leaving the original untouched.
So, how does it perform? Well, it makes it very easy to turn your photo into a reasonable approximation of an impressionistic painting which is, after all, what it aims to do. Although anyone with zero skill can pick up the app and turn a photo into something approximating a painting, there does seem to be a little scope for experiment and technique to improve the end result. My first effort looked reasonably painterly, but rather messy. Once I’d tried a few things and experimented with brushes and different strokes, the results did improve. The best technique I found was starting with broad strokes to quickly cover the main area then zoom in to the focus of the picture (the face in a portrait, for example) and using smaller brush strokes to bring out the detail.
It would also be nice to have a range of paint types to choose from. At the moment, all results are restricted to a vaguely impressionistic style. The choice of, say, watercolour and pointillist (dotty) strokes would add some welcome variety. I’d also like the option to ramp down the painterly distortion of a stroke where zero would be a straight copy from the original photo and 100% would equal the current painted stroke. These changes would further allow for a little Artistic skill and judgement as well as adding variety.
I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that the initial choice of photograph can make a dramatic difference to the end result. I found that photos with a single, bold subject, worked best. Those consisting of lots of uniform, small detail didn’t benefit so much and can end up looking more Pollock than Monet.
Verdict
It does what it does pretty well. How useful or entertaining you’ll find Impress is difficult for me to guess. For those with Artistic skills, you’ll probably find yourself frustrated with the lack of options and control and be better off with a more sophisticated painting app such as PhotoForge.
For everyone else, it’ll depend how much you like the idea of easily turning your photos into something approximating an impressionist painting. If it appeals, you’re likely to find using Impress satisfying and fun.
Impress
Version reviewed: V1.0
Category: Photography
Company: Mario Guimaraes
Current Price: £0.59
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch
UK App Store Link