Get A Cool Mixture of Color and Black and White in Photos with ColorSplash for the iPhone

Get A Cool Mixture of Color and Black and White in Photos with ColorSplash for the iPhone
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(5 out of 5)

One of the norms in photography today are those pictures that have an object in color, with the entire background remaining in black and white. For a while, it took a strong photo editing program to achieve this. Those days however, are long gone with ColorSplash from creator Hendrik Kueck.

When I first started using this application, I fell in love with it. Pictures can come to life so much more with effects like these. It can turn the most simple photo into a stylish work of art. So, let me explain first how simple this application is to use.

You take a photo, whether it’s one from your iPhone library or one you snap right there. After the picture is loaded into the application you are ready to begin creating your work of art. Once your image is loaded, it will automatically be filtered to gray. You then simply take your finger and shade in all of the areas you wish to have colored. It might sound like a difficult task at first, especially if there is a part of the picture with small parts or a lot of detail. Luckily, ColorSplash allows you to zoom in on a photo, almost as much as you like, to make small parts much larger. There is a slider that you can use to adjust brush size, but I found, and as Mr. Kueck points out in his demo video, it’s easier to just keep the brush size as the default size, and then just zoom in as much as you need to.

You can also switch between two views. One will make everything you color in basically look it’s normal tone. The other view however, makes all of the places you have shaded, a distinct color, like red, so you can see exactly what parts you have shaded in. Once you have completed the shading portion, you can then invert the picture to see if it would look better having everything colored, and the shaded area just black and white or keep it how it is.

What’s nice is that you can save a session at any time and pick it up again whenever you want, or you can go back and always edit a picture you have done. There are a variety of settings to toy with under your general settings option on the iPhone’s settings menu. You can adjust brush size, show the slider within the application, make the brush tip visible and automatically rotate photos. You are also given the option in saving. You can have it ask you if you want to save, save always or never save. So there are a select amount of options to choose from.

ColorSplash is a nice application because it takes artistic talent to really succeed in what you want. All you do is select a photo, shade it in, and you’re good to go. This is a really cool paid application for the iPhone. It will cost you about $1.99 in the iTunes application store, but it’s such a cool thing to do with photos, I would say it’s well worth it.

Screenshots of Colorsplash by Hendrik Kueck

ColorSplash by Hendrik Kueck

ColorSplash by Hendrik Kueck

ColorSplash by Hendrik Kueck

ColorSplash by Hendrik Kueck

ColorSplash by Hendrik Kueck