App Roundup

5 New Apps for Exploring Your Creative Side

A monthly showcase of the latest mobile apps for educators and students. This month's roundup features a selection of apps for creating, editing, and viewing photos and art.

• By Stephen Noonoo
• 08/08/12

• Panorama lets users create high-resolution photo panoramas by stitching multiple overlapping pictures together. The app also helps to remove artificial warped curvature of straight edges for a more realistic image. Users can save their work in their own galleries, add location data, and share via social media. Free; iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad.

• Photography app Smoosh transforms images into impressionist art with a variety of manipulation tools. The app lets users smudge and smear their photos--similar to developer Michael Valdez’s Pixel Blend Pro app--and then share them with others. $1.99; iPhone, iPod touch, iPad. Free version also available.
• Great Pictures features hundreds of works of art from the Impressionist period for viewing. Recently, the app has added the paintings of Georges Seurat, whose works join those of fellow Impressionists Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh in the app. Details of each work, including title, year, and technique, are also displayed. $0.99; iPhone, iPod touch, iPad.
• The latest release of AssistiveWare’s Pictello offers new children’s voices in English and a number of different languages, including Mandarin Chinese. In addition, some voices now come in expressive versions such as happy, sad, far away, and up close. Pictello offers a way to create talking photo albums and books to share with others. $18.99; iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
• The newest version of ArtStudio features a ground-up redesign, which adds a new graphics engine to make creating works of art faster and easier. The app allows users to sketch, paint, and edit photos. Updated features include bigger maximum canvas sizes, 150 free brushes, a new text tool, and new filters. $2.99-$4.99; iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.