Photogene review

Through sheer popularity, the iPhone has become something of a photographic hero. Sure, it's not actually much cop as a camera, but the fact most iPhone users take it with them everywhere makes it great as a casual photo buddy.

Even though no version of the iPhone's camera has been stellar, a quick tweak can do wonders - enter stage left Photogene.

Photogene is an app that's designed to offer enough of the basic image editing tools offered in software packages like Photoshop to mean you can edit your photos to satisfaction without having to bust out the mouse and keyboard. We were surprised at quite how well Photogene fared in this respect.

With it, you can edit the essentials of colour levels, brightness, contrast, sharpness, but there's a good amont more too. You can also rotate and crop your image, for when you haven't got that horizon quite horizontal enough. Plus, you can also add a smattering of effects to your image, although we didn't feel these were one of Photogene's strongpoints.

These options are laid out intuitively in a sidebar that sits to the left of the screen, while your image takes up the rest of the screen, so you can easily see the effects of your meddling. Quite how quick everything updates is impressive too, with no lengthy waits as a progress bar slowly fills up. No yawns here.

That's not where Photogene ends either, although that would be enough editing power to let you tart up your photos to email onto a friend without the need for any pesky wires. The app also gives you some 'fun' features designed to make your photos look more like postcards or posters.

You can add speech bubbles to your pics, which can be filled with the caption of your choice. There's also a selection of frames you can put around your pictures. Throwaway as these options may seem, the variety of drop shadow and glow effects you can use on them gets rid of that distasteful clip art look that we'd normally associate with such things.

Photogene's comprehensive - for an iPhone app - feature set is partnered by its impressive usability. As each feature is right there at your fingertip thanks to the handy sidebar menu, giving a photo an overhaul only needs to take a minute. The app also lets you zoom in and out using the familiar pinch method and scroll freely about the photo, so even if you've got a seriously critical eye, Photogene should keep you happy.

For £1.79, this app represents great value for money. It's been thoroughly tailored for the iPhone's touchscreen and the results you can get from it aren't all that far removed from those you'd get from a software package costing hundreds of pounds like Photoshop.