Smartphone apps like Instagram are popular because of the effects you can add to your photos. And now the App Store is brimming with programs to add effects to photos. One of our favorites is PowerSketch, which turns your shots into artistic sketches.
The app includes more than a dozen filters to make photos look hand-drawn. The Comic filter adds cartoonlike outlines to your pics, while Neon accentuates the brighter colors and adds a bright white outline to the edges of objects. There’s also Rice Paper, Shadow, Washout, and one called Picture in Picture, which makes your photo look like a photo on a desk.
Users can choose either a photo in their iPhone’s Camera Roll or take a new picture within the app to start experimenting
PowerSketch is the companion app to PowerCam, which debuted in December. PowerCam is nice in that it allows you to preview the desired effect as you take the picture, but PowerSketch can’t do that just yet. Make sure those pictures look good before applying the effects.
If you’d like to show off the images you create, PowerSketch allows you to share to networks including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. You can also share to Instagram or another photo service by copying the PowerSketch-modified image from your Camera Roll.
PowerSketch is available in iTunes for $1.