When Rhonna Farrer debuted her app in the Apple app store, it quickly shot to the top of the Most Popular list and I was not surprised! For those of you that aren’t familiar with Rhonna she has been an amazing artist on the digital scene since she won Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame scrapbooking contest in 2004. She was also lead digital designer for Two Peas in A Bucket as well as one of their Garden Girl’s and is currently working on the Wacom Pen Scrapper’s team. Rhonna has a gorgeous, vintage meets modern style that is always uplifting and refreshing and her app is nothing short! Here’s how it is described in the app store:
“Designed with your creativity in mind to add your own personality to your photos. Can be printed out up to 4×4 with great resolution! Perfect to creatively edit your photos with artist, Rhonna Farrer’s exclusive frames, masks, designs, fonts & filters right on your iPhone.”
This app is JAMMED PACK with endless options for your photo needs! It’s like a never-ending Christmas morning when you first open it up! I can honestly say I could take hours going into every little detail of the app, but I think the best way for me to show you what this baby does is to walk you through the process of a few photos. Sound good? Let’s go!
Upon opening the app you are greeted by the main screen. You have three options from here; You can choose a photo from your camera roll/photostream/designed backgrounds, (film roll icon), turn on your camera to take a photo, (camera icon), and rate/report issues/tutorial videos, (heart icon.) I am going to choose a pre-designed chalkboard background for my first sample.
You can crop your photo or background to the pre-designated size and zoom in and out as you please.
There are some canvas options available at this point, but we will discuss these in the later samples.
There are four font packs which contain multiple fonts within each pack for you to choose from. There are endless options from doodled, swirly and standard fonts to choose from.
You can easily choose your font and color and write whatever you desire. There are easily accessable coordinating colors, but as you scroll more to the right you can choose to completely customize the color using different gradient and brightness scales.
You will also notice the box that surrounds your font; you will see this throughout the app surrounding any decorations or embellishments you add. By touching anywhere within the box you can move that specific item around, but by touching the circle in the bottom right corner, you can resize and rotate the object however you want.
By touching the asterisk sign in the upper left corner you will access the design packs. There are so many endless options with fabulous Rhonna designs within here. I have looked through these so many times I still feel like I find new designs all the time that I have never seen before!
Once you choose a design, you can hit the horizontal lines button in the upper right and get, “Design Options.” One of my favorites is Transparency. This will reduce the opacity of the image, embellishment or text that you added.
Another design option is outlining. Here you get options for thickness and color of your outline.
Once you are completely finished with your design you have the options to save it to your camera roll, email it, post it on twitter and more!
Next I’m going to choose to use a photo of my daughter from a recent trip to the lake. Here we are going to look into the canvas options a bit more.
First I’m going to add a filter. There are nine filter options and you can choose the strength of the filter.
Another canvas option is masking. This is a great way to put focus on primary area or person in your photo. Masking might seem intimidating at first, but trust me, it’s pretty awesome once you learn how to use it. Once the option is tapped you have to slide the “off” to, “on,” and then choose the opacity. This will put a “fuzz” to your background or photo.
Then from your design packs list you will choose a shape or phrase to mask your background or photo. (I think the insta geo pack is great for masks.) Once placed, this shape will delete the, “fuzz,” from previously and highlight your subject in the photo.
You can continue to mask other shapes and doodles and reveal smaller amounts of the photo for fun, visual purposes. You can also add other non-masked images by tapping the mask icon in the upper left corner and have regular design and color options.
Now let’s look at the frames under canvas options. There are multiple frames you can choose from and size how you like around your photo or background. There is also an option for a color outside of the frame space which I found was a very nice option.
Next we are going to look at the shadowing option…
You have the options on how you want the opacity, blur and upper-left alignment for shadows. It’s one things that make a special difference in the appearance of your image.
I didn’t get a screen shot of it, but you can also use the picker option at any time in your creative process to go back and change the size, color, orientation of your object or phrase. You can also use it for to get the correct layering in your creation.
I know I’ve given you a LOT of information, but I hope it’s helped you get a good feel of all that this app can do. This app is currently $1.99 in the Apple app store and to be honest, I didn’t hesitate buying it for one second. The amount of designs you have with the added bonus that you can customize them to your heart’s content means your options are virtually endless. With the most recent update there are two “extra packs,” available which are .99 cents a piece and you can completely preview the packs to see just what shapes you’re getting which I think is awesome. If you hashtag (#) your designs on twitter, facebook or instagram you just might see your design featured on the main screen of the app! How cool is that? Also check out Rhonna’s website where she gives fabulous in depth tutorial videos. Well folks, I LOVE this app and I think you will, too. It’s like photoshop got shot with a ray of Rhonna sunshine and editing your photos with it will definitely make you smile.
What do you think of this app? Have you tried? Do you want to now? As always crafters, let me know ithe comments!
( Disclaimer: I purchased this app and all opinions are my own.)
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Is there a version for android? Or will there be one? Looks great!
Thank you for the review, Sara! I have been trying to decide whether or not to buy Rhonna’s app. Your review just helped me make up my mind! I’m off to iTunes to purchase it! And I’m going to save this review on my computer because there is so much good ‘how-to’ info in it! Thanks again!