Review: Darkroom – An Editing App That Won't Make You Want To Lie Down In One
A Dark Room is an open-source software role-playing text-based game originally published in mid-2013 for web browsers by Canadian indie studio Doublespeak Games. Later that year, it was released in the App Store for iOS devices. In 2014, a prequel entitled The Ensign, which provided more insight into the world and its characters, was released for iOS.
Popular iPhone photo editing app Darkroom is today expanding to the iPad, marking the app's biggest update since its 2015 launch. Darkroom has been rebuilt from the ground up to add support for the iPad, which means there are app-wide refinements, improvements, and optimizations. The new interface works with all iOS devices in every orientation.
The app now supports Portrait, Portrait-Wide, and Landscape orientations on iOS devices, and it has been optimized to choose the best layout for each device and each size for a consistent editing experience.
On devices where Darkroom is used in landscape orientation, Albums are available at the top level of the library next to photos for quicker album access.
Also new to the landscape layout is a photo strip, making it easier to navigate through the photo library when editing. A long press on the photo strip will also bring up photo actions like copying edits, resetting edits, deleting photos, and more.
What's great about Darkroom is how quickly you can navigate between screens. For example, from the fine-adjustments screen, a swipe down will hide the sliders, and another swipe down brings you back to the library.
Also, once focused on an image, you can swipe left or right to browse images in your library, which is convenient especially when you're trying to choose one shot from many similar shots.
But even with these advantages, some features are inconvenient and others are missing. As I mentioned at the top, there is no included camera, so you'll be taking pictures in another app entirely, and then opening Darkroom to process them. It's not a big deal, but it adds extra steps.
Darkroom is a powerful little app, disguised in quite a simple interface. It lacks the plethora of features that you can find in other more accomplished apps like Enlight but does a great job at giving you the control to play around with the individual elements of colour in your photos.
Darkroom is free but advanced features require in-app purchases, most of them reasonable, ranging from £1.99 to £9.99. The £9.99 deal, Pro Tools and Premium Features, seems to include most of the other options which can be bought separately.
Popular iPhone photo editing app Darkroom is today expanding to the iPad, marking the app's biggest update since its 2015 launch. Darkroom has been rebuilt from the ground up to add support for the iPad, which means there are app-wide refinements, improvements, and optimizations. The new interface works with all iOS devices in every orientation.
The app now supports Portrait, Portrait-Wide, and Landscape orientations on iOS devices, and it has been optimized to choose the best layout for each device and each size for a consistent editing experience.
On devices where Darkroom is used in landscape orientation, Albums are available at the top level of the library next to photos for quicker album access.
Also new to the landscape layout is a photo strip, making it easier to navigate through the photo library when editing. A long press on the photo strip will also bring up photo actions like copying edits, resetting edits, deleting photos, and more.
What's great about Darkroom is how quickly you can navigate between screens. For example, from the fine-adjustments screen, a swipe down will hide the sliders, and another swipe down brings you back to the library.
Also, once focused on an image, you can swipe left or right to browse images in your library, which is convenient especially when you're trying to choose one shot from many similar shots.
But even with these advantages, some features are inconvenient and others are missing. As I mentioned at the top, there is no included camera, so you'll be taking pictures in another app entirely, and then opening Darkroom to process them. It's not a big deal, but it adds extra steps.
Darkroom is a powerful little app, disguised in quite a simple interface. It lacks the plethora of features that you can find in other more accomplished apps like Enlight but does a great job at giving you the control to play around with the individual elements of colour in your photos.
Darkroom is free but advanced features require in-app purchases, most of them reasonable, ranging from £1.99 to £9.99. The £9.99 deal, Pro Tools and Premium Features, seems to include most of the other options which can be bought separately.
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