This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Top Photography and Image Manipulation Apps. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Photoboard ($1) is a multi-touch picture viewer for iPhone and iPod touch resembling the interface of the Microsoft Surface table. Following a brief splash screen, users are presented with a background — space-themed image, by default — on which they may view photos.
Tapping with a single finger brings up the app’s menu system, which changes based on what the user is touching, and uses a four-way selector — left is setup, right is add, and so on — to invoke actions. The setup menu lets the user change the background and adjust the brightness, making both completely white and completely black backgrounds possible.
Photos appear inside a relatively thin border, and can users can shrink, expand, and rotate the photos by touching them with two fingers and using basic gestures. Tapping on a photo with a single finger brings up the menu to either group the photos together in a corner of the screen, or remove the photo, while tapping inside a photo’s border with three fingers lets the user distort the image.
Furthermore, the user can zoom in and out on the board itself, reframing the photos as they go, and the app also lets users save their collages to the Camera Roll in 1600×1200 resolution. We really appreciate this high-resolution save feature; it distinguishes this app from its peers.
Though it initially feels like a straightforward technology demo, Photoboard is fairly impressive — in some ways, it feels as if it should have been on the phone from the start, as the way it allows the user to manipulate the photos is both natural and intuitive. The ability to save the board as a screenshot is also welcome.
