• Best free iPad apps 2021: the top titles we've tried (2/3)

    From TechnologyDaily@1337:3/125 to All on Fri Jun 18 15:30:02 2021
    has to offer in an hour or so. But its always fun to return to, and certainly beats treading on a Lego brick while barefoot. Sago Mini Friends

    Sago Mini Friends is a sweet-natured collection of adorable mini-games,
    ideal for young children. After selecting a character to play, you visit a neighborhood of colorful houses. Knock on a door and youll be invited inside for a playdate.

    The activities are varied and smartly designed. Theres a birthday party,
    where gifts are gleefully unwrapped, and a birdhouse to fix by hammering in nails. Our favorite, though, is a cleverly conceived snack time that finds
    two friends sitting side-by-side. Feed one and the other looks a bit glum, which encourages the young player to learn to share.

    Entirely lacking IAP and advertising, Sago Mini Friends is a no-brainer for any parent who wants a safe, free, fun, educational app for their youngster
    to spend a bit of quality time with. Zen Studio

    According to the developer's blurb, Zen Studio is all about helping children to relax and focus, by providing a kind of finger-painting that can only
    exist in the digital realm. Frankly, we take issue with the 'children' bit, because Zen Studio has a welcoming and pleasing nature that should ensure
    it's a hit with every iPad user.

    You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack.

    Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world.

    This is, however, a limited freebie in some ways. You get eight canvases, which can be blank or based on templates. If you want more, you can buy an
    IAP to unlock the premium version of the app. Still, for no outlay at all,
    you get a good few hours of chill-out noodly fun more, if you're happy drawing over the same canvases again and again. Lego Life

    Lego Life is a social network for kids whose lives revolve around plastic bricks. Once youre signed up, you explore feeds and follow themes, to become
    a better builder, or just see whats current in the world of Lego.

    Unsurprisingly, theres a nod towards advertising of a kind, in new product videos being liberally sprinkled about. But mostly, this is an app about inspiration. Youre regularly offered building challenges and knowledge tests; during lazy days, you can slap stickers all over a virtual Lego kit, or build a mini-figure for your profile.

    Given that itll mostly be kids using the app, its worth noting usernames are anonymized. You cant type your own, and instead select from semi-random word lists. EmpressSensibleMotorbike, meet ElderSupersonicJelly! Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby

    Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is a two-part game
    designed for children as young as six months old.

    In Level 1, your youngling now armed with a worryingly expensive piece of technology can tilt and tap the screen to make shapes appear and bounce around. But Level 2 ramps things up considerably.

    Lets put on a show, chirps the app as the five shapes wiggle and jig about on the screen, lurking above a colorful keyboard. And you know whats next: maddeningly jaunty earworms, augmented by a deliriously happy baby smacking the huge piano keys.

    Your slow descent into madness will be worth it for the smile on their little face. Toca Tailor Fairy Tales

    Toca Tailor Fairy Tales is a dressing up app. You choose from a male or female customer, and then set about giving them a new and exciting outfit.

    As with other Toca Boca fare, this is a tactile, immediate app. Tap a garment to adjust its type; drag and youll change its length. Accessories can be
    added from an expanding box, if you decide your appreciative on-screen
    manakin needs a trendy hat.

    The best bit, though, is the materials section. For each part of the garment, you can drag and drop materials onto it. This isnt a question of merely recoloring either you can pinch/rotate to make all kinds of crazy patterns, and even import photos or snap a texture using the iPads camera. Great stuff for tiny wannabe fashion designers. The best free music and audio apps for iPad

    Our favorite free iPad apps for listening to podcasts, making music or being
    a virtual DJ. (Image credit: Popgun) Splash

    Splash instantly puts the power of live remixing and DJing at your fingertips, through triggering loops on a grid. Simply select a track from
    the library, and then tap to kick off drum, bass, synth, and vocal loops.
    Fire up the effects, and you can make your tune go all strange and wobbly by way of flange, filter, reverb and delay.

    Although immensely tappable on the iPads display, Splash unfortunately
    demands you swipe between two screens rather than enabling access to every loop on just one. But other than that, this is an immediate, fun, and
    entirely free entry point into the world of making music. And should you want to retain a performance for posterity, the means to record and share is also built right in. (Image credit: TechRadar) Figure

    Figure is an app designed to let you craft beats in seconds. Its been around for a while on mobile, but the current iteration frees itself from irritating social media cruft. Create an account and youre good to go.

    Although primarily designed for one-fingered operation on a phone, Figure works really nicely as an iPad app. Blown up on the larger display its
    tactile interface affords you more precision as you tap out beats, construct melodies, and fiddle around with settings.

    This isnt an app for crafting a top-ten hit, note at most, youll end up with eight-bar loops you can export elsewhere. But its fun, great for inspiring
    new ideas, ideal for non-musicians, and perfect for creating bespoke
    ringtones and alerts for your Apple devices. Image credit: Ultimate Guitar (Image credit: Ultimate Guitar) Tonebridge

    Tonebridge Guitar Effects has a different spin on the whole turning your
    iPad into an amp thing. Rather than you painstakingly setting up a set of stomp-boxes, and pairing your creation with an amp, Tonebridge offers thousands of presets. Moreover, each one mimics the guitar sounds from an existing song.

    This means whether you fancy being Clapton, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, or Led Zeppelin, all you need to do is prod a recommended option, or have a quick search of the catalog.

    About half of the presets let you preview the sound using some of the
    original songs melody or chords. All can be tweaked to suit, if you know better than the preset when it comes to the precise level of echo a pedal should be emitting or how much the chosen amp has been cranked up! djay

    djay once existed in various forms on iOS, but is now a free, universal app that invites budding DJs to pay for the level of features that they want.

    If youre not willing to splash out, theres still plenty to enjoy. You get the full two-deck classic mode, featuring a pair of virtual record decks to spin, a crossfade mixer, scrolling audio waveforms, and a bunch of effects. The interface is intuitive and tactile, although you can delve into AI-driven auto-mixing when manual control seems like too much effort.

    Paying subscription IAP unlocks a slew of extra features, including a four-deck pro view, video, MIDI, and high-end mixing. For jobbing DJs, thats perhaps the only option; for bedroom deck-spinners, the free apps more than enough and rather generous, given its high quality. Beatwave

    Beatwave makes it easy to create music. You select a voice and tap out notes on a grid. The grid can be set to various scales, ensuring the notes you use always sound good. Go deeper into the app and you can layer/arrange multiple loops, each of which can have a unique sound assigned.

    The app looks great, with an explosion of color bursting from each note as
    the playhead hits it. This is a welcome hangover from the apps previous incarnation as a simplified digital take on the Yamaha Tenori-on.

    The more conventional redesign elsewhere robs Beatwave of some immediacy and playfulness regarding the play surface, although accessing all of its
    features is now a lot more coherent. Overall, its a good bet for beginners
    but also musicians looking for a fun sketchpad. AudioKit Synth One
    Synthesizer

    AudioKit Synth One Synthesizer is an iPad synth bursting at the seams with dials to twiddle, buttons to push, and all kinds of exciting noises that
    blast forth from your speakers.

    Even if youre not overly musically inclined, theres fun to be had here by selecting presets - many of which use a built-in user-friendly sequencer, so you can fire off a melody by holding down a single key. Theres loads for musicians to delve into, including Audiobus and IAA support, customizable filters, and touchpad play surfaces.

    Its hugely impressive and the sort of thing youd usually expect to set you back north of 30 bucks, so its all the more surprising that Synth One is entirely free from ads and IAP - and that will always be the case, given that its also an open-source project. Novation Launchpad

    Novation Launchpad is about remixing electronic music using a grid of loops. For the beginner, its a friendly, intuitive introduction to music-making. You load a genre and just tap away, safe in the knowledge everything will always sound great. You can even record live mixes and share them with friends.

    Theres depth to Novation Launchpad as well effects to apply, filters to experiment with, and the option to mix and match pad sounds. If youre
    prepared to dip into your wallet, you can take things much further, importing your own audio files and working with a larger range of effects.

    On iPad, you can buy all of these things and a MIDI sync feature for a one-off $14.99/14.99/$AU22.99 IAP. But even if you stick to the free version, Novation Launchpad proves to be suitably noisy fun. Auxy Music Studio

    The thinking behind Auxy Music Studio is that music-making - both in the real world and software - has become too complicated. This app therefore strives
    to combine the immediacy of something like Novation Launchpad's loop triggers with a basic piano roll editor.

    For each instrument, you choose between drums and decidedly electronic
    synths. You then compose loops of between one and four bars, tapping out
    notes on the piano roll's grid. Subsequent playback occurs on the overview screen by tapping loops to cue them up.

    For those who want to go a bit further, the app includes arrangement functionality (for composing entire songs), along with Ableton Link and MIDI export support. Auxy's therefore worth a look for relative newcomers to
    making music and also pros after a no-nonsense scratchpad. Garageband

    On an iPhone, music-making app GarageBand is mightily impressive, but on
    iPad, the extra space proves transformative. In being able to see more at any given time, your experience is more efficient and enjoyable, whether youre a beginner tapping the grid view to trigger loops, a live musician tweaking a synth on stage, or a recording artist delving into audio waveforms and MIDI data.

    Apples app also cleverly appeals to all. Newcomers can work with loops, automated drummers, and piano strips for always staying in key. Pros get seriously impressive track controls with configurable effects, multi-take recording, and Audio Unit support for bringing favorite synths directly into GarageBand.

    If you dont feel terribly creative sitting in front of a PC, GarageBands the perfect way to unleash your Grammy-winning songwriter in waiting. Overcast

    Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

    We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger
    space on the right.

    The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast
    management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of
    clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

    Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically
    syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off. Seaquence

    There are two ways to approach Seaquence , where the first is as a really bizarre interactive album. Select a track and a bunch of little creatures
    swim about on the screen, which results in spatialized sound mixes. (Stick some headphones on to hear how their movements affect the placement of sounds being played.) You can manually fling the creatures about, or tap-hold to remove them.

    But Seaquence also enables you to edit. Add a new creature and itll instantly change the track. Tap a creature and you can delve into a scale editor, sound designer, and a sequencer for adjusting the notes of the current loop.

    A $6.99/6.99/AU$10.99 IAP opens up a bunch of pro features; but for free, Seaquence is entertaining whether youre just listening and occasionally bothering the digital sea life, or figuring out how to construct your own tunes. Beatwave

    Beatwave is a grid synthesizer/sound toy, loosely based on Yamahas Tenori-on . This means you tap notes by turning on the grids lights. When the endlessly looping playhead collides with one, you get an explosion of color, and a
    sound plays.

    Notes towards the top of the grid are higher, and those at the bottom are lower. Some instruments use the bottom two rows for drum sounds. Most importantly, though, Beatwave is designed to always make output listenable.

    Its actually quite difficult to create anything horribly discordant, short of filling every square on the grid.

    For those who fancy more depth, the app offers plenty of alternate sounds, automated morphing, and the ability to save patterns to the sidebar, which
    you switch between with a tap. So its fun whether writing songs or just playing with sound and color. The best free office and writing apps for iPad

    Our favorite free iPad apps for writing, email, spreadsheets, presentations and calculations. (Image credit: Ginger Labs) Twobird

    Twobird aims to reimagine email by doing away with cruft and making your inbox a lot more useful by adding handy features.

    It works with Gmail. Sign in and youll see all your existing mail. The app
    can quickly generate a list of junk you might like to unsubscribe from, simplifies email formatting, and generally makes ongoing conversations easier to read.

    Beyond that, the app cleverly integrates reminders and notes directly into your inbox, and offers collaborative elements that at times make it feel a
    lot like Slack or a messaging app. In short, it makes email better.

    The downside is that to get the full benefits, people you want to collaborate with need to be using Twobird as well. But even for the solo user, the app
    has much to offer - and theres no price tag that limits you at least giving
    it a try. (Image credit: TechRadar) The Clocks

    The Clocks is an alternative to Apples Clock app, and is primarily focused
    on a large, very legible display, rather than a bunch of tiny clocks telling you the time in a range of countries.

    The free iPad app enables you to quickly flip between an analog clock, a lovely flip clock, and a colorful digital number that looks like it has escaped from the 1980s. Some elements can be configured: 12/24-hour time; whether seconds are displayed; the digital clocks color.

    The app has some extended features, too: there are alarms, and a double-tap
    on the top half of the screen launches a world clock view with six slots. Arguably, Apples app betters The Clocks for both things; but as a free great-looking display clock you can see from across the room, The Clocks cant be beaten. (Image credit: Readdle Inc) Documents by Readdle

    Documents by Readdle might seem redundant on iPad now that the feature set
    of Apples own Files has improved. And, yes, its certainly less necessary now your iPad has traditional file system access and a means to create compressed ZIP archives but that doesnt mean Documents isnt still useful.

    The app makes it a cinch to connect to a wide range of local and remote storage types, and quickly import (not least with the new + button), manage, and share items. There are built-in media viewers, enabling you to play music and search PDFs. The built-in web browser is sleek, snappy, and now supports private browsing.

    In fact, privacy is one area in which Documents excels. If you want Files to remain open, but hide some of your browsing/documents away from prying eyes, this apps optional Touch ID/Face ID barrier may alone make it worth the download. (Image credit: James Saeed) Hour Blocks: Day Planner

    Hour Blocks: Day Planner is a calendar designed around razor-sharp focus. Rather than a week view with overlapping items, your day is broken down into the titular hour blocks. The idea is to avoid clutter and concentrate on one thing at a time.

    This proves effective, and although the app will import existing Calendar data, youre better off starting from scratch. On iPad, the minimalist nature does feel a little like a blown-up iPhone app, but it works well in Split
    View and Slide Over, and iCloud syncs your data between devices.

    Should you feel the need, a pro IAP ($1.99/1.99/AU$2.99) unlocks sub blocks for tasks, but its worth sticking with the free version initially, until you get that sense of focus to your day that traditional calendars just cant bring. (Image credit: TechRadar) Secure ShellFish

    Secure ShellFish plugs one of the last remaining holes in the iPadOS Files app: the inability to natively access remote servers.

    Setting up SSH/SFTP connections is a breeze. Using the clear, simple interface, you can quickly connect to any shared drives the app can find, or manually configure servers to later access whatevers stored on them. Define the app as a location within Files, and youll then be able to get at all your remote documents.

    For free, Secure ShellFish is extraordinarily generous, with a feature-rich experience. For $6.99/6.99/AU$10.99, you can upgrade to remove interruptions and add offline features. But if you want something robust for the odd connection and with no outlay its hard to beat the vanilla version of this app. Paper by WeTransfer

    Paper by WeTransfer is the latest version of a much-loved iPad sketching
    app. It now echoes its earlier incarnation, in giving you a set of virtual journals that you then scribble pictures inside of.

    The tools are straightforward, and designed for getting ideas down quickly. But although youre not deluged with options, the look of pen strokes and dabs of watercolor is spot-on. When youre done, you can export a page to share
    with others. It all feels rather sleek and elegant.

    Its worth noting that quite a few features are locked behind IAP: multiple image import; freeform cut; paste between pages; iCloud sync; multiple brush sizes. But the free take despite its limitations feels really nice to use, not least when youre doodling with an Apple Pencil. Otter Voice Notes

    Otter is a voice memos app with a fine line in automatic transcription. Talk to your iPad, and the app should do an excellent job of getting your words down (punctuation and all), so you dont have to bother typing them out later. You get 600 free minutes per month 6000 if you move to a paid tier.

    Notes can have imagery added inline, and you can highlight words or entire lines. Usefully, the app attempts to extract meaning from longer passages, giving you summary keywords to scan. Should you need to edit transcribed
    text, thats possible, too.

    Ultimately, the apps perhaps less useful for recording on iPad although it works well enough. But with cloud sync, and features for working in teams,
    its an excellent option for getting at and using content you've recorded on your iPhone. DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser

    DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser wants the internet to leave you alone. Specifically, it doesnt want you being tracked.

    It comes across like a stripped-back alternative to Safari thats determined
    to have you leave no trace. Third-party trackers wont follow you as you browse, meaning no relentless and suspiciously targeted adverts because you several days back happened to check out a nice new TV online.

    Sites are forced to use encrypted connections where available, and your searches are not tracked. The app grades sites you visit, too; and so even if you usually use Safari, DuckDuckGo gives you insight into any sites
    underlying privacy measures.

    Also, if all of that doesnt go quite far enough, and you want your DuckDuckGo browsing history to be nuked from orbit, a tap is all that takes! LastPass

    LastPass in some ways echoes iCloud Keychain, in giving you a central repository for storing passwords and payment details. You might therefore wonder what the point is in using such a system.

    First and foremost, LastPass is fully cross-platform, so if you also work
    with Windows and Android, it means you can take your passwords with you everywhere, securely. But there are other advantages, such as secure notes
    and form fill options, all of which seamlessly integrate with devices running iOS 12 or later.

    There is a premium tier; US$24/23/AU$38 per year adds sharing options, 1GB of encrypted file storage, and premium multi-factor authentication. For most users, though, the extremely generous free version should be enough. Bear

    A halfway house between full-fledged writing tool and capable note-taker,
    Bear provides a beautiful environment for tapping out words on an iPad.

    The sidebar links to notes youve grouped by hashtag. Next to that, a notes list enables you to scroll through (or search) everything youve written, or notes matching a specific tag. The main workspace which can be made full-screen marries sleek minimalism with additional smarts: subtle Markdown syntax next to headings; automated to-do checkboxes when using certain characters; image integration.

    Theres not enough here for pro writers theyd need on-screen word counts, customizable note column ordering, and flexibility regarding notes nesting. Also, for iCloud sync, you must buy a $1.49/1.49/AU$1.99 monthly
    subscription. But as a free, minimal note-taker for a single device, Bear
    more than fits the bill. Numbers

    With Numbers , Apple managed to do something with spreadsheets that had
    eluded Microsoft in decades of Excel development: they became pleasant (even fun) to work with.

    Instead of forcing workmanlike grids of data on you, Numbers has you think in a more presentation-oriented fashion. Although you can still create tables
    for totting up figures, youre also encouraged to be creative and reader-friendly regarding layout, incorporating graphs, imagery, and text. On iPad, its all tap - and finger - friendly, too.

    With broad feature-parity with the Mac version, iCloud sync, and export to Excel format, Numbers should also fit neatly into most peoples workflow.

    And although updates robbed the app of some friendliness (whoever removed the date picker needs a stern talking to), it still excels in that department, from nicely designed templates through to the handy action menu, ensuring common tasks are only ever a tap away. PCalc Lite

    PCalc Lite 's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation.

    Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised
    but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users. The best free photo and video editing apps for iPad

    Our favorite free iPad apps for editing photos, working with filters, adding text to photos and editing video. (Image credit: Apple) Clips

    Clips is a video editor that prizes immediacy. Although you can add items from your photo library (oddly by recording them live rather than via a standard import), the apps primarily designed for shooting video on the fly.

    Thats more awkward with an iPad than an iPhone, but it does lend itself well to structured set-ups like shooting family events, selfie-videos, gigs, and sports. And if youre using iCloud Photos, you can always augment your miniature masterpiece with videos shot elsewhere.

    The apps playfulness becomes more readily apparent when you start working
    with live filters and stickers; but its practical too: Clips supports both iPad orientations and Apple Pencil, and allows you to create videos in a
    range of aspect ratios, whether their final destinations are a widescreen TV or a social network with a thing for squares. (Image credit: DigitalMasterpieces GmbH) Graphite by BeCasso

    Graphite by BeCasso is yet another filter app with aspirations of being an artist or, rather, several artists. Load a snap, tap a filter, and you can instantly transform a photo into a pencil sketch, a watercolor, or even a blueprint.

    These free iPad apps always produce results that are a touch mechanical, but Graphites attempts at art are some of the most natural looking and authentic weve seen. Head into the Edit tab and you can make further adjustments, to crop your shot or fiddle with saturation and brightness levels.

    If youre prepared to pay, you can take things further, choosing from a range of surface textures, and using your finger to make changes to the digital strokes. The control this affords you makes the IAP tempting stuff, but even for free, this ones a must-have. Image credit: TechRadar (Image credit: Future) Darkroom

    Darkroom is a premium photo editing experience for iPad, but one that bafflingly lacks a price tag. On launch, it immediately invites you to open one of your pictures. Do so and you gain access to a wealth of options, including superb cropping tools, a range of adjustment sliders, frames, and one-tap filters.

    The app feels sleek and professional, but also immediate and usable. On first use, tools briefly explain what theyre for. The built-in help center provides added assistance for newcomers to editing.

    Should you want to take things further, a one-off $9.99/9.99/AU$14.99 IAP unlocks curves and color tools, along with many more filters. But even in its free incarnation, Darkroom is a no-brainer install if you want to make your digital snaps sing. Visionist

    Visionist echoes Prisma in having you load a photo thats then transformed into something resembling a painting. However, you get more control in this app.

    There are 10 free styles to choose from (a one-off $1.99/1.99/AU$2.99 IAP unlocks 60 more), but Visionist doesnt stop the second you select one. Along with adjusting the effects strength, you can define how abstract it is,
    adjust the manner in which it interacts with the original image, and mix styles together.

    Some labels on the styles would be useful, not least those based on
    real-world artists; also, the end results do look rather digital in nature, rather than like theyve appeared from the hands of an actual painter. But the important thing is theyre arresting, adding interest to even the most mundane of snaps. Infltr

    Infltr stands for infinite filters. The app isnt quite packed with endless options (there are only around seven million), but feels limitless as you
    drag a finger across a photo and watch it change.

    But this is only one tool packed into a versatile, usable editor. You can crop, make adjustments to temperature and hue, fix perspective, mess around with blurs, and more.

    Edits are non-destructive, so you can always update or remove a setting. You can save up to three favorites for one-tap application as well.

    That limitation goes away if you pay for the subscription IAP - which also gives you HD export and additional tools, including color shift and selective HSL - but as a freebie, Infltr ably does the business. A no-brainer download for iPad users keen on fixing their snaps. Enlight Pixaloop

    Enlight Pixaloop wants photographs to get animated in a literal sense. Load one up and you can draw paths to denote the direction of your flowing,
    looping animation, and use anchors and masks to make everything else stay
    put. The effect is like a cinemagraph, but you only need a single still, rather than a sequence of shots or a video.

    On iPad, Pixaloop benefits from the larger screen, and the accuracy an Apple Pencil affords. You can create some seriously intricate and eye-dazzling effects, even from fairly mundane source material.

    If youre short on snaps, the app enables you to grab something from Pixabay. And when youre done, you can export your work to video (although, alas, not animated GIF). Its smart, sleek, and even though optional IAPs lurk, offers plenty of functionality for zero outlay. Pic Collage

    Pic Collage is a powerful app for creating photo collages. You can start
    with a freeform canvas or a card template, but the pre-defined grids are better. Select some photos and a grid, and the app will automatically arrange everything.

    Many apps stop there, but Pic Collage goes much further. You can tweak the frames, and perform adjustments on individual images. Movement can be added through importing up to three videos and later exporting your creation as a GIF. And if youre feeling arty, you can scribble all over your grid-based masterpiece.

    Pic Collage hits that sweet spot of unlocking creativity in an immediate, usable manner. You get results fast. The only real negative is exports have a watermark, but if that bugs you, they can be gone forever with a one-off US$1.99/1.99/AU$2.99 IAP. Clips

    Clips is a video editor designed for people who dont want to spend a great deal of time editing or even shooting. Unlike Apples iMovie, Clips is intended for impulsive shoots, and super-fast clip arrangement a video
    editor for the social media generation.

    On iPad, you might question its relevance. After all, youre not going to whip out an iPad Pro to quickly shoot someone larking about on a skateboard. But the iPads larger screen is superb for editing, making it easy to rearrange clips on the timeline and get a proper eye for the many included filters.

    Theres more lurking here too, including automatic animated subtitles, posters with customizable text and iCloud sync. Clips wont make you a Hollywood legend, but it might just propel you towards Instagram stardom. Photoshop Fix

    It's become apparent that Adobe - creators of photography and graphic design powerhouses Photoshop and Illustrator - don't see mobile devices as suitable for full projects. However, the company's been hard at work on a range of satellite apps, of which Photoshop Fix is perhaps the most impressive.

    Built on Photoshop technology, this retouching tool boasts a number of high-end features for making considered edits to photographs. The Liquify
    tool in particular is terrific, enabling you to mangle images like clay, or more subtly adjust facial features using bespoke tools for manipulating
    mouths and eyes.

    Elsewhere, you can smooth, heal, color and defocus a photo to your heart's
    co
    --- D'Bridge 4
    * Origin: Physics (1337:3/125)