There's promise here, but I still prefer Snapseed when push comes to shove.īack in my newspaper freelancer days, I once agreed to shoot some high school wrestling matches and basketball games. Sadly, you can't import your own textures and backgrounds to mix with the company's own cadre. It's also no good for doing anything other than toying around even amateurs won't want to rely on this for any serious editing. In other words, there's really no 'touching up' photos with these filters when you apply one, you know it. I'd estimate that two-thirds of these are of the 'so cheesy you'll never use this' variety, while the others are still too potent for my blood. The biggest pitfall is the quality of the filters. The Pro version, however, is entirely overpriced at $40. For just a few bucks on iPhone and iPad, it's actually not a half-bad deal. Put simply, the app provides 170-plus filters, a few frames and some very basic editing tools (crop, rotate, brighten, adjust, etc.). I've spent a few weeks using both the Pro version on the desktop and the paid version on the iPhone. FX Photo Studio (and FX Photo Studio Pro for OS X) hits somewhere in between on both fronts.

And over on the desktop side, Adobe's Lightroom is probably far too rich for the blood of those just messing around. Instagram's built-in options - while appreciated for $0.00 - isn't exactly something that a haughty-taughty photog would adore. But honestly, I'm not super into using filters for the heck of using a filter. And say hello to our new copy editor Philip Palermo, who says if he had to live with just one lens for his Nikon D90, it would be the 35mm f/1.8G. On the camera side, Edgar recently took the PowerShot D20 on his honeymoon in Jamaica, while Darren's been giving FX Photo Studio a whirl (spoiler: he still prefers Snapseed).

Turns out, quite a few Engadget editors are in the mood to talk up their shooting gear lately.

Updating fx photo studio