Pocket Artist is the little yet powerful image editor app for my Treo

Having a multi-purpose mobile device like a smartphone in our pocket creates another predicament of its own; you want it to become more and more useful even after you’ve managed to push your smartphone to do something better just a day before. Well, I know I did that. ;-p

Yesterday I told you about my pick for IE Mobile enhancement app, which enabled me to save images from web pages. And just like I’ve said above there, came a new problem that pops right after I saved a picture and wanted to edit it in order to fit the pic for a blog post. You know, the usual edit steps such as crop the pic, change the brightness & the contrast, resize it, etc.

And it’s not only the images from the web, sometimes we also need to edit the photos we took with our smartphone’s camera. I once experienced the situation where I took a snap of picture with my Treo, I didn’t had the chance to change the resolution of the camera into smaller size; so the photo was saved in big size and it’s awfully too big for a PalmAddict post. If my memory served me well, I remember it was Sammy who changed the photo into smaller size. (PS: thanks again Sammy!)

Soon enough, I was looking for an image editor app that can do the right job with my Treo 750v. Oh, and this happened about a year ago, when I started to stuff in almost every apps I can find into my Treo. ~LOL~ And after a year of using it, I found the app to be reliable and most of all it’s suitable for the little things I need to do with an image editor. It’s Conduits Pocket Artist 3.

The Pocket Artist 3 is one of the most powerful tool for image editing I’ve ever tried on my Treo; you can edit and retouch photos and images, add text and special effects, create web graphics, and so many other features which I can’t possibly mention them one by one in this post. I’m just gonna mention the common tasks I used to do whenever I edit an image from web page, with Pocket Artist 3. Otherwise, this post will be as long as your Christmas wish list. ;-)

In short, Pocket Artist 3 has more juice in da house for the simple tasks I wish to do with it. But for me, the most important factor from an image editor app is the ability to open & save various image formats like: PSD, JPG, PNG, GIF,BMP, TGA, J2K. With so many support for image formats, you won’t be disappointed if you have to open and save images in any file formats you want. In rare cases, the best image you found is in unusual format.

Next thing I do is usually draw a rectangular frame to outline part of the image that I want to edit, with Select Rect option at the Select button on the main bar (see screenshots above for reference - click to enlarge the set).

Open up the Adjust options through the Menu button, and then choose Crop Image option so Pocket Artist can display only the part you wanted.

Afterwards, you can set the Levels and the Bright/Contrast of the cropped image as you wish. Another neat little thing I like from Pocket Artist 3, is that the app can preview the changes before you apply them on the image. It works exactly like the professional image editor software for desktop computer, without mentioning the software I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about. *wink*

And for getting a crisper result from the image, you can use the Filter features from Pocket Artist 3. I usually use Sharpen filter, to get snappish effect from a blurry image/photo.

Resize Image is one must feature that I use, and it’s the last thing I do from all the editing steps. The feature resides at the Adjust options, the same place of the Crop Image feature (see previous screenshots set above).

Last thing to do is to save the edited image, but don’t forget to choose Save As option instead of replacing it on the original file. I often got mad because I simply forgot to save the edited images into new files, since I sometime still need the original file for different edit.

While saving the file, this is where Pocket Artist 3 excel once more; the app can constrain the proportions of the image just like the feature from professional desktop image editor software.

After it’s all done, Pocket Artist then show the result. By the way, please don’t mind the girl in the picture, she’s just trying hard to be as cute as she possibly can for me (and for all of you too). ~LOL~

If you’re interested to try out Pocket Artist 3 first before you buy it, Conduits has been generously give 30 days for the trial version. Click on this link to start download the desktop installer, and head on to this link to purchase Pocket Artist 3 directly from Conduits on-line store; the app is sold at US$19.95 there.

The latest Pocket Artist is at v3.3, it’s already compatible for Windows Mobile 6 and below including the old Pocket PC 2002 & 2003. Conduits also provide documentation, gallery, tutorials and support that are all related to utilizing Pocket Artist for advanced and professional usage.

And I’m saving the best for last; for PalmAddict readers can start taking advantage of the 25% OFF offering, simply by punching in this code: PALMADDICT at Conduits on-line store. The offering is valid through December 31st, so this means you’ll get plenty of time to make up your mind and use up the most of that 30 days trial period. ;-p

Happy editing!