ezimba – Review
By App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: Christopher Minson
Version #: 1.0F
Date Released: 2008-07-31
Developer:
Price: 0.00
User Rating:
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I loved the app Comic Touch, the iPhone version of Comic Life that lets you ad comic-like balloons to images. It is one fun little app and is definately a keeper. I suspect, though, that adding comic captions to pictures will get old after a bit. When that happens, ezimba might be just what the doctor (photographer?) ordered. ezimba advertises itself saying,
"Think of ezimba as a simple mini-photoshop for your iPhone."
That pretty much covers it. With ezimba you can grab an image from your photo library or take a new one and begin to tweak it in a wide (and growing) variety of ways.
With the "Standard Enhancements" you can adjust the contrast, brightness, or sharpness. You can also alter the saturation, and hue or blur and soften the image.
The amazing thing is that "Standard Enhancements" is only on of many areas of adjustment. There is also a section known as "Reorient" With it you can rotate it, flip it vertically horizontally and much more. There is also a section known as Resize & Reduce. It can alter the size but I found it to be of somewhat limited use on a screen as small as an iPhone’s.
Other functions are just plain fun. You can change color, turn your photo into black and white, twist the image, add a cut out filter to make the picture a circle or square. And because the app contacts the server and is constantly updating the filters there may be something new from one time to the next.
One of the best things is the way the app handles the images. As is the case with Photoshop or other image tweaking applications you can add filter layer over filter layer. You can also revert to the original photo so the image is not at risk.
For the app to work, unfortunately, you need to have an active data connection which kind of defeats the whole "have a resident app so you don’t need to rely on a live data connection" thing. The iPhone app actually takes the image, sends it to ezimba.com and does the tweaking there. After applying the filter the image is sent back to you. It is simple, quick, and it does work.
The tweaked image is saved at a low 320×240 pixels so if you are looking for higher res images than that this isn’t the app for you. If you want to do some real tweaking with an image on the fly and resolution is less of a concern, however, ezimba works great. With a few taps of the screen you’ll be on your way.
ezimba is free, it works and, because it is resident on your iPhone, it is always with you when you snap a shot with your iPhone.
All of which is fun but, quite honestly, if I have to make a choice, I prefer adding cartoon balloons and captions.
Quick Take
Value: High: its free and it works
Would I Buy Again: sure, it is free and it works
Learning Curve: Low to Medium
Who is it for: Anyone who takes pictures with their iPhone and wants to do some light alterations
What I like: Works well, it is free
What I Don’t: Images are just 320 x 240, need an active data connection for it to work
Final Statement: Despite its limitations ezimba does what it claims to do. It is a good, quick way to alter images and either save them to your library or email them. It is free but a "pro" version is said to be on the way.
ezimba offers over 100 photo operations. These range from the basics (such as altering contrast, brightness and sharpness) to interesting transformations (such as rotating, blending and jigsawing). In addition, ezimba offers a number of exotic special effects that you probably won’t find anywhere else. …
Best of all, new operations are continually being added to the service. ezimba automatically connects to ezimba.com every time it is launched and installs these new operations. In this way ezimba is always growing and offering interesting new photo transformations.
O U R T A K E . . .
