Tai Shimizu

iOS & Mac Developer

Creator of the iOS photography apps Gridditor & Filterstorm, the Mac drawing app Inkist, the Mac HDR app Light Compressor, and the experimental web browser Torii.

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Gridditor

The Anti-Filterstorm

Filterstorm is overkill for most people—and it should be. It was meant to be powerful, and though I try to make it as easy to use as I can, power necessitates complexity. Gridditor is the opposite. It’s the app I can tell all my friends to use regardless as to whether or not they know the first thing about photography. It is meant to be fast, easy to understand, and in some respect to teach by forcing people to look at how each filter behaves and interacts with others.

http:  taishimizu.com pictures gridditor the anti filterstorm gridditor flower screenshot thumb.png

The basic premise is simple: arrange thumbnail previews in a grid, and let the user choose which one looks best (tapping on any thumbnail will bring up a larger preview). Lather, rinse, and repeat until satisfied. To generate the grid of thumbnails, I assign one filter to each cardinal direction. By default, up is contrast, down is vibrance, left is darkening, and right is brightening. If you choose a thumbnail directly to the right from the center you get that one filter, in this case brightness. If you go in two directions—say, up and to the right—then you’ll get both the brightening and the contrast filters. After a choice has been made, four new filters are pulled in at random. If the user doesn’t like the filters chosen, they can be specified manually, or a new group of random filters can be pulled in by selecting the center/unmodified image.

http:  taishimizu.com pictures gridditor the anti filterstorm gridditor torii screenshot thumb.png

By showing a big grid of choices rather than having the user select a filter and control its strength, more options are shown at once, unexpected possibilities can arise. It also allows for very quick choice and is great for making some minor adjustments to an image before uploading it to wherever it’s headed.

http:  taishimizu.com pictures gridditor the anti filterstorm gridditor truck screenshot thumb.png

I’m very excited to get Gridditor out onto the app store, and it should be available in the next couple weeks or so. In the mean time you can see the website, including a video of Gridditor in action on iPad at http://gridditor.com

Posted by tai on 2012-09-20 15:09:48. Comments (5) | Tiny link

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Comments

andescruz (anon)

love filterstorm - but this is going to be awesome as well!

Posted by andescruz (anon) on 2012-09-20 15:46:57.

Mar (anon)

Very very very excited about the sheer simplicity and functionality of the app. Bravo on having the idea and on what seems like a flawless execution. Hope you can make all features available for the iPhone 4 (don’t make me upgrade, can’t afford it!).

Posted by Mar (anon) on 2012-09-22 14:34:57.

@Mar

All the filters should be available on iPhone 4, but unlike 4S, it won’t be able to export at full resolution. This is due to some limitations of the GPU. The export size is something like 2.6Megapixels on iPhone 4.

Posted by tai on 2012-09-22 14:36:48.

John (anon)

When I got Gridditor a few weeks ago I thought it had just come out, but I see from the blog dates that it’s been out awhile. No matter, I love the concept and the results I get. I’ve had Filterstorm/FSPro since the beginning (at least I think so ;)) and bought Inkist the same day as Gridditor, though I can’t draw worth a damn. All are superior apps! Thanks Tai.

Posted by John (anon) on 2013-06-15 03:16:28.

Bug in filter storm Bug in filterstorm neue

Tilt shift causes immediate crash. iPad Air iOS 7.1. Need to rectify

Posted by Rajesh (anon) on 2014-06-18 00:38:31.
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