If you're incapable of taking a photo without running it through some sort of filter mill to make it even better, here's another app for your picture-jiggling arsenal. From the people who brought you LoryStripes, an app for adding swish ribbon patterns to images, Fragment is all about adding prismatic distortion effects to your photos.
You either snap a picture or grab one from your photo stream, and then you can go to work on the effects. We've found that the best way to get a feeling for what Fragment can do is simply tap the Shuffle button, which will add a random pattern with random settings to your image, and then keep tapping until something show up that you like the look of.
If you want to get your hands dirty, though, there are loads of settings that you can play with. For starters you can choose from a sizeable library of patterns, and then move, scale and rotate the pattern so that it goes nicely with your photo. You can also adjust all manner of settings to affect the final look of your prism effect; you can tweak colours and saturation, you can add blend and blur effects, and you can also apply these effects to the original image instead of the prism pattern, meaning that you can quickly end up with some pretty psychedelic effects.
Alternatively you can just give your picture a bit of a boost with the thoughtful placement of a gentle framing effect if you prefer. Less is more, and all that. Once you're done you can of course share your picture on all the usual social channels, or you could either refragment it - that is, go back and layer another effect on top with a whole new load of settings - or if you have them installed you can instead send your image to either LoryStripes or Tangent for a different breed of processing.
Simple to use and capable of some really pleasant effects once you get the hang of it, Fragment's a great way to either add a little impact to your photos or create amazing abstract patterns from almost any image. It's far from essential, but it is a lovely photo toy to have around.
Key info
- Works with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
- Price: $1.99/£1.49
- Developer: Pixite
- Version: 1.2
- App size: 5.5MB
- Age rating: 4+
Words: Jim McCauley
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