Surprisingly the iPhone is rapidly becoming a powerful portable photo-manipulation platform. As the quality has improved to a focusing 3-megapixel camera in the 3Gs, almost 900 photo apps are now available, most of which have functions to change images right on your iPhone.
Photo Sketch turns a photo into a black and white charcoal drawing. Choose a photo, pinch to zoom, and set the parameters if needed. That's it. Photo Sketch goes to work. You can set the number of tones to 1, 3, 7 or 15 and the paper as grainy or smooth. I have noticed that some photos look better with less tones and some with more, so it's recommended that you try a few. I'd recommend 7 and 3 or 15 and 3.
The really powerful feature is image size. Even if your image was a tiny area of an image to start with, you can save renderings up to 2048 x 2048 in size. This allows you to make a high-quality 4-meg piece of art work from even tiny icons. Unfortunately iPhone's email will restrict the image to 800 x 800 for mailing, but the full size image will be saved in your camera roll for transferring to your computer.
One of the current limitations is that the app has no ability to adjust the exposure of the image you're rendering from for the best look. A little adjustment in an app like Free Photo Filters (actually one of the nicest apps for adjusting image exposure) will allow you to both control images for the correct lightness and sharpen blurry blowups for sketching. Slightly overexposed shots can look best.
This app meets the main criteria for being iPhonish: one easy-to-use screen. While not a must have for everyone, this is a fun app that shows off the powerful photo tool the iPhone has become.
App: Photo Sketch Lets You Skip Art Lessons
