You can quickly find a particular filter by typing its name into the search field.

The panel with live previews lets you scrub through all 159 effects or filter the list by category A handy drop-down menu lists your filters by category (Cross Process, Sketches and Textures, Vintage and Grunge, TiltShift and Blur, Hollywood FX and Color Strokes plus more). You can hide the effects panel with a single click in order to fully focus on the image at hand. Gorgeous effect thumbnails with live previews reside lined up inside the panel below the workspace. Top and bottom toolbars augment the main area dedicated to your content. Elegant animations lend to the sense of liveliness without slowing you down or obscuring your view. The sleek, slightly subdued interface looks business. Everything is inside a single window, no palettes floating around. I’d like to see this iOS philosophy carried over into more Mac apps. Rather than just redo the iOS interface, the Mac port rethinks your workflow by letting you accomplish most touch ups with just a click or two. The Mac version of FX Photo Studio comes with perks like a brand new interface and deeper color correction capabilities Lovely interface done right Pros will appreciate its high-quality filters and the features which allow for advanced touch ups. For rookies, FX Photo Studio is fun and easy to use. It trumps Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Picasa in some aspects while being a compelling alternative to similar offerings. The program’s Mac-ified interface takes feature parity across platforms to a whole new level and a lot richer editing tools build upon that.

And above all, it’s arguably the best example of an iOS port done right. It packs in notable perks that turn heads. The software performed above my expectations on such a sub-par machine. That being said, I set out to review FX Photo Studio on an aging 2.4GHz unibody Mac mini with 2GB RAM running Snow Leopard.

The opportunity is clearly there: Excluding big-name suites and a few established programs from indies, quality yet affordable photo editing programs are few and far between on the Mac. Suffice to say that I walked away wanting that photo editing experience on my Mac. Ever since I reviewed MacPhun’s FX Photo Studio for iOS, its insane amount of superior effects, the eye-catching interface taking full advantage of iPad’s canvas and the overall polish have been a revelation.

Fx photo studio app