ToonPAINT, by Toon-FX is a fun application that enables you to turn a picture, either one that’s in your iTunes Camera Roll, or one that you’ve taken with the application, into an image that looks like a cartoon.
When you first launch ToonPAINT, you will see a sample picture of a girl that comes with the application. However, if you’d like to change the picture, you can do so by tapping on the button that looks like a folder, located in the bottom left of the application. From there, you should be able to either choose a photo from your iPhone or iPod Touch’s camera roll, take a snapshot, or return to your previous sessions.
Once you have either selected or taken a photo, you should see a loading screen for a few seconds and then you will see your photo, which has been turned into a cartoon. However, the cartoon version of the photo will not be in color, though you can choose to color in the photo yourself.
Now that you have your photo in the application and it has been turned into a cartoon, you can make a variety of changes to it.
One way that you can make changes to the photo would be to tap on the button which looks like a rabbit coming out of a hat, which will display some options, such as how thick edges look, as well as how dark the gray and black colors are in the cartoon.
There is also an option to change the sliders from “soft” to “hard”, which have some different effects on the photo. Also, there is a button that “softens” the image, as well as an “Advanced” button, which allows you to configure things, such as the image’s coherence, edge width, as well as edge length.
Since the images are turned into cartoons without color, you have to manually color in the photo, which you can do by tapping on the button that looks like a paint can. From this menu, you should see four colors, which you can change by double-tapping on a particular color. After double-tapping on a color, a menu should come up that allows you to either select a color from a color-picker, adjust the shade of a color that you’ve chosen, as well as use a “dropper” tool to select a color from the original image that you uploaded.
Also from the paint menu, there is a button that looks like a paintbrush, which brings up a slider that changes the brush size. This tool can be useful for when you’re trying to fill in small areas and require a different brush size.
The last button in this menu looks like a bomb and enables users to undo their recent paint strokes or clear the image of any color that has been added.
If you’d like to zoom in so that you can paint in small or difficult areas, you can do so by pinching the image. The same process can also be used to zoom out of the cartoon.
Once you’ve finished editing your cartoon, you can save it by tapping on the button that looks like a green floppy-disk. This button brings up a menu, where you can configure your image’s settings, such as whether or not you’d like to save your image in high or low resolution, as well as if you’d like to save your image with any paint that you may have added.
When you’re ready to save your image, you can save it to your iPhone or iPod Touch’s camera roll by tapping on the “Save to Device” button. There are also buttons that enable you to share your image to either FaceBook and Twitter.
Here is an example of a photo of my family’s dog, Dusty, that I turned into a cartoon using the ToonPAINT application.
If you’d like to try using ToonPAINT, you can purchase the application from the iTunes App Store for $1.99.