You won't find any shortage of photo editors in the Windows 10 Store, with KVADPhoto+ Pro as one of the more recent offerings (or at least new to us). This editor hopes to catch your eye with over 150 creative filters, an easy-to-use interface and support for multiple image file formats.
The photography app also includes a feature-rich collage creator that has over 50 adjustable templates to combine your photographs with. The editor is not available for Windows 10 Mobile, but if you are still searching for a photo editing app for your PC or tablet, KVADPhoto+ Pro is worth checking out.
Your opening menu for KVADPhoto+ Pro opens up with options to open an image to edit, launch your device camera to capture a new image to edit and start the collage creator. You will also find sample photos displayed on KVADPhoto's main menu and as you begin to edit photographs, a recently edited panel will appear to highlight these images.
There is a menu button in the upper left corner of the screen where you can share the app, tap and send or access the app's settings. Settings cover options to turn on/off the main menu animations and Example panel, set the output folder and choose the default file format and quality options.
The collage editor has over fifty adjustable templates to populate with your photographs. You can adjust the borders, frames, corners and backgrounds of the collage. Templates range from two images to sixteen images.
While the collage creator is a nice feature, the heart and soul of KVADPhoto+ Pro is with the editor. Once you have selected an image to edit, the app transitions to the editor where you will find editing tools lining the bottom of the screen, file management options running across the top and your image taking up the center of the screen.
File management options include browsing your saved images for another photo to edit, save/save as options for your edited image and an option to share your image.
The editing tools that line the bottom of the screen include:
- Action Set: KVADPhoto+ Pro will allow you to create action sets based on your edits to allow for one-touch editing.
- Filters: KVADPhoto+ Pro includes over 150 filters that can be applied to your images. These filters include series of grayscale filters, high-contrast filters, warm tones, cold tones and more. Each filter application can be adjusted for intensity.
- Frames: KVADPhoto+ Pro includes seventeen frames to encase your images with. The app also includes themed frame packs (romantic, holidays, wood, etc.) that are available through in-app purchase.
- Effects: This is an attractive set of special effects filters to apply to your images. The core group of effects includes twenty filters with several add-on packs of effects filters available through in-app purchase.
- Sketch: Eleven effects filters that transform your photographic images into sketch drawings.
- Decorations: This is a group of four tools to decorate your images, including text, stickers, paint and color splash. Color splash converts your image to grayscale and you can selectively return portions of the image to the original color.
- Magic Tools: This editing tool set includes automatic adjustments for levels, a lens boost tool and a tilt-shift tool. The lens boost tool is basically a circular tilt shift option while the tilt-shift tool addresses things in a linear fashion.
- Transform: This is where you will find tools to rotate, change your image orientation, crop and resize your image.
- Adjustments: This is where you will find the more elementary editing tools that include adjustments for brightness, contrast, saturation, color, temperature, hue, blur and sharpness.
Edits are easily done with a thumbnail of your image appearing on the screen with an adjustment bar to regulate the editing change. As you make the adjustment, the thumbnail will reflect that change. I would have liked to have seen a larger live preview of the adjustments on the full-size image than using the smaller thumbnail window. It works, but sometimes I found it difficult to see the full effect of the changes in the smaller image.
Applying filters and effects is done in a slightly better manner. Your image is reduced in size, the effect or filter applied and adjustment tools will appear below the image to allow you to fine-tune the filter or effect's application. Even though the picture is reduced to make room for the filter selection, it is large enough to get a feel for the impact of the filter.
You can back out of an edit without applying the changes and your editing history is accessible from the lower right corner of the editing screen. You can back up to any point in your editing history or tap the Original Button at the bottom of the editor to remove all edits from your image.
I have to commend the developers for offering a photo editor that keeps the image as the centerpiece and avoids cluttering up the screen with editing tools and menus. The design offers a clean appearance and a pro-style feel that you would find with the professional-grade editors (and professional-priced) photo editors. It's not the full Adobe Photoshop, mind you, but most people don't even need 99% of what Photoshop can do.
KVADPhoto+ Pro does support JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP image files for opening and saving images. You also have the ability to choose the destination folder for your saved images and in the settings set the quality of your saved image (low, normal, high) and DPI of your image (72, 300 or original).
A quality photo editor in a user-friendly package
KVADPhoto+ Pro is an excellent photo editing option for your Windows 10 PC. Coming in around 18MB. it's an attractive option for tablets where storage space is often more restrictive than with a desktop or laptop.
The editing tools are simple and straightforward with plenty of editing options to fine-tune or transform your images. The user-interface has a pro-style feel and a set of editing tool sets that will appeal to a broad range of photographers from the casual shutterbug to the "never leave your camera at home" crowd.
The only two items that jump off the screen as being missing with KVADPhoto+ Pro is the lack of support for RAW images and an HDR conversion tool. Neither omissions are deal breakers and not everyone will miss those features.
Compared to other Windows 10 Photo Editors, KVADPhoto+ Pro isn't as feature rich as Fhotoroom, but a few steps ahead of Fotor and several steps ahead of Adobe Photoshop Express. Overall it is a quality photo editor that makes the choice of choosing just one all the more challenging. Luckily, we aren't restricted to just one.
KVADPhoto+ Pro is currently running $3.99. If you need to try things out, there is a free, non-pro version of KVADPhoto+ that is a tad scaled back, but will try things out before making the investment. We think KVADPhoto+ Pro is worth the cost and think you will too.
Download KVADPhoto+ Pro for Windows 10 PC
