The photography app has a host of filters, adjustments and effects to fine tune your photos and give them a little boost.
Along with a decent photo editor, Photo Box Pro offers a slideshow tool to display your photos and a depth of field calculator that can come in handy as you capture your images. The free version provides you access to the core editing tools, and a nice range of features that can be added to the editor through in-app purchase.
Photo Box Pro does lack that professional editor feel you have with Fhotoroom or Fantasia Painter, but for quick edits on the go it is a Windows 10 photo editor worth considering.
Photo Box Pro opens up to a conventional menu with options to jump to the various tools within the app. You can view your image gallery, load an image to edit, launch the camera app to capture a new photo, create a photo slideshow and view the Depth of Field Calculator. If all you need is to crop an image, Photo Box Pro also has an option to bypass the editor and jump right to the cropping tool.
In viewing an image or slideshow, a series of navigation buttons lines the top and bottom of the image display. Along the top of the display, there is a menu button that pulls down a navigation menu and buttons to launch a slideshow, expand the image full screen, share the image, as well as a back button. Across the bottom of the display are options to rate the application, launch the photo editor, view the EXIF file data, and a delete button.
The editor itself has a slightly cluttered feel, especially on a Windows 10 Mobile phone. The free version of Photo Box Pro is ad supported, and the banner ad eats into your workspace. Editing tools line the screen below your image, and buttons to save and undo edits are positioned in the upper-right corner of the display. Along the very bottom of the editing screen you can find options to launch the cropping tool and to save your edited photo. Cropping options include several preset cropping sizes (4x3, 4x6 and 8x10, for example) as well as a custom crop size.
Photo Box Pro has a nice collection of editing tools in the free version of the photo editor, including:
- Adjustments — Here you can adjust the image's brightness, contrast, exposure, saturation, color, sharpness, temperature, blur, noise levels and vignette.
- Filters — This is a collection of 21 effects filters that include lomo, antique, sunset and fog.
- Black and White (B&W) — If grayscale images are more your tastes, here you'll find a collection of 17 black and white filters to apply to your images.
- Drawing — This is a collection of 16 sketch style filters to give your photos that hand-drawn feel.
- Frames — There are 17 frame styles to surround your image with.
- Magic — This group of tools includes 24 special effects filters that can add fire, lightning, stars and fireworks to your images.
- Funny — If you are looking for a more abstract approach for your photos, this collection has 16 filters that warp, twist and contort your images.
Additionally, through in-app purchase, you can add seven expansion packs of filters. These filter packs can be added individually or bundled. Prices range from $0.99 to $5.99.
The editing experience is far more pleasant on the larger screen of a Windows 10 PC. The Windows 10 Mobile version is just too cramped, especially with the ad banner. It requires you to make an in-app purchase of $3.99 or higher to remove the ad support and free up some real estate.
Along with the cramped feel, the user interface is clunky. The app offers plenty of features and editing tools but spreads them out too much. I would have preferred to have seen the main menu limited to the slideshow tool, access to the editor and the depth of field calculator.
As is, Photo Box Pro has potential and is a worth try. The app just needs some work on the user interface and maybe an easier way to get rid of the ad banners. I don't think Photo Box Pro could hold up to serious editing, and it might work best as an option for quick, simple edits. If you have tried Photo Box Pro, let us know what you think in the comments.
