Annotate your photos and screenshots on iPhone and iPad with Annotable app by Ling Wang. Annotable provides various tools to edit or annotate images before sharing. You can add text in different colors, use zoom loupe and conceal private info with blur tool, amongst other features.
Here is our review of the free app:
Design
- No registration is required to use the app which is good to see. The app directly opens the home screen which displayed your Camera Roll photos.
- The title bar has two options: Settings and a drop down menu of the available Photo Albums
- You can select an image here and get right into editing.
- Overall, the app design is almost non-existant whether you are on the home screen or the edit screen. The focus is on your imagery and the app’s tools.
Editing tools
The following tools are available in the free version of the app, with some of them locked behind in-app purchases.
- 8 colors for text and highlighting
- Crop
- Zoom loupes: rectangular, circle and oval
- Text
- Straight arrows
- Blur (3 styles and levels of pixelation)
- Spotlight
- Shades
- Text highlight (similar to OneShot, the app lets you highlight text in images or screenshots)
Editing is very simple here. You select the tool you want and chose its location on the image. Depending on the tool, you can change some parts of it. For example, in the blur tool, you can change the intensity of the blur from 3 available levels, as well as its styling. In the free version, some tools are locked behind in-app purchases, but it does not ruin the experience and most of the important tools are still available without any cost.
Saving and Sharing
- All annotated images are saved to the Photos app in original resolution. Editing the images does not crop them so you preserve the original quality.
- Annotable uses the default iOS share sheet so you can share your edited imagery on social media or with friends through your installed apps
Verdict
Annotable has a very simple interface and you can get to editing straight away. Zoom Loupes and Blur tool set Annotable apart from other editing applications, especially for a free basic tier. There are no ads in the free version either.
The only hiccup is that you cannot utilize all the features until you buy the pro-version of the tools via in-app purchases. Each tool costs $1.99 individually which is on the higher side as some of these tools are available for free in other apps like Blink. A discount is currently available when purchasing all tools at $7.99 instead of $12.00. This offer is only valid till the release of version 1.6
In addition, some editing tools lack variety. The crop tool does not include features such as rotation and flipping. There is also a lack of choice in border colors, arrows, fonts and font sizes. The edits are not done in layers so it can be a drawback too.
Annotable lets you test full versions of all the editing tools for a few times. This makes it easy for you to make up your mind whether you want to pay to upgrade or not.
The latest version 1.5 includes french localisation, Undo feature, and bug fixes. The developer has also announced that a Photo Editing extension is in the works.
Annotable is available for free on the App Store. It requires iOS 9.0 and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Download Annotable from App Store
