WaterLili - WaterColor Effect 4+

Create an oil printing of your photo is very simple with this app. Minimal controls that speed the process right along. Works best with simple non complicated images. And best of all no brushes to clean when you’re done.
Would gain the extra star to bring it to a 5 star rating, if you could crop the photo in the app. Then you could move the image to fit inside the covers/edge brush strokes (eg head in portrait is off to left side to start - then covers left side does doesn’t fit well). As it is I need to crop in the iPhone Photo app and guess how the cover will fit when I bring the photo over to this app.

While the results are okay, the app takes up way too much storage space for such a narrow range of features. I’d also expect more watery effects—such as bloom—from something that calls itself “Waterlili.” The masks would be more useful if you could rotate as well as scale, even better if you could customize them with a brush/eraser.

I do like the elegant and logical layout of the interface.

The save/share options barely function on my iPad Air. Most of the time it crashes the app. When it doesn’t, the sharesheet often fails to appear, even with long waits. When an image does eventually make it to the camera roll, more often than not a big chunk is blotted out with a grey rectangle. High resolution isn’t worth much if I can’t save the picture in the first place. Even if save worked properly, it would be better to have a choice than be forced to a high resolution when it’s not necessary. On the plus side, even when it crashes, the app does save the last used settings (except the mask), which makes it easier to make another attempt.

After trying the basic, free, version I bought the upgrade, the only difference I see is the addition of several more covers. It is a good app for creating art/paintings from my pictures, I’ve created several I like but I’m not sure the full upgrade is worth the $2.99.