I have a particular interest in painting apps and, as I mentioned in a previous review, I think the iPhone is a great platform for this type of application. Portable and lacking the mess of real media, a good painting app offers Artists of all levels the chance to create wherever they find themselves without the need to carry around all the equipment and materials they’d normally use.

Discounting the dozens of simplistic finger painting applications out there, you’re left with three main contenders for the title of the best painting app: Brushes, PhotoForge and now Layers. I’ve not tried Brushes as yet but have already reviewed and been impressed by PhotoForge. New kid on the block, ‘Layers’ really needs to add something different and impressive to the mix in order to have a chance of standing out.
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Anyone who’s played Flight Control will get a strong sense of déjà vu when they see TaxiDrive in action. In fact, I assumed it must be the sequel to the hit air traffic control game. When I realised it wasn’t, the next thing that crossed my mind was ‘Rip off!’

However, after installing and playing it for a while, it’s clear that although the developers were undoubtedly ‘inspired’ by Flight Control and it contains a hefty dollop of its DNA, TaxiDrive’s different enough to warrant a place in the App Store. So, how does it ‘fare’?
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I’m firmly of the belief that anyone has the ability to draw and paint. Far from being some mysterious, magical process that most seem to believe (and many Artists do nothing to refute), it’s a largely mechanical skill that anyone with a hand and an eye can learn. Actually, I’m pretty sure you don’t even need the hand.

Then again, it does require a little knowledge and practice – not a process everyone wants to go through. I’m the same with music. I’d love to be able to play a piano or guitar but I’m not interested enough to go through all that tedious ‘learning’ business. Impress aims to allow anyone to turn a photo into a painterly image with no artistic skill required.
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Some apps seem ripe for the iPhone: games, Twitter clients, podcast players and many others. Who though, would think to create an application that contains several of the essential photo manipulation tools found in more grown up software like Photoshop? GhostBird would… and did.

With PhotoForge, you effectively get two apps in one. It’s an image manipulation utility and also a painting app. Although I suspect the developers see the image manipulation side as the main selling point, for me, it’s the painting aspect that’s of most interest. I’m not suggesting its bad at twiddling with your photos, it’s actually very good at it and includes an impressive range of tools. It’s just, for me, it suffers from an inherent problem regarding photo editing on the iPhone. But I’ll come to that later.
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