First look: iPad Tilt Shift Generator app

Making real photography look like tiny toy box scenes just got a whole lot easier, and even more addictive, with the newly released Tilt Shift Generator app for iPad ($2.99/¥350/£1.79/€2.39).

So far tens of thousands of photography fans have been feverishly manipulating snapshots to create fake miniature scenes with the hugely popular Tilt Shift Generator iPhone app. Now they can enjoy the TSG on a bigger screen while continuing to have fun with photography. All for the miniaturized cost of US$3 too. Not bad for an app that helps you achieve DSLR-like effects. 

The iPad might not seem like the ideal platform for photography apps, considering that there’s no camera built in. However, the whole 'screen as canvas’ idea we’ve been seeing for the last week is sure to make the iPad a photographer’s dream toy before long. That extra screen real estate makes blown-up image-doctoring apps like Tilt Shift Generator for iPad so much easier to use than the iPhone’s 3.5-incher. 

As for ease of use -- the pinch and dab touchscreen simplicity of the iPad makes the humble but now outdated mouse seem like something from the dark ages. 

Yes, in action the iPad version of the Tilt Shift Generator is a lot like its 170,000-selling predecessor. But when the developer Takayuki Fukatsu flies from Japan to the United States to pick up six new iPads just so he could be ahead of the curve in his native nation, TSG fans know they're buying an app with some thought put into it.

The Tilt Shift Generator app is available now at the iTunes store.