Mobile Mondays: Using the ToolWiz app to be creative with your phone photography

What do you do when you’re without your main computer for two weeks? Well, I took the time to play with my phone camera and the ToolWiz photo app.

ToolWiz capabilities

The ToolWiz website claims that it’s the best all-in-one photo editor — simple and powerful. But in addition to that, you can do some pretty cool things with it to help take your photography to the next level. This includes Patch and Healing, allowing you to duplicate and remove targeted elements. There’s also Mixer — which lets you blend two photos together to create double exposure effects — and Polar Coordinates — enabling you to transform your images into planets.

There are also several art effects, text tools, color correction tools and more. Several of these categories are further broken down into more refined editing options, as shown below.

What you can do to create art

I’m not one to use my phone for editing images on a regular basis (my aging eyes don’t enjoy it), so experimenting with ToolWiz has been fun and I chose the easiest and quickest edits. I also went more off the rails than I would have in my normal photo editing process using Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

Here is what I started with. A flower from our backyard is the first, original image. The second one is the water reflection function and the third is using one of the Prismart effects. The header image of this article was created using a kaleidoscope effect.

Experimenting is the best thing to do

I decided to start taking one photo each day that I’m without my computer and processing it differently each time. Really, I have been lazy with this and anything in my sight has been fair game. Here are a few more images and what I did to create the final edit.

The Chevy engine is another one of the effects under the Prismart section. I love the illustration-type look.

The cool thing is that you can layer different effects, like I did with my spiral notebook image. First I applied a “feeling” effect to convert it to black and white. Then I went into the Urban category to choose a texture. There are 20 textures and color pallets to choose from. You are also able to mask where you don’t want the effect, but for my image I applied it all over.

For the third hospital architecture image I chose an already black & white image and added the sketch effect under the Art section. That one reminded me of a-ha’s “Take on Me” music video (I know I’m aging myself.)

So many options

Seriously, there are an infinite number of combinations of effects to try. Below is a rubber band on my desk. I used the mirror effect, flipped it and added an art effect to it.

Other functions

Besides the creative and artsy effects and functions, ToolWiz also operates as a standard editing app with all the usual options including; toning, filters, portrait settings, clarify, sharpen, healing, lens correction and many more. You can also create what they call Moments which is a slide show with music using whichever images and text you choose.

The ToolWiz YouTube channel has tutorials on using most of the effects and functions.

Just play!

The best way to learn apps like this is to just play, tap on options, go back, tap on another option just see what emerges and what you can create. The only limit is your imagination.

If you’re interested in more on mobile photography, check out more of our Mobile Monday articles.