Perfectly Clear is a clever photo enhancement application that uses some clever code to analyse your photo's and automatically adjust them so that they look better, a kind of automated photoshop.
It does a fairly good job of automatically adjusting images (as can be seen in the picture below which is the automated version of the picture, not a manually tweaked version, and which shows the difference even totally automatic adjustment can make) but perhaps its greatest feature is that you can manually adjust settings to tweak a picture until it's just right for you and then share it in various ways or simply save it.
Pictures can be saved at the original size or at various alternate resolutions, this caused problems in testing as with an average of a hundred megabytes of ram free it could only save large pictures (such as a fourteen megapixel image) at 2048 by 1536 resolution, telling me that it required fifty two megabytes of ram which it could not allocate.
On devices with more free memory this won't be an issue of course and even at 2048 by 1536 pixels images are detailed enough for everyday use, with a little more ram you can save at higher resolutions which makes the app equally useful for those with high resolution images.
For an in app purchase of under a pound you can unlock additional features which include teeth whitening, face smoothing, skin tone correction and making eyes more noticeable.
This has annoyed some users who feel cheated at the use of in app purchases and claim it makes the application unusable, but in this case their annoyance is misplaced.
All the automatic correction and a number of manually adjustable settings work with no additional payment needed. The only features you pay extra for are those specifically targeted at improving pictures of faces, something you may find useful for enhancing a facebook profile picture for example but even without the in app purchase the software still performs well on a variety of different pictures (including faces of course).
Indeed the ios version has this same use of in app purchases, and charges a small one time fee for certain features that are more specialised.
In app purchases can be annoying when they make an app almost unusable without spending out more money however this is one case where everything works without these purchases and unless you're planning on editing pictures of faces where you want to to whiten teeth or make eyes look sexier than you aren't going to need those features in the first place.
But should you want them, are they worth the extra money?
Surprisingly yes. The eyes can be made clearer larger and more defined (in what some would call a cute way, almost like becoming a human version of an anime character) and the teeth can indeed be whitened should you really have a need to do so.
Clearly there is some clever calculation going on to target specific areas of faces within pictures, and clearly if it is something only certain users will find useful an argument could be made that it makes sense to sell the app for less and simply charge extra for those who need those more specialised features.
At its introductory price of just over sixty pence (sixty three at the time of writing) it makes sense for budding photographers, or even those with a habit of taking not so good pictures, to get Perfectly Clear while it's on offer.
The use of in app purchases is of course always going to remain a sore point for some users, and rightly so, but at least in this instance it doesn't interfere with the intended use of the application and isn't going to stop your photo's looking better if you don't want to pay more for those more specialised extras.
If you want to know more, or to buy the app yourself, head on to the Play store and, as is recommended with any app purchase, check the user comments there before making your decision.
If you want to know more, or to buy the app yourself, head on to the Play store and, as is recommended with any app purchase, check the user comments there before making your decision.
