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Karma Art review

Mark Mackay

We review Karma Art, a cut and paste picture making app for the iPhone

Karma Art is a a cut and paste picture making

Published on Sep 3, 2009

Karma Art is one of those apps that are great for people with inclinations for creativity to kill some time while waiting for a bus. It’s also has the added benefit of making a creation to send a creation to a friend or loved one.

Many iPhone apps that are based on making pictures have failed before they’ve even been downloaded as the touch screen isn’t ideal for drawing. Karma Art capitalises on the interface though as making a picture is done by poking around pre made cut-outs which come with the application.

The app has several different backgrounds to make your drawing on all of which possess a decidedly natural quality. The textures include a canvas and different shades of roughly recycled paper and we’re guessing this theme is the source of the title.

Pressing the small blue flower icon at the bottom left hand side of the screen opens up the menu which allows you to add text to your picture using the iPhone’s keyboard. The menu also contains icons for changing the background and saving, opening or deleting pictures and adding objects.

Once you’ve written the text to be added to the picture you can select from 12 different fonts and 6 different sizes. After hitting the ‘+’ symbol to add it to the picture, it will do so as one object and will allow you to position it on the paper as such.

The list of objects you can add to your pictures is extensive enough to keep you interested and make for some varied compositions. The makers have included objects such as waves and fishes for underwater scenes and dinosaurs for anyone with a more pre-historic bent. The categories include transportation, people, animals, scenery and a few others. All of the images are drawn in a child-like stick men style which works really well with the natural backgrounds.

You can save or open pictures made in Karma Art straight from your iPhone’s photo library but there’s no feature that allows you to send them straight to someone via email or text which would have been cool. It’s a fun application though and a great way to kill some time if you’re stuck with some time to fidget and at just 59p, it’s a steal.