Tracing Board | Lightbox vs Core Image Tools
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Tracing Board | Lightbox
This app transforms your iPad into a portable light box for artists. It allows you to trace over sketches, drafts, or fonts to refine your work, make variations, or create new typographical designs. Save your progress and adjust image settings for an optimal tracing experience.
- Portable light box functionality
- Trace sketches and drafts
- Create typographical designs
- Save tracing progress
- Adjust size, brightness, saturation, and contrast
- Lockable menu to prevent accidental input
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Tracing Board converts your iPad into an on-the-go light box. This is a tool for those of us who draw daily (wherever we are) and sometimes need to re-draw sketches until we are pleased with the results. ▶ USES • Use it to clean-up or fix mistakes in your drafts. • Make hand copies of your originals with small variations. • Combine drawings you’ve done in separate places. • Make your own typographical creations by combining and tracing inspirational fonts. ▶ ADVANTAGES • Use it on the go • Menu can be locked to avoid accidentally tapping any controls or leaving the app while tracing. • Save your boards to finish tracing later. • Adjust Size, Brightness, Saturation & Contrast to make tracing easier. ▶ HOW IT WORKS Before using the app app, go to your iPad’s Settings and “Turn OFF Multitasking Gestures”. Read the “Tips & Tricks” section displayed automatically on the first run (you can access it again later by tapping on the lightbulb icon) to get the most of this app. Choose the drawing you want to trace and either take a photo of it, select a photo from Camera Roll or simply tape the drawing you want to trace over the white screen and add a white paper on top. Tracing board does not condone copying original works from other artist and claiming them as yours. It is merely a tool to improve your own creations, practice or for going from a draft to a final piece. We recommend using a soft lead pencil and tracing with minimum pressure to avoid damaging your device.
Core Image Tools
This app offers over 100 image editing tools with a simple interface for various effects. Easily edit, enhance, resize, and apply filters to your photos across multiple devices. Its intuitive workflow allows for seamless, step-by-step image manipulation without complex file management.
- Over 100 image editing tools
- Simple and intuitive user interface
- Multi-platform support (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Vision)
- Resize images with added pixels
- Flip and mirror functionality
- Various blur effects
- Chroma-keying tools
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Over 100 powerful image editing tools, presented in the simplest user interface. Like most workshops, you use several tools to accomplish a task. Core Image Tools is a large toolbox to reach into, to accomplish many complex effects, one simple step at a time. Lightweight yet Powerful: Edit, enhance, resize, rotate, & add effects to your photos|images from the palm of your hand, while you're on the go, or also from your desktop|laptop. Multi-Platform: Use the same app across your devices - iPhones, iPads, Macs, & Vision. Super-Simple Workflow: Pick a Photos image, apply an effect, tap save - done! Want more? Pick that saved image, apply some other effect to it, tap save - done! Loop the image through as many edits|effects as desired & always have a hardcopy in Photos of each step along the way. Plus you'll always have your original, & never had to type in a single filename throughout the entire process. Resize Images: ACTUALLY resize images, not just crop them down or zoom in. Also, you can ADD color|transparent|semi-transparent pixels to any edge of an image to resize it, or offset it, using 'Border | Underlay'. Flip|Mirror: Quickly mask|mirror a brand name out of your selfie. Flip|mirror an image, horizontally and|or vertically, with one tap. Use 'Skew' to straighten, keystone-correct, zoom, mirror, & crop all at once. Smooth: Use 'Blur, Selfie Smoother' to iron out a few wrinkles, de-focus skin blemishes, or smooth out other unwanted details. Line|Edge Drawn: Make an image look as if it was drawn|sketched using an ink pen, pencil, charcoal, colored pencils, colored chalk, light-pen, watercolored, wax-scratched (scratch-art), or made entirely out of dots|square pixels|points|hex-pixels|or crystalized. Bump Distortion: Kids of all ages (Mom? Dad?) love to swell up, or shrink down, faces & parts of people - give dad a superhero chin, a sibling one big eye & one little one, a bubbled alien-forehead of a friend - endless fun. Wish you had a smaller nose - shrink it. Wish you had bigger biceps or shoulders - pump 'em up. Wonder what implants would look like - find out. Zoom in on, & bring attention to, any feature in an image, especially for technical uses, like highlighting a capacitor on a PCB, or a component of a wiring schematic. Overlay Images: Including resizing, repositioning, & rotating them. Overlay your logo or business card over an image. Also, you can make an entire image of a transparent, or semi-transparent color & overlay that over your image, adding a color filter effect to the entire image. Chroma-Keyers (6 types!): Remove red, green, or blue-screen, or any color. Maybe make transparent overlays out of them? Maybe use 'Polygon | Star' to make color-keyed shapes for transparency masks. Checkerboard: Make checkerboard designs - just pick your colors, including clear|transparent. Blurs: Gaussian Blur, Zoom Blur, Motion Blur, Glow|Bloom, & other blur effects. 3D|Graphics|Cube Images: Make your textures|shaders, tile them, rotate them, make normal|bump maps from them for enhanced lighting effects. Mirrored|seamless tiles, multicolored gradients (linear & radial, plus gradients scale perfectly & tile infinitely from one small image - very efficient). Use 'Alpha as Grayscale' to map out image transparencies for your texture|shader's opacity channel. The best skybox|cube image tools too! Color & Light Adjusters: Many options - brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, gamma, vibrance, opacity. Try 'Dark Document Enhancer' on a dark document or a scan that you want to enhance. Grayscale Images: Select from 7 grayscale modes each honed for specific imaging challenges. Animated Image Player: Play, pause, slow down, speed-up, & reverse animated images. Kaleidoscopes: Do you like kaleidoscopes? Oh yeah! Gotcha covered there! Over a dozen types. Infinite possibilities just from one image, & the default image is of the most beautifully colored flowers. Developers: Make App Icons, Buttons, & Radio buttons.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Core Image Tools at 5.0 against Tracing Board | Lightbox's 4.5. Core Image Tools also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 67%) and update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 18 months). Tracing Board | Lightbox's advantage is ratings volume (40 vs 3) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 18). On ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Tracing Board | Lightbox costs $2.99 and Core Image Tools $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Core Image Tools holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Tracing Board | Lightbox has 40 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 67% of Tracing Board | Lightbox's written reviews are positive against 100% of Core Image Tools's.
Tracing Board | Lightbox ships an update every 18 months, Core Image Tools every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 6, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Tracing Board | Lightbox | Core Image Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | $0.99 — better |
| Rating | 4.5 (40 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 40 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 18 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro — better |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 18 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 60 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pablo Paciello | Lino Bailey |
Customer experience
Tracing Board | Lightbox
Core Image Tools
In-app purchases
Tracing Board | Lightbox
No in-app purchases
Core Image Tools
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Tracing Board | Lightbox free?
Is Core Image Tools free?
Which has better reviews, Tracing Board | Lightbox or Core Image Tools?
Do Tracing Board | Lightbox or Core Image Tools have ads?
Which is updated more often, Tracing Board | Lightbox or Core Image Tools?
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