Dramatic Black & White vs Smart Resize
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Dramatic Black & White
Transform your photos into striking black and white images with adjustable light, contrast, and texture. Explore classic and modern styles, and use unique tools to create artistic compositions. Perfect for photographers seeking to enhance their monochrome vision.
- Black and white photo conversion
- Adjustable light and contrast
- Texture and shape controls
- Ellipse spotlight tool
- Classic, infrared, and HD styles
- Grain and vignette effects
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Make a Black and White Photo with Light Contrast Grit and Form --- MacWorld’s pick for the App Gems of the Year Award --- Everyone knows it doesn't get better than classic Black & White - it's the artistic soul of photography. Referencing one of our favorite Ansel Adams quotes: "Great Black & White photos aren't taken - they're made". Using Dramatic Black & White you can make your own black and white photographs, ones where light and contrast, grit and form come together to tell a story; ones where stone and sky, water and light transcend the material world and ascend to the Photographers’ Gallery. With Dramatic Black & White there are no mistakes you can't fix, no limits to your vision, no stopping until you're finished, nothing to hold you back from truly 'making your photos' and making them - Oh.My.Gosh. good! JixiPix's Dramatic Black & White app starts by leaving color in the rear view mirror, and enables you to make expert adjustments with easy-to-use, fully customizable controls to contrast and light, texture and shape. Before your eyes, watch your photo transform into the dramatic looks of the past and cutting-edge styles of the present. PHOTOGRAPHY STYLE • Black & White – Classic • Infrared Photo – Modern • Dramatic Black & White – High Definition FEATURES A one-of-a-kind ellipse spotlight tool will allow you to set up a light source on a subject in your composition. Fully customizable controls allow expert adjustments to contrast, light, texture and shape; and adjustments to spotlight size intensity. INCLUDES Spotlight, Black and White Filters, Grain and Vignette UNIVERSAL FEATURES All JixiPix Apps come with: Superior Customer Service, Support for High-Resolution Images & Output, Undo/Redo, Randomize Button, Quick Presets and the ability to create Custom Presets, Cropping with the ability to specify aspect ratio, Quick Preview, Email, Print, and the ability to post directly to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. We also have an online art gallery and invite our user’s to display their artistic creations on it: http://www.flickr.com/groups/jixipixcreations/ *************** “JixiPix turns any photo into a masterpiece. All that is required of you is the appreciation — we’ll take care of the rest! ” JixiPix.com “Creative Tools for Creative People” Photography | Artistic | Graphic Apps MAC • iPad • iPhone
Smart Resize
Enhance photo resolution and clarity using advanced AI. This app offers content-aware scaling for perfect aspect ratios and an object-erasing tool to remove unwanted elements. It also includes a simple cropping tool with rotation options.
- AI resolution enhancement
- Content-aware scaling
- Object removal tool
- Image cropping
- Ratio and rotation options
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Improve the quality and clarity of your photos with Smart Resize. Our app uses advanced AI methods to double and quadruple the resolution of an image without any loss of quality, ensuring your images are crystal clear and sharp. Smart Resize also offers content-aware scaling, a smart ratio and scale resizing tool that uses a deformable background algorithm to fix the size ratio of your images without losing any vital information. This is great for creating beautiful Instagram stories that will impress your followers. Easily remove unwanted objects from your photos with our powerful object-erasing tool. Simply mask and remove anything that you don't want in your image. We also have a simple cropping tool with useful ratios and rotation options, so you can easily crop your images to perfection.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Smart Resize at Free against Dramatic Black & White's $2.99. Smart Resize also leads on update cadence (every 4 weeks vs every 4 months). Dramatic Black & White's advantage is rating (4.8 vs 3.8) and in-app purchases (none vs 3). On ads, device support and iOS requirement 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
Smart Resize is free to download; Dramatic Black & White costs $2.99 up front. Smart Resize sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 7 days. Dramatic Black & White asks for nothing beyond the download.
Dramatic Black & White holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 3.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Dramatic Black & White has 346 ratings behind it against 22, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 84% of Dramatic Black & White's written reviews are positive against 50% of Smart Resize's.
Dramatic Black & White ships an update every 4 months, Smart Resize every 4 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Dramatic Black & White | Smart Resize |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.8 (346 ratings) — better | 3.8 (22 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 84.3% of reviews — better | 49.5% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 346 — better | 22 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 4 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 15 MB | 361 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | JixiPix, LLC | talonsodev |
Customer experience
Dramatic Black & White
Smart Resize
User reviews
Dramatic Black & White
From 346 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Great for B&W photography
- 🎨 Lots of editing options
- 💻 Works well on desktop
- 🤩 Fantastic results
- 🙌 Easy to use
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes frequently
- 🔍 Clunky UI/UX
- 🔍 Annoying pop-ups
- 🔍 Slow saving process
- 🔍 Limited features
Smart Resize
From 22 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Sleek and straightforward interface
- 🚀 Fast image upscaling
- ✨ Good output quality for resizing
- 💡 Powerful tools like waifu2x and Esrgan
- ✅ Effective for old/small photos
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes frequently
- ⚠️ 4x resize can be disastrous/distorted
- 📉 2x resize still has distortions
- 😵 Artifacts created with 4x resize
- 💸 Subscription model is disliked
Bugs and requests
Dramatic Black & White
Reported bugs
3 issues- Freezing on login screen
- Incompatibility with newer devices
- Inability to access camera
Requested features
4 requests- Ability to adjust individual color channels
- Layers and masking tools
- Remembering custom settings
- Improved performance and stability
Smart Resize
Reported bugs
100 issues- 4x resize is a disaster, everything is distorted
- 2x resize still has distortions
- Crashes out a lot
- Crashes on iPad during processing stage
- Creates artifacts when using the 4x button
Show 95 moreShow fewer
- Does nothing but crashes on iPad
- Stürzt leider noch n der Regel beim vergrößern von Bildern auf meinem iPhone 7 böse ab
- Falls es doch mal ein Ergebnis bringt war es fast immer komplett unbrauchbar
- M1 iPad Air で料金画面って何なん？
- Pure crippleware
- Short demo than you’ll delete!
- Tried for 20 minutes does not work I want my money back
- Do not buy this it does nothing
- Non fa nulla di quello che promette. Non funziona.
- Will not respond
- Unable to load any photos. App is no longer working.
- Photos Don’t Load
- Dark screen
- It shows nothing after selected the photo
- Smart Resize x2 iPhone 7 does not do anything when I opened the App update it and still nothing happens when you try to use it. Deleted
- Не выполняет свои задачи адекватно
- Doesn’t work on iPhone XS
- It’s impossible to choose any photo, app doesn’t work.
- Payment done and the app is not working ?!!!!
- Recadrage ok mais redimensionnement ne marche pas
- La fonction pour changer la hauteur ou largeur de l'image sans déformer certaines zones est intéressante mais le doublement de taille ne fait rien (bug), et la suppression d'objets est très moyenne
- Not working iPhone XS Max
- This app is not working on my IPhone XS Max kindly solve
- Works on iPad Pro
- It does not work on my iPad Air. The photos do not load.
- The app does not have instructions for use nor a help function.
- Doesn’t work
- Please fix this app. It doesn’t work at all.
- App doesn’t accept any picture to open to adjust ?
- Not working
- It is not working on IPhone 12 Max pro.
- No funciona
- No funciona ninguna opción, cuando elijo una foto se queda la pantalla gris y no muestra nada, o directamente se queda en la pantalla de inicio.
- Doesn't work at all
- Cannot even open an image, what else can be said.
- 今のバージョンは動作しない
- 2020/10/30 ファイルを開いても読み込まれず何も出来ない
- It's not working at all.
- When a photo is selected, it does not transition to the processing screen.
- Rong policy
- Paid free app under the pretext of upgrading without any information is a very wrong policy.
- Works great. Needs some instructions.
- Other apps do it better
- The erase feature doesn’t let you zoom in to get the mask as close to the object as possible, and when you do get it drawn as best as possible, the result is not good.
- The depth data feature could have been interesting. However it doesn’t seem to work by generating the map via AI from a 2D image, it seems to just separate the data from an image that already has depth data.
- The main feature, resizing images, was also a disappointment. After selecting an image taken to double the size of with my phone, it seemed to do nothing other than being up a “please wait”-style screen overlay. That’s all that happened. Image wasn’t generated.
- Not very well planned
- What I mean is that the developer might know exactly what to do, but it’s not easy for the rest of us. Maybe a quick tutorial. Anyway, the resize doubles the resolution I guess but I’m curious about the depth feature. I choose that, open a recent picture I took with the phone and nothing. Absolutely nothing.
- Useless. Won’t export to library. Deleted.
- Some functions do not work on iPhone Rx
- Please return landscape orientation
- This has been a workhorse app for me ever since it came out, but today I opened it to discover it will now only work in portrait orientation. I hope this was an error that will be corrected soon. Working in portrait is a nuisance, since my iPad workspace and keyboard case are all arranged to work in landscape.
- Not sure why a photo is huge on import and then shrinks as you resize. Rather odd.
- Useless app
- It’s not working 🤦♂️😒
- App is broken!
- I love the app, but your last update prevents it from working. When you tap on “Resize” it crashes.
- F IXED!!!! Crashes after Updating!
- On my iPad Pro iOS 13.2.3 after updating the app crashes after selecting an image to resize. Major disappoint. Hope a fix comes soon.
- Blurs pictures beautifully
- I just tried this app..started with a good crisp picture and it made it blurry with resizing, then tried a blurry picture...made it even worse.
- doesn’t work
- i checked, the app doesn’t double the size.. there is no change to the resolution/size and in one case using drawing mode it halved the resolution!
- No instructions
- The app doesn’t tell me exactly what the application for resizing photos is. Like is it for posting on social media with better quality or what? There are no instructions on the app. If there were instructions it would be better. I don’t even know what I did when I resized the picture. The app just assumes everyone knows exactly what it means
- Does it work?
- Maybe it's me, but when I choose a photo from my camera roll and tap on Resize, it never stops Resizing.
- I’s really like to effectively use this app and get the results other reviewers have, but it hasn’t worked for me. Any advice would be appreciated.
- Not worth the money - other apps do same job....
- .... much better and for free.
- Decided to purchase for the Erase feature but it doesn’t erase at all, it simply smudges the area to be erased in a VERY POOR ATTEMPT at cloning the empty space next to the image being “erased”.
- Bad choices
- 1. No settings.
- 2. No instructions or tutorials
- 3. Save often fails.
- 4. Saves to PNG!?
- Why go to the trouble
- This takes way way to long to do anything
- Glad I got it for free not worth a dime
- It’s good bye
- No rating
- Your app doesn’t work. That’s why there is no rating.
- Make the picture so bad qualitity
- After I used the app and save the picture this will be so bad qualitity.
- Terrible app
- The resize feature completely scrambles your photo (or cranks forever), the ratio change just stretches your photo, and the heal feature doesn’t work very well either. I wonder whether any of the good reviews are fake.
- Doesn’t work at all
- Wasted my money. Didn’t resize x2 any photo.
- Doesn’t work
- Tried it on this iPhone 6 and mini iPad 4. It didn’t work at all.
- Unusable
- It crashes every time you try to resize a photo
- Tiene un error / there’s an error
- Con la nueva actualización, aún se puede seguir eligiendo entre tipo de archivo : dibujo o foto . Sin embargo, al elegir foto, el resultado final es de “dibujo”
- With the new update , you can still choose between (drawing type and photo type) . However, the resulting file is “drawing”.
Requested features
10 requests- Add AI - sharp function
- Add support for .png/.tiff etc image formats via Files
- Add ability for custom aspect ratios
- Magnifying glass for erase tool
- Option to know and delete metadata of photos
Show 5 moreShow fewer
- Return landscape orientation
- Add Chinese version
- More details about how apps work, detailed manual
- Tutorials or instructions
- Option to undo last change or quickly reopen image
In-app purchases
Dramatic Black & White
No in-app purchases
Smart Resize
- Smart Resize PRO3 Days trial$1.997 Days
- Smart Resize PRO3 Days trial$6.991 Year
- Smart Resize PRO$9.99
Questions
Is Dramatic Black & White free?
Is Smart Resize free?
Which has better reviews, Dramatic Black & White or Smart Resize?
Do Dramatic Black & White or Smart Resize have ads?
Which is updated more often, Dramatic Black & White or Smart Resize?
Other comparisons
