Windows Phones such as the Lumia Icon and Lumia 1020 , with its staggering 41 megapixels, have arguably the best mobile cameras around. So it makes sense that a powerful image-editing tool such as PicsArt Photo Studio (free, with in-app purchase options) should land on the devices. Don't let the name fool you: The app lets you create drawings as well as fancying up photos in a remarkable number of ways. This app's wealth of image-enhancing tools is only made more compelling by its thriving photo-sharing community.

You can start to get a feel for what PicsArt can do without even creating an account—a trait I like in any app I'm testing. But you'll want to sign into an account so that you can upload photos and participate in the online community. You can use an existing Microsoft or social network account, or just create a PicsArt account using an email address.

The startup screen on the Windows Phone version differs from the Android and iOS versions: It shows large colorful tiles for Effect, Collage, Draw, Camera, Photo, and Shop. You can start by choosing a photo from your camera roll or from online photo places like Facebook, Flickr, and OneDrive. When getting images from Flickr to edit in PicsArt, you don't even need a Flickr account: You can browse, search, and eventually edit public photos on the service.

The PicsArt app interface is fairly well designed and powerful, though it can get busy at times because of the multitude of options. You can pinch to zoom, reveal more controls with a plus button, see before and after views of your image, undo the last action, and reset your picture to its original state.

Once you start editing an image in PicsArt, you immediately see the app's appeal: It has oodles of photo editing tools—not only Instagram-style filters that are more adjustable than those in Instagram, but also masks, clone/stamp, cropping with shape, brushes, borders, text and lens flares. Photoshop, watch out! And don't even get me started about clip art. There are sets for travel, sports, nature, birthday, mustaches, baby, love, rabbits…the list goes on and on. Some are in-app purchases, usually for 99 cents, but many are free.

Drawing tools also push the app into Photoshop territory, but the Windows Phone version only offers four brush types compared with over 20 on iOS. You do get the same 30 font choices as in the other platforms for text overlays, however, with a color picker and handles to resize them to taste.

Of course you also get red-eye and blemish correction, but no tooth whitening or tan adding. The blemish tool did a good job on minor skin issues. One thing you don't get is auto-object selection and edge detection. The cloning tool is fun, but don't expect content-aware object removal like that in Adobe's Photoshop and Mix.

Collages
Collages: You've seen them on Instagram and elsewhere, and maybe you wondered how they were made. Collages aren't possible with most photo social apps, but, as you might expect, PicsArt offers a cornucopia of layouts, borders, and backgrounds for collage creation, as you can see from the image below.

Sharing and Social Photos
The app's wealth of editing tools means you can put serious time into working on an image. You can save the picture to the Camera Roll at any point with a button tap, but naturally you'll want to share that work with others, and the app is by no means deficient in sharing options. Direct sharing options include Facebook, OneDrive, Twitter, and Tumblr, and of course PicsArt's own service. An Other option adds Instagram, as well as any app you have that accepts photos.

If you have Instagram blinders on, you may not have noticed PicsArt's surprisingly active photo-sharing community. I'm always amazed at how often new social services can come along and still manage to build up a decent quorum of users. That said, its community is still dwarfed by those of Flickr and Instagram. When uploading an image, you can add keyword tags and location, specify whether the photo should be private or public (the default). You can also indicate that it includes mature content (a toggle lets you view mature content, but it's off by default).

The app—and the PicsArt website for that matter—allow all the standard social networking activities—commenting, favoriting, and following. The interface is intuitive, making good use of swipe gestures to get from My Network to Interesting to Contests and Artists. Contests are a nice plus from PicsArt, and they make sense, given the numerous creative tools the app offers. The users vote, and the winners are highlighted on PicsArt's blog.

The Formula of PicsArt's Success
PicsArt takes just about the opposite approach to photo enhancing to Instagram's. Where the latter stresses simplicity, PicsArt offers a lot more image-editing options. Not only are its filters more adjustable, but it offers near-Photoshop-level tools like layers, clone stamp, and masks. Drawing tools and clip art make it far more than just a photo app. All of this, however, comes with a risk of gaudy pictures, which Instagram does a good job of preventing by limiting the options and the extent to which those limited options can affect images.

Those who love to tinker with photos on their phones and jazz them up to the hilt should immediately download PicsArt. Or at least use PicsArt to edit before sharing pics to Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, and the rest. But they may just find enough like-minded image makers on PicsArt's own robust social network to satisfy their needs. For the largest app community and some pretty nifty photo tools of their own, however, stick with Instagram.