Our first iPad app, TouchUp, is now available on the iPad App Store.

This is our first big release since Postage and we are thrilled to see it make its way into the hands of eager iPad owners across the globe. The launch today has been a resounding success, with TouchUp claiming the #1 spot in the U.S. App Store’s Photography category and breaking into the Top 100 of overall paid iPad app sales. Everyone at RS HQ is extremely humbled by this first day adoption!

TouchUp is focused on making it fun and easy to add creative effects and refinements to your photos on iPad. The product web site and the tutorial videos will do a much better job of giving you a feel for the application than I can do here. Check it out to see what TouchUp can do for your photos.

To all the naysayers we say– What do you mean iPad isn’t for creation? Photo editing on iPad is very different from pushing pixels with a mouse on the desktop. Something about holding the iPad and doodling directly on your photo sans the mouse running interference in-between is truly a new experience. I can tell you after working on this app for months, it is also a whole lot of fun. Our administrative assistant, Liz, wasn’t too engaged with the iPad until she tried TouchUp and now she can’t wait to get one of her own.

Rather than rehash the basics here, I will take just a bit more of your attention to pass on two nuggets about what I think are some unique features of TouchUp that you may not notice until you have more time to explore the app.

One thing TouchUp adds that is novel in the somewhat crowded market of iOS effect apps is layering. Each effect in TouchUp can be applied in its own layer that blends with the layers stacked below it. This works pretty much like a simple form of the layers you would find in Photoshop or Acorn on the desktop. This one feature gives you a lot of power to create some fairly sophisticated edits to images. Look at this photo for instance, which has had Temperature, Blur, Burn and Dodge adjustments layered on top of the original :

That’s a pretty dramatic difference with a cool result. Notice how the corners are darker now and the center has a highlight. The edges have also be de-focused a bit with Blur and the tone of the upper left is now much warmer. TouchUp makes this a breeze with painting effects on specific areas and blending the results together in layers. It may sound complicated, but the UI in TouchUp is tuned to make this easy and natural.

BTW, that photo is an array of iPads that our friends at Black Pixel had constructed for a cool project they built. Now you know why Apple can’t keep up with demand.

The other cool feature of TouchUp is the Accumulation or Painting effects. Many of the effects in TouchUp and in most of the competing applications on the iPad are applied to your photo with a mask. When you doodle with your finger on the photo you are essentially creating this mask or stencil that is either off or on for each pixel. If the mask is off, the original pixel shows through. If the mask is on, the effected pixel shows.

The painting effects in TouchUp work just a bit differently. Instead of just turning the mask off or on, these effects are applied by building up the effect as you stroke the image. The more you stroke in one area, the more the effect is applied. The simple example is the Paint Brush effect in TouchUp. When you pick a color and paint the Paint Brush effect on your photo, you can keep painting the same area over and over with new color. If you use a brush with some transparency you can also blend the strokes on top of the color that is already there.

Painting, instead of masking, works great with effects like Dodge and Burn. You can burn (darken) or dodge (lighten) an area with multiple brush strokes over and over to keep increasing the effect. Combine this with one of the soft-edged brushes and you’ll get an amazing and natural ‘organic’ feel to your edits. Look at how burning the mid-tones with a soft, transparent brush made the middle row of iPads look like they have been roughed up a bit in this next image. I wonder if the Black Pixel crew got their iPads at a fire sale?

While I’m sure this sounds complicated when spelled out in words, its really pretty easy to grok when you have the iPad in your hands and just start playing. Grab a photo or image with a lot of texture and just start rubbing! You’ll be surprised by the results that make eye-catching pictures.

Now that you have read a bunch of words about pictures, why not download the app and try it first hand on your own photos. If you make anything cool, show us on Twitter or Facebook. We are looking forward to what you come up with!