Apple’s Swift Student Challenge

The Swift Student Challenge is an annual three-week competition hosted by Apple, inviting students from across the world to showcase their iOS development skills. Winners receive exclusive Apple rewards and the opportunity to connect with the global developer community.

PixelPerfect

For my submission, I wanted to create a simple and intuitive photo editing application. Since there are many existing photo editing applications, I wanted PixelPerfect to focus on a cleaner, “less is more” design. To create the app, I used the SwiftUI and CoreImage frameworks. Although it may not have functionality as robust as existing editor, I always found simplicity more fitting for mobile applications. The following is a list of the core functionality:

• Variety of available filters
• Auto-enhancement
• Image cropping
• Undo/Redo/Clear
• Copying to clipboard

Takeaways

In the week and a half I spent working on this application, I learned many things about the development process. My biggest takeaway is how much more difficult it is when you are working solo throughout the entire process. From coming up with the app idea/solution, to designing the user interface, and then implementing all of the desired features/requirements, there is a wide range of skills required. This posed a challenge when it was no longer only about implementing features as a programmer, but doing all of the prior creative work as well as worrying about things like user testing afterwards. That said, I really enjoyed being part of the entire process, start to finish. This challenge was a great learning experience while improving my iOS development knowledge