From the same developer of Cameramatic, Monochromia is an app focused on recreating photographic black and white effects on the iPhone.
Main Features
- Full resolution available;
- 15+ presets;
- Adjust brightness and contrast;
- Adjust vignette;
- Add grain;
- Send with email or share on Facebook and Twitter.
Appotography Opinion
Monochromia allows both taking pictures with the built-in camera and processing photos already stored in your device. Differently than in Cameramatic, you can choose to disable the square format restriction and therefore you can edit and save your photos in their original shape and size.
Once you load the photo into the working area, you can open the presets menu and choose one of the ready-to-use filters that come with the app. The selection is good enough, covering a range of possibilities between basic black and white to high contrast monochrome, passing through old photo effects like sepia and silver tone. The available presets, however, don’t cover everything. It’s here that the Develop feature comes in handy.
It’s possible to access the Develop area by tapping on the monkey wrench icon. Develop in Monochromia is very similar to Filter Development in Cameramatic: by playing with parameters, you can create your own monochrome filter. You can set brightness and contrast, add a tint and determine vignetting, opacity and width. When the editing is complete, you can save, email or share on Facebook and Twitter.
Black & White and Retro Chrome presets.
The lack of a channel mixer is probably the hardest thing to digest in Monochromia. Not that many other monochrome converters in the App Store have it, to be honest. However, a lot of other photo editing apps have recently started adding this and other sophisticated tools, making users question the actual usefulness of the average monochrome converter available in the App Store. Given the similarities with Cameramatic, Monochromia feels like a themed light version of its toy cam sibling. Not so “light” though: the price tag is exactly the same as Cameramatic. In theory, Cameramatic is less specialized, yet it’s by far more flexible, if you except the square format restriction: because of additional features, mainly, and because it is basically capable of doing the exact same things that Monochromia does.
Given these considerations, Cameramatic users will thus regard Monochromia as a clone only limited to monochrome photography of the better-known iPhone toy camera by the same developer. These users will not find any special use for Monochromia. Still, youthhr’s monochrome app is able to convert photos to black and white quickly and it allows fair customization. Achievable effects are definitely above the average black and white. Monochromia is perhaps not a must-have. Still, especially to non-Cameramatic users, it can be worth a try.
Overall
Name: Monochromia
Developer: youthhr
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch , iPad. iOS 4.1 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 4/5
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