I know that this may sound incredible, but hey! SwankoLab is back. The creators of SwankoLab have finally decided to lend their ears to the hordes of disappointed buyers of their once promising app that more than a few of us had believed lost in oblivion.
The update came earlier this week. It turns out that not only the app got the long-awaited update, but a few features were also added to it—if you don’t believe me, you can check for yourself.
Here is what you will find in version 1.3 of SwankoLab.
- Preview Mode
The newly introduced preview mode allows to visualize effects before actually applying them. When you add a chemical to SwankoLab’s developing tray, you immediately see from the thumbnail how it will affect the final picture. It’s also possible to have a preview without even adding the chemical to the tray by tapping and holding on the chemical’s bottle.
- 4 New Chemicals
Haze Sauce: to create blur around the photo’s edges.
Queen’s Vignette: black vignette to darken the edges of the images.
Rockin Robin’s Color Booster: color enhancer to bring out the vibrant tones in the pictures.
Instant texture Mix Kit: to add digital grain.
All the new chemicals are right now available in one version only, but more are coming soon. - It’s now possible to take photos from within the app. Previously, SwankoLab only allowed to alter images from the Camera Roll.
- Facebook sharing bugs were also fixed and part of the design was revamped.
Instant Texture Mix Kit and Queen's Vignette (left), Rockin Robin's Color Booster and Haze Sauce (right)
We welcome very much the update and we are happy that SwankoLab is back among the living, but the impression is that what once looked like an innovative app is now, overall, somewhat outdated. The effects are still nice, but after a while the options you are given seem a bit limited. The rendering times are also quite slow, even on iPhone 4S. Even though we appreciate that Uncle Stu didn’t run away with our money and that he eventually decided to care for his subscribers, we still feel he could have done more and we expected his comeback to be slightly more memorable.
Anyway, it’s clear that the developers have the intention to add new features in a not-so-distant future. We’ll be looking forward to it.
Too little, too late (Stu, aptly named, is half-stupid). The world has moved on way forward since he’s last checked.
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