Pu – Page 17 – Appotography

Snapseed Now Free

Nik Software’s Snapseed is currently available for free in the App Store. This special limited time offer will be running until September 23, 2011: if you have not tried Nik’s app yet, this is the best time to download and enjoy it.

Snapseed Free Snapseed combines advanced photographic tools with high functionality and a clean and easy to use interface. As a universal app, Snapseed is fully compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Nik Software has delivered to the App Store a product that clearly show their great competence in the development of digital filters for photographers. Among the features of Nik’s app, selective adjust, high quality customizable filters and borders.

Revamped Instagram 2.0 Hits the App Store

Numbers speak clearly: over 9 million people worldwide are using Instagram to take, process and share their photos. These figures are mind-boggling and they speak better than anything else about the actual popularity of this app. The success of Instagram is explicable with the fact the Burbn’s app succeeded in attracting both photo enthusiast and, at the same time, people that had never considered having fun with a camera before. Instagram was, and still is, a common ground for users with very different expectations and requirements.

I got Instagram on day one of its release: when was it? Last October, I think? It feels ages ago since I snapped the first in-app picture and applied the first filter (I think my very first try was the Lomo-fi) and, although I am far from being a regular user (you will find me as @psychopu there), I always enjoyed checking out every update conjured by the developers at Burbn. Yes, even when there were reasons for complaining.

I never denied there was something in Instagram’s way of dealing with my photography needs that left me a little disappointed. Namely the issue with Instagram’s output resolution. However good the filters (you gotta love the timeless and subdued Earlybird, just to name one), that problem always lurked at the back of my mind when using the app to take photos.

Instagram 2.0.0 was released earlier today and the new version adds a lot to what Instagram already offered. Improvements include: new filters, new editing tools and, most importantly, new save resolution. Here are all the details.

Full resolution save – One of the problems that prevented users from truly enjoying the app was the final resolution of saved photos. Now Instagram delivers filtered photos in high resolution to the device Camera Roll.
Instant live effects – Both filters and tilt-shift can be seen in real time before applying them. As I was testing this new feature today on my iPhone, Instagram live view seemed to work smoothly and I could not find any problem with it.
New filters – Four new filters are an addition that Instagram fans will appreciate greatly. The new filters are Valencia, Amaro, Rise and Hudson. I am adding a preview for all these new effects — definitely better than writing a useless description.
On a perhaps irrelevant note, some of the older filters appear to have undergone significant changes in the new version of Instagram as well.
Turn off borders – Borders and effects can be applied separately, as it’s finally possible to disable borders in photos when a filter is chosen.
Rotate – A rotate tool has been added. Users can now rotate photos by 90 degrees after taking them.
New icon – Instagram 2.0.0 has a new icon — nothing dramatically different from the previous; just a little sleeker, as you can see above.
Other enhancements – Improved viewing feed support; faster feed load times.

Given the improvements in version 2.0, I feel like reviewing our previous score for Instagram. With the added extras, but most of all with the long-awaited high resolution, the app now deserves a full score.

Overall

Name: Instagram
Developer: Burbn, Inc.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 4.2.1 or later.
Price: free!
Vote: 5/5

Pinhole HD Updated to 1.1

Pinhole HD is now version 1.1. Apart from several bug fixes, new features come with the latest release of the successor of Pinhole Camera for iPhone. Here is what’s new in more detail.

New edges effect – The all new blur edges effect was added. Blur edges apply slight blur around the borders of your image, for a more believable analog pinhole look. To make space to the new effect, lens distortion is not available anymore. The blurring option can be enabled by default from the device settings.
Revamped color effects – Saturation in color film effects was changed in version 1.1. Film effects available however are still Color and Expired Color, as in the original release.
Autosave – An autosave to library option was added, allowing to save images automatically to the Camera Roll. Autosave can be enabled from the device settings.
Double exposure preview – It’s now possible to have a live preview of the double exposure effect directly in the app’s viewfinder before taking both photos.
Tap buttons – Before, it was only possible to swipe over buttons to change resolution, enable double exposure and change effects. Now you can either tap or swipe for achieving the same.
New info screen – Tapping on the icon marked with the letter “i”, you access the app information.
Save settings when app starts/ends – Pinhole HD now remembers all the previous settings when you close and open the app again. You don’t have to start over and change settings every time, unless you want to.

Are you looking for more information on this app? Our review of Pinhole HD is here.

TtV Photo Studio Now Free

Taplayer’s TtV Photo Studio is currently free for download in the App Store. This Through the Viewfinder photo app for iPhone was previously available for $0.99/€0.79/£0.69. The offer is valid for a limited time only.

TtV Photo Studio comes as a replacement for it predecessor, TtV Studio Pro. Taplayer greatly improved the previous versions of their Through the Viewfinder camera, making it more usable than before and fully functional. TtV Photo Studio comes with beautiful classic viewfinder styles and basic editing tools, such as black and white and sepia filters, plus opacity, brightness and contrast controls. If you are into the square format and vintage effects appeal to you, then you should consider trying TtV Photo Studio, especially now that it comes for free.

If you want to know more on TtV Photo Studio, which effects it includes and how it works, please read our full review the app here.

EBook Magic 1.5 Update

EBook Magic, the app to create photo books on the iPad, was recently updated. The app offers several template options and tools to create and share photo ebooks. EBook Magic is a good shortcut to help anybody, even total newbies with no previous experience, in the task of assembling a photo book in minutes without having to go through all the hassle of starting everything from scratch.

What’s new in version 1.5? Apart from several improvements and bug fixes (including the bug made the app crash when adjusting text), there are two major additions in the latest version of eBook Magic.

iPad camera support
You can now add photos taken directly with your iPad instead of importing them. Previously, eBook Magic only allowed to use images imported from the device’s albums, which could have been a pain for those users that simply wanted to add photos right away. Given the possibilities offered by iPad 2’s camera, being able to add photos taken in-app makes things much easier in some instances.
EPUB output
EPUB, the open ebook standard that replaced the older OEB (Open EBook), has become a widely popular format for publications over the recent years and thus it is now for many the primary choice. EBook Magic now offers the possibility to save ebooks in this open format and optimizes them for displaying on iOS devices.

EBook Magic is available from the App Store for $3.99/€2.99/£2.49.

iObsessed Gets a New Price

Dan Marcolina’s interactive ebook for iPad has a new lower price. The iObsessed iPad Companion is now $3.99/€2.99/£2.49 in the App Store — it was previously $4.99.

iObsessed iPad Companion Marcolina’s iPad Companion is an expansion to his iPhone Obsessed book, published by Peachpit Press and available here. The original book counts over 150 visual experiments explained, with tips and formulas to recreate their effects. The iPad companion is actually something more than a simple interactive ebook, as it is rich in extra materials, such as the extensive video tutorials and other resources. Like the book, the app comes with detailed analysis of several visual experiments carried out on the iPhone by Marcolina. It also contains a compendium for all the app used in the various experiments and an appendix for iPhone photography add-ons. Given not only the amount of information included, but also the thoroughness and the care with which every example is explained, iObsessed is undoubtedly a first-rate guide to get acquainted with the possibilities offered by the iPhone as a means of expression.

If you want to know more on iObsessed, you can read our feature here.

Noir Photo on Sale!

Red Giant’s Noir Photo gets a price cut for the weekend. The artistic monochrome converter for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is now 66% off the regular price.

Noir Photo on Sale

Noir Photo is designed to achieve beautiful and evocative black and white, sepia and other monochrome effects with no effort. By setting contrast, exposure and vignetting with the help of easy-to-operate controls, Noir will bring dramatic suggestions to your images. The app is universal and thus compatible with all iDevices. Our full review of Noir Photo is available here.

You can currently find Noir at the special price of $0.99/€0.79/£0.69 in the App Store.

Photo Effect Studio Review

Photo Effect Studio for iPhone by Everimaging is a photo editing app which offers users an assortment of editing tools to achieve quick and easy post-processing. A Mac and an iPad version of the app are also available for purchase.

Main Features

Full resolution available;
30+ effects;
Detail, temperature and tint;
Brightness, contrast and saturation;
11 borders;
Flip and rotate;
Split toning and sepia effects;
Autosave on/off;
Send photos via email or share on Facebook and Flickr.

Appotography Opinion

Photo Effect Studio comes with a selection of editing tools for simple fine-tuning of photos both taken in-app or imported from iPhone’s Camera Roll. The Edit Photo section offers brightness, contrast and saturation sliders, plus sliders for detail enhancement, temperature and tint. Every adjustment to these parameters is carried out by moving sliders. Other than these operations, Photo Effect Studio provides its users with simple flip and rotate tools.
Photo Effect Studio iPhone Images thus edited can be processed further by adding to them several photographic filters. All effects available are arranged into four categories: Classic, Lomo, Neon and Monochrome. The grouping of effects to fit them in the various categories seems however a little arbitrary and I still cannot fathom why some of those effects appear twice and why in the Monochrome section there are color filters as well. Countless filter combinations can be applied to photos. As a final touch, before saving, sending with email or sharing on Facebook and Flickr, it’s possible to apply a borders. Borders are mostly black and white items in a variety of styles.
Photo Effect Studio iPhone Photo Effect Studio is an OK app with a few nice effects, but it definitely looks too much like something we have already seen many times. And with many I really mean many. Some of the filters bear an uncanny resemblance — same names too — to those of other best-selling apps, like Instagram and Camera+.

Photo Effect Studio iPhone — Lomo (left) and Inkwell (right) filters.

Is this app acceptable in terms of quality? Yes, although I wouldn’t go as far as considering it truly good. Many elements can be improved and refined, like removing the repeated filters, making the Monochrome category an actual monochrome category instead of including in it all kinds of randomness, making borders more usable and less “cheap”, spicing things up, and so on. Overall, this app is far from unmissable and it leaves the impression of a product put together without many ideas to support it.

Photo Effect Studio for iPhone is currently free in the App Store.

Overall

Name: Photo Effect Studio
Developer: Everimaging Ltd
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 4.0 or later.
Price: £1.49||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 3/5

BoothClub Updated to 1.2

The update to 1.2 of BoothClub brings to Glowing Butterfly’s iPhone photo booth some extra features, like new effects, border colors and self-timer.

The new effects are Lovely Pink and Seraphic White, both added to the Fantasy booth. Without any logical reason, to unlock these effects in the Fantasy booth, which comes for free with the initial download, you have to buy the Memory booth, which is available only as in-app purchase for $0.99. Seraphic white is basically a heavy white vignette, while Lovely Pink applies a hot pink tint on photos.

The new borders are simply plain color frames that are in substance all variations of the same style. Originally, BoothClub only included three borders, while now there are ten colors in all available to choose from (black, white, gray, purple, red, blue, navy, yellow, brown and green).

Finally, the self-timer feature. In version 1.2 it is possible to enable a time interval between shots, to make it easier to take photos more accurately in BoothClub. The timer, with options ranging from 1 to 5 seconds, can be set from the in-app settings.

We have a full review of BoothClub here.

Grungetastic Updated: Now Free!

Following its recent update, Grungetastic is now free in the App Store. JixiPix’s app had already gotten a price cut in occasion of the update to version 2.o.
Grungetastic Free
The update to 2.0, which took place last week, revamped Grungetastic’s UI and added tons of new items, although mainly in the form of in-app purchase. A new update, to version 2.01, took place earlier today to allow users to have more freedom when applying effects and to help them to achieve subtler results. Grungetastic now counts seven themed preset packs and a rich choice of textures, borders and other elements to turn even the cleanest photo into a grungy feast.

You will find more details on the update to 2.0 of Grungetastic here. If you want to know how the app works and what it can do, please read our full review.

The current offer is valid both on the iPhone and iPod Touch version and on the HD version for iPad of Grungetastic.