iPhone App Reviews – Page 15

BlurFX: Simulate DOF on Your iPhone

Simulating depth of field on mobile cameras seems to be for some people an obsession. Anybody knows that at this point you cannot hope to reproduce with camera like the one that comes with the Apple iPhone the same effects of a full-fledged DSLR. Many users though seem to expect similar results from their Apple devices, also thanks to deceptive use by developers of photos obviously not taken with an iPhone in the App Store to promote the marvels of their products. The effects you can obtain with blurring tools can be fairly good, but they’re nowhere close to the kind of thing you can achieve with a DSLR.

Main Features

Full resolution available;
Restore from previous sessions;
Three adjustable blur effects (Motion, Gaussian, Median);
Masking on/off;
Automatic brush resize on/off;
Undo/redo;
Zoom in/out;
Vignetting;
Adjustable saturation, color and brightness;
Colored filters;
Possibility to share via Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Appotography Opinion

What BlurFX promises to do, it does well. This app is a valuable accessory, especially in combination with other apps. BlurFX though will please some and disappoint others. If you are not familiar with other cameras and you expect from BlurFX to imitate the dramatic results obtained with other equipment, you better think twice before purchasing it. BlurFX is nothing more than a good blurring tool, something you could have applied to a picture with a photo editing program on your PC or Mac and now you can apply on the iPhone – or iPod Touch or iPad – too.

BlurFX helps to bring out details of your photos imitating the out of focus effect provided by three different types of blur and several other features – color and brightness adjustment, etc. Using BlurFX proficiently requires a little bit of patience though.

You can use the built-in camera or load a photo from your camera roll; selecting the desired blur and adjusting the various parameters you can obtain very interesting results and improve the look of your photos in just a few minutes. The interface is very clear, but correctly applying or removing the blur from areas of the photo with just the rubbing of your finger can be a little tricky. The zoom feature comes in handy, letting you enlarge portions of the image for greater precision. The undo and redo and the possibility to switch the masking on and off are also very useful additions and the restoring of previous sessions is particularly helpful, as sometimes working on an image can take more than expected and it’s always good to be able to interrupt without the need to save your progress all the time.

Some improvements should be made in the next versions to the zoom and the scroll, both not very refined at the moment, and also to the automatic brush resize: it’s not easy to work with photos that require special attention to smaller details in BlurFX. Being able to adjust the angle of the motion blur would be nice too.

Overall

Name: BlurFX
Developer: Blue Sky Lim
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch. iOS 3.1.3 or later.
Price: £0.59||$0.99||€0.79
Vote: 4/5

PhoneGrafer: Improve Your Camera With a Few Useful Features

iPhone – and now iPod Touch – photographers, especially those that are a little more dedicated to iPhone photography than the casual camera users, know the limitations and deficiencies not only of some apps but of the default Apple camera. A lot of people make up for these deficiencies downloading many different apps to perform many different tasks. Sometimes you have to use up to four or five apps just to take a straight picture of yourself and apply a couple of filters on it. There are some apps in the App Store though that cleverly try to bypass the limitations and effectively help the users, combining together various features. PhoneGrafer is one of these apps.

Features

Full resolution available;
Nine filters to choose from: B&W, B&W Extreme, Russian, Antique, Sepia, Cyano, ColorCast-C, ColorCast-M, ColorCast-Y;
Vignetting and filter on/off;
Sharpen/soften (only when reviewing pictures);
4x digital zoom;
Self-timer;
Leveler;
Access to EXIF data;
Google maps access by GPS tags (when available);
Possibility to share the photos via Twitter and Flickr.

Appotography Opinion

PhoneGrafer is a multi-purpose app that will please many for its ease of use and for the many features. It is not only a collection of filters nor it is a self-timer camera or an EXIF data reader: PhoneGrafer is a little of each all rolled into one. PhoneGrafer is definitely a good replacement for the default camera, especially if you are looking for a bit of everything without too many complications. The interface of this app is at the same time slick and simple. Whether you decide to take a photo or you want to edit some saved in your camera roll, with just a few easy steps you’re done.

PhoneGrafer iPhone

The access to pictures’ meta data is particularly useful, especially considering other apps with this same function are on average not that great. Access to Google Maps by GPS tags, when they are available, is another of PhoneGrafer’s features.

PhoneGrafer iPhone

The small collection of filters is good enough for people with very basic editing needs; the possibility to adjust the settings to make filters more or less intense and to add a vignetting gives the user more freedom in spite of the actual number of available effects.

PhoneGrafer iPhone

Here is an example of the various filters with vignetting on applied to a simple photo with PhoneGrafer:

PhoneGrafer is definitely a must-have for those who want to use just a single app to accomplish many tasks. Hopefully, current issues with the iPod Touch 4G will be solved in the next future, so iPod users will be able to enjoy PhoneGrafer as well.

Overall

Name: PhoneGrafer
Developer: emotionale
Compatibility: iPhone. iOS 3.1 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 5/5

Manga Me: Your Photo Turns Into a Comic Illustration

I’m always suspicious of apps that apply cartoonish filters to photos. In general, I don’t like the synthetically cheesy look most of these apps deliver. I will be honest – and perhaps biased – but I find most comics filters to be the closest artificial thing to motion sickness inducers, ships and cars excluded. Then why I wanted to give a try to Manga Me, you’ll ask? For three reasons: because of the word “manga” in the title, which still retains a bit of attractive sophistication compared to the word “comics”; because the screenshots didn’t make me immediately nauseous; because the developer is no less than the Chinese University of Hong Kong. And… I also like to have five minutes of idiocy once in a while.

Main Features

Maximum resolution 320 x 460 pixels;
Two different editing modes (portrait and landscape);
Three different effects.

Appotography Opinion

Manga Me wants to help artists in the production of comics with automatically generated illustrations. My dear artists, if you need this kind of help I am sorry to say you have touched the bottom. Even if it were only for a quick reference, the results obtained with Manga Me are nothing a professional should too seriously take into account.

Manga Me iPhone

It’s not that the effects applied by Manga Me are so terrible, especially on more organic shapes where aliasing is less visible and especially if compared to other similar filters available, but it is immediately noticeable that they are not natural and that they are result of a mediocre automated process. Besides, there are many issues to fix in Manga Me before it can become functional in any way. First of all, even if the final result isn’t so atrociously bad, the output resolution makes up for it: the ridiculous 320 x 460 speaks for itself about the actual use one can make of the final images. Also, both if you choose landscape or portrait mode, the images are generated upwise. It doesn’t make any sense to have two different modes if the result is in any case an upwise picture, of course. The developers should fix this inconvenience as soon as possible. You can adjust black/white level, but obviously the clearest images are those granting better results.

Since the app is free, one can try it for having five minutes of fun, but that’s all. If you want to use this app for other purposes, as an aid for your comic art for instance, you better think about it twice.

Manga Me works both with the built-in camera and with previously taken photos.

Overall

Name: Manga Me
Developer: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Computer Science & Engineering
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 3.1.3 or later.
Price: free!
Vote: 2/5

Moco Cam Pro: You Don’t Want This App on Your iPhone!

Some developers think whatever they manage to sell to their audience is ok; quality doesn’t really matter. After all, buyers are inclinned to buy everything if you make the package look alright. I’m not saying all these developers do it in bad faith… Trying to sell apps that seem ok on the outside but are in fact rather hastily put together, that is. Abraham Vivas was either extremely pleased with his app, to the point he didn’t care about improving it to make it actually functional and useful, or he was just lazy. I’m not sure which is the answer. Anyway, his Moco Cam Pro is definitely one of the apps that you don’t want on your Apple device.

Main Features

Up to a 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution;
Twelve filters available.

Appotography Opinion

Moco Cam pro is a truly worthless app that you don’t want to buy. No, you don’t. For its price anyway, I’d call it a theft at the expenses of the buyer. First of all, I find it very annoying when apps, especially paid apps, have such poor and misleading descriptions in the App Store. All the information the developer of this app offers is outrageously laconic and not in the least informative. Also, the developer didn’t take time to develop the app properly. You have five lousy filters you can choose from that you can either use on photos stored in the camera roll – and you have no preview or anything to see what’s going on and how your photo is going to be affected, but you have to go and look at the result in the camera roll itself! – or you can apply to photos taken on the spot.

The filters are abominable: not only the output quality is terribly low, but they are frankly ugly to look at. Not at all the vintage effect you should expect, but a messy blur with a colored vignetting and a hint of grungy spots here and there. If you don’t believe me, look at these pictures edited with Moco Cam Pro:

Moco Cam Pro iPhone

There are obvious perfomance issues as well, for even the simple action of scrolling the camera roll is painfully slow in comparison with other apps.

Even if it were free, I would tell you to stay away from this app at all costs! Please, do yourself a favor and don’t waste your money on this!

Overall

Name: Moco Cam Pro
Developer: Abraham Vivas
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch. iOS 3.1.3 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 1/5

Plastic Bullet: Turn Your Photos Into Dreamy Images

What a lot of users love about toy cameras resides in the unforseen quality of the results one can accomplish with them. Some people love the unexpected, what is impossible to reproduce just with mastery of the technique. All the fancy leaks and crazy color shifts, the blurry and somewhat cheap looks: those are some of the effects toy cameras are so good at achieving and iPhone users love to be able to reproduce these days with the various applications the App Store has to offer.

Plastic Bullet by Red Giant Software promises to bring the unexpected variety of toy cameras to your Apple device. Does it live up to the promise?

Main Features

Full resolution available;
Great assortment of final effects;
Possibility to share the photos on Facebook and Flickr.

Appotography Opinion

With Plastic Bullet you can either take a photo with the built-in camera or load a previously taken photo from the camera roll. Making it work is very simple and doesn’t require any effort to get used to. You are presented with four thumbnails representing four random final results: if you like any of them you choose and save it; if you don’t you press the refresh button until you have something that pleases you. The easiness and immediacy of use are two of the strongest points of this app and something that has to be taken into account. The results, although actually not greatly different the one from the other in most cases, grant enough choice to the user .

These are examples of what you can achieve using Plastic Bullet to edit your photos:

Plastic Bullet is a very nice addition to the family of toy cameras available in the App Store. With just a couple of taps you can truly turn your photos into something different and pleasing to the eye.

Overall

Name: Plastic Bullet
Developer: Red Giant
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 3.0 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 4/5

ClassicINSTA: when a stylish app doesn’t equal to a stylish collection of filters

Some developers achieve good results with one or two projects, but then they start developing a lot more apps and the quality and originality of what they have to offer sometimes is lowered.

ClassicINSTA brings nothing new to iPhone photographers. To be honest, it’s very difficult at this point to bring a breath of fresh air in the overcrowded field of iPhone instant photography. But seriously, unless you come up with some very peculiar idea, it’s hard to compete.

Main Features

Up to a resolution of 1536 x 1536 pixels;
Ten different cartridge types;
Three different camera designs (classic, modern, pink);
Two photographic borders;
Vibration on/off;
Possibility to add date or customized text to the photos.

Appotography Opinion

It’s definitely not worth the time and the money of users with already many apps to choose from to purchase the umpteenth collection of so-so filters, which is exactly what ClassicINSTA is right now. Even for those having to pick one app to simulate the instant camera effect, this is definitely not the best available choice. Despite the effort to spice things up adding three interchangeable skins, ClassicINSTA remains, compared to other instant photography apps, quite average. The cartridge filters aren’t anything particularly memorable; some of them are quite insubstantial, like ColorShock or Rainbow; a few of them don’t really look very different the one from the other. It would have been more sensible to have less filters, like just five or six, and work more on them.

ClassicINSTA iPhone

Here are examples of shots taken with the various cartridges included in ClassicINSTA:

ClassicINSTA works both with the built-in camera and with photos stored in the camera roll.

Overall

Name: ClassicINSTA
Developer: misskiwi
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch. iOS 3.1 or later.
Price: £0.59||$0.99||€0.79
Vote: 3/5

Pinhole Camera Review

A pinhole camera, for those who don’t know, is simply a camera consisting of a light-tight box with a small aperture in one end and film or other photographic support loaded at the other end. Very often these cameras are handmade, but there are also quite a few commercial pinholes around.

The notion of pinhole camera has been known for ages. The first rudimentary examples of pinholes date back to 4th century BC, and as a matter of fact ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers had written about them. However, the modern pinhole camera as we commonly know it is a lot more recent. It is believed the first photography with a pinhole camera was taken by Scottish inventor and scientist David Brewster in 1850. Since then pinhole cameras have become very popular especially among smaller groups of enthusiasts.

Doesn’t trying to imitate a pinhole camera on a mobile phone device totally defy its original purpose? Maybe it does, but we’re not going to start a debate about digital vs analog here. But does the app under consideration at least achieves what it was developed for?

Main Features

Up to a resolution of 640 x 640 pixels;
Double exposure on/off;
Three different films (color, expired color, b&w);
Flash on/off (iPhone 4 only);
Possibility to share the photos via Facebook or email.

Appotography Opinion

If we were to give an opinion only on the external aspect, Pinhole Camera would be rated much higher. The interface, at the same time very simple and easy to get used to, and the look of this app, with its cute low-fi allure, are both elements we liked. However, a photographic app must provide something more than cuteness. The shots taken with Pinhole camera, both with the double exposure turned on and off are quite neat; the available filters, although very basic, cover a small spectrum of possibilities nicely enough. What is really upsetting is the maximum available resolution of the photos taken with this app: a very modest 640 x 640 pixels. Definitely a little too small, especially for a paid app.

Pinhole Camera iPhone

A few examples of double exposures obtained with Pinhole Camera:

Pinhole Camera only works with the built-in camera, not with photos previously taken and stored in the camera roll.

Overall

Name: Pinhole Camera
Developer: iA
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch. iOS 3.1.2 or later.
Price: £0.59||$0.99||€0.79
Vote: 3/5

Instagram Review

Not everybody who has an iPhone is necessarily looking for apps that are mainly oriented in photo editing. Some people mostly like to take snapshots as a way to keep in touch with friends, family and acquaintances, letting them experience moments of their lives with them.

Instagram was especially conceived for those who, willing to share their photos with others, want at the same time to add to their pictures that irresistible analog flavor that only instant cameras in the old days could deliver.

Main Features

Maximum resolution 612 x 612 pixels;
15+ filters available;
Square format;
Possibility to share the photos via Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Appotography Opinion

Instagram works both with built-in camera and with camera roll. This app will very likely please users whose main interest is sharing snapshots with their friends. For those willing to use it simply for photography purposes, the app will be kind of disappointing though. The filters are very limited in number and in possibility of customization; however, their quality is more than decent in the imitation of real analog instant cameras.

Improvement is absolutely necessary regarding the images resolution – now merely up to a ridiculous 612 x 612 pixels! More than a few times the app crashed when we were trying to take a picture; refresh of user’s data is another issue we noticed. Browsing through the photos uploaded to the Instagram community isn’t very easy; the latest photos should be emphasized, not only the most popular; some kind of moderation should be applied to the uploaded photos, as many users end uploading photos that are not their own or snapshots of copyrighted material just to get comments and faves to end in the popular selection. This is not only completely wrong, but it also defies the purpose of the Instagram community.

Instagram is fully integrated with popular social networking services as Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Tumblr but the user can also share the pictures on the dedicated community created and managed by the app developers. The app is optimized for photo sharing: once it’s been correctly configured, it really takes nothing to share the pictures through the featured services. Registration is required in order to use the Instagram.

Anyway, the app is totally free: if you are curious why don’t you try it yourself?

Instagram iPhone

Name: Instagram
Developer: Burbn, Inc.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 3.1.2 or later.
Price: free!
Vote: 3/5

Infinicam: Time To Randomize Your Camera!

We know about Nevercenter thanks to their CameraBag app. We are now presented with a new photo app whose potential goes far beyond that of CameraBag. However, Infinicam is not an enhanced version of CameraBag. Like its predecessor, it features filters imitating analog cameras and films, but the way the filters are generated is totally different.

Main Features

Full resolution available;
18 film-style borders;
Wide range of photographic filters;
Possibility to save preferred the automatically generated styles;
Cropping tool;
Camera history;
iOS retina-display support;
Possibility to share styles with friends.

Appotography Opinion

As the name implies, Infinicam offers the user an endless series of combinations to edit photos, previously taken or on the spot. Tapping on the “Press for new camera” button, a new style is instantly generated through complex algorithms. Each style is identified with a seven digits code which can be saved for further use or manually entered when needed. The filters are neat and some of them truly deliver the feel of shots by analog cameras. Endless effects, I said: is it really true? Well, the variety of automatically generated effects is impressive, but most of the styles look very similar. Also, we are not great fans of borders with credits and apps names stamped all over them, as they make the edited photos more like something obtained using a free app. From a paid app, this is not very “stylish”.

Here are some examples of what you can achieve:

Infinicam iPhone

Unless you create a huge library of previously used and faved filters – or acquire them in exchanges with other users or through download – you won’t have great freedom of choice and customization. For those who are more focused in obtaining extremely predictable results, Infinicam is definitely not the right choice. Infinicam will mainly please perhaps those who have already tried many other apps and are looking for something different, or those who are fans of the unexpected results that can be obtained through apps allowing a great degree of randomization.

Overall

Name: Infinicam
Developer: Nevercenter Ltd. Co.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. iOS 2.0 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 4/5

VintageScene Review

To this moment, there aren’t great apps around allowing you to add layers to transform your pictures into something different and more complex. I have seen many iPhone users resorting to Photoshop — not the app, the actual PS — to beautify photos they had taken on the iPhone.

VintageScene will not ultimately turn your photo into a genuinely looking old photo, as the developer’s slogan says, but it will add some functionality that to this moment is still not fully developed by other iPhone apps.

Main Features

Full resolution available;
16 default presets;
63 different textures available;
Possibility to save custom presets;
Possibility to share the photos via email.

Appotography Opinion

VintageScene is a good addition for those looking to add predetermined effects to their photos, with just a little possibility of adjustment. You can play around with just a few parameters, like intensity of texture vs intensity of photo, vignetting, and so on. The available textures grant a certain degree of variety, but are sort of repetitive when added to more photos. It would have been more useful, though this is not the VintageScene app’s intent, to have the chance to add your own textures to the ones in the app’s library. As I said, to this moment there are no decent apps to effectively add layer styles and to make use of multiple exposures on the iPhone. They all have some sort of deficiency. For this reason, VintageScene has kind of limited range of action, but it’s still good if you are using it, for example, with other apps that let you adjust more photo editing parameters. The hi-res rendering is also very slow.

Here are some of the default presets applied to the same picture:

VintageScene iPhone

VintageScene works both with camera roll and with photos taken directly with the built-in camera.

Overall

Name: VintageScene
Developer: JixiPix Software
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod Touch. iOS 4.0 or later.
Price: £1.19||$1.99||€1.59
Vote: 4/5