Review: Pic Grunger 3.0 – Awesome Digital Lo-fi
Pic Grunger screenshots. Click to enlarge
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Pic Grunger
Version 3.0
Price: $0.99
Bottom Line: Pic Grunger creates stunning lo-fi effects in high resolution. Highly recommended! An essential app if you like the look of grunge photography.
With the new, improved cameras in the iPhone 4 and 3GS, more and more the onus is now on developers to “dirty up” our images to give iPhonegraphy a digital lo-fi look. Pic Grunger by Stephen Spring has always been one of those apps and excelled at grunging up photos on the iPhone. The latest update brings new features and more importantly full-resolution output. Pic Grunger creates stunning lo-fi effects and now it supports the higher resolutions of the newer iPhones.
Pic Grunger is pure digital lo-fi. It takes an image, dirties it up, and makes it look like it’s been stuffed in your pocket and then left on the seat of your car — and does it beautifully and flawlessly. Pic Grunger is beyond toy camera lo-fi. Pic Grunger is in the same class as Lo-Mob — apps that make photos look used up, stressed and gritty.
Pic Grunger is incredibly easy to use, but now offers a lot of variation in its effects. It has 11 preset grunge effects, such as Aged, Cracked, Creased and Weathered. One of six styles can easily be applied to all of the effects, changing color and saturation. With the new 3.0 update, the effect strength can now be adjusted. A plain border can be toggled off and on.
The filters create beautiful, grungy, worn results — among the best grunge effects available for iPhone. Every filter applies a perfect amount of saturation, color shift, grain and weathering to make photos look genuinely old. The blotch, crack and crease effects are seamlessly integrated with the image. There are no gaps, white spaces or pixelization. The filters are flawless.
With the version 3.0 update, Pic Grunger now supports full 5MP resolution on the iPhone 4 and full 3.2MP resolution on the 3GS. 800x600px is the maximum resolution supported on older iPhones. It works great on an iPhone 4 — it is fast and stable.
Pic Grunger has always produced great looking effects. With its support for high resolution, this is an essential app for anyone who likes the look of grunge photography and its low price makes it a great deal for any iPhoneographer to have in their toolbox to add the perfect amount of grit, and stunning lo-fi effects to their photos.
App Store link: Pic Grunger
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Marty is a self-employed graphic designer in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex. He is an avid Rangers baseball, Chicago Cubs, Packers and Highbury Arsenal fan. In addition to capturing random moments with whatever camera is close by (usually his iPhone), his other interests include coffee, film, music, and traveling in seats 5E and 5F with his fiancé.
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You know, every time you review a new app, I can hear the 'ker-ching' noise. You're making me part with too much money!
Great review as always
I agree. When you review an app, it definitely increases the odds that I'll consider buying it. I wish this particular review had some before/after pics because, while it's neat to read what the app can do, since this is a photography website, it's more important to see what the app can do – especially in the hands of a real person.
Cheers!
This is a great app. I had bought it a few months ago and used it very little due to each effect was the same. Now with the adjustment to the grunge fx it makes this app much more usable.
Go0od point and great idea! Thanks, Rob!
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I hate you! (just kidding). Every time you review an app I have to buy it. Thank you for your hard work.
Andy, Rob, Catherine,
Sorry about that! But Pic Grunger is definitely worth buying now!
I'll try to review and pan a few lousy apps for a while…
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I bought BlurFX and hate it. I had been thinking about it for awhile anyhow but your review pushed me to purchase. Pic Grunger on the other hand is excellent! As far as I can tell the res support for iPhone 3G is 1000×1000 not 600×800. There was an update awhile back that pushed up the res. I believe it still works like that. Just FYI. I'll run a couple couple more tests and get back to you if this is not the case.
1600×1200 shrinks down to 1000×750 on iPhone 3G.
Hey, you're giving away a copy of App Grunger? I follow on facebook and I'd love one! Am I in?
Unfortunately I have problems with pic grunger in last couple of days. I have an iPhone 3GS. When I started to use pic grunger, it saved the photos with 1536×2048 resolution. However now it saves photos with 600×800 when high resolution is on, and with 360×480 when high resolution is off. All the original shots are in 1536×2048 resolution. Does anybody experienced similar issue?
Just an update. Resolution problem occurred after upgrading to pic granger 3.1. After reinstalling version 3.0 the issue disappeared, resolution is fine again.
Robert,
Thanks for that update! It's a problem with 3.1 and iPhone 4 as well. Resolution is 800×600 with hi-res on. I've contacted The developer and will post news as soon as I find out when a fix has been submitted.
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nice!