Decim8 is a modernist photo app that pixelizes, distorts, saturates, inverts your images. In short, it decimates them. The effects are unpredictable and surprising. The effects are a cross between a mosaic, pixelization and opening a corrupt JPG file in Photoshop. Sometimes they don’t work. Often, the results are stunning.

Among the issues with the previous versions of the app were its instability and a lack of support for importing pics from your photo library. It’s been long in coming, but in the new 1.2 update, both of these issues have been fixed.

Here’s what’s new in version 1.2:

• Super-ultra-mega stability update. All known crashes fixed! Program is ROCK SOLID!

• Can now process images from Photo Library

• Fixed all memory management, every effect tested to run hundreds of times

The app is definitely more stable than in previous versions. I output a couple dozen images and it didn’t crash – a pretty amazing feat given the amount of pixel destruction going on under the hood. Just to help you with memory manglement management, there’s a new low-memory indicator in the viewfinder that turns red when the app thinks you’re a little short of free RAM (that’s the little red box in the lower right of the viewfinder — see above). When it’s on, quit the app or reboot your phone. Quite honestly, I didn’t have any problems with Decim8 on my iPhone 4, even though the low memory indicator was on.

You can now load images from your Photo Library, but you can’t randomly apply effects or change the effects applied. Importing an image only applies the current effects setting.

One more change that isn’t documented — the Quality/Image Size slider is now gone. It looks like the app only outputs at your device’s full resolution. Slower, but apparently more stable.

There are no new filters or effects in this update.

Decim8 does some wonderfully destructive things to your photos. This update is a huge improvement.

Decim8 is $0.99 in the App Store and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.

Decim8

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