BeFunky Photo Editor Pro
Version 1.0
Price: $1.99
Bottom Line: Not a bad photo filter app, but doesn’t support full resolution and the looks of some of the filters don’t match the devices they are supposed to recreate.
Last year in March, I reviewed an app called BeFunky FX, by BeFunky the website of the same name. It created good-looking effects, but was hampered by very low resolution output and the need to be connected to the Internet to upload images to BeFunky’s servers for processing.
The original app is no longer available. BeFunky have released in its place BeFunky Photo Editor Pro. It’s a much better app and it’s where the original app should’ve started. It’s a good, one-click processing app, but this version still has a few issues which keep it from being an excellent iPhone photo app.
BeFunky Pro is a huge improvement over the original app. All image processing is handled on the device now. The app now supports several output resolutions, including high-resolution output.
BeFunky Pro features a basic image editor where you can do basic tweaks such as adjust color saturation, brightness and contrast, sharpen, rotate, and crop. They’re basic tools but can do most tweaks without the need for processing the image in another app.
There’s a much wider variety of filters and effects in this version of the app. Separately, there’s also a good assortment of frames that you can apply.
The app uses texture overlays, vignettes and color shifts to create its effects. Overall, effects are well-rendered and the effects themselves look good. They are mostly vintage, toy camera effects and grunge effects. There are a few outstanding, cool-looking effects in the line-up. Each filter is adjustable in intensity from 0 to 100% — a great tool for softening some of these effects which tend to run a little heavy.
I found the effects to be oddly named for what they were supposed to represent. For instance, the Lomo effects are bizarrely-colored with unnatural yellow or red tints. The Holga effects looks little like a toy camera and more like a misaligned color transfer. I see where they were trying to go there — misaligned film advance. The filter doesn’t really achieve this effect. The Instant Camera effect has overall yellow or red discolorations and looks more like a bad cross process effect that an instant camera print. It’s almost like they’re named after toy camera effects because it’s cool and that’s what users expect, but with little regard to the accuracy of the effects themselves. It’s frustrating to me. They look good, but I’d like these effects a whole lot more if they were named something else or if they at least look like the toy camera effects that they claim to re-create.
On the other hand, there are several black & white filters that look great, including a killer pinhole filter that I like a lot.
There’s a wide range of frames ranging from classic styles to stressed film borders. There’s a big variety there — something for everybody in the frame selection tastefully without relying too much on “cute” frames.
BeFunky Photo Editor Pro is one of the slower processing apps filter effects apps available. The app takes a relatively long time to think as it processes affects. While this version supports high resolution on an iPhone 4, 1920×1434 pixels, it doesn’t support full 5 MP resolution on an iPhone 4. Other apps do more and don’t break a sweat when processing large images.
BeFunky Photo Editor Pro is a definite improvement over the original app. It’ll do a good job of adding good-looking effects to your photographs to share with family and friends. But there’s nothing here that isn’t done better or faster in other apps. For instance, the excellent FX Photo Studio by MacPhun has a similar feature set, has more filters and frames and is comparably priced.
BeFunky Photo Editor Pro is a good, one-click processing effects app that is great for adding a good-looking, fairly quick effect to photos before sending them out. While it’s a significant improvement over the previous version, BeFunky Photo Editor Pro is still a toy.
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 4, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, and iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
=M=
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