With Instagram and other apps that recreate a faux-LOMO experience, it’s easy to forget that many of the classic early iPhoneography apps did an excellent job of recreating the looks of other film cameras.
One of the best at recreating the look and texture of actual film stocks is RetroCamera. The app typically goes a while between updates, but it’s that time again. RetroCamera is also on sale now for only $0.99 — That’s a savings of $1.00 off its regular price. This classic app is a quirky but good one to revisit.
I’ve previously reviewed RetroCamera here; my previous review is for the 2.0 update. This is not the same Retro Camera as Urbian’s popular analog-style Android app (Retro Camera Plus on iPhone).
RetroCamera lets you add authentic-looking recreations of several types of film stocks in over 160 combinations that can further be combined, altered and tweaked. At its core are 21 film stock recreations of Fuji, Kodak and other photographic stocks. The raw stocks are authentically done here with accurate color and tonal qualities. These filters make your images look like they were developed in a lab. Many of these are standard, everyday film stocks, not the Lomography looks found in many retro apps.
RetroCamera has other tools as well which set it apart from most of the other analog film recreation apps, including excellent noise, dust, and scratch filters, a good vignette tool and a versatile, highly configurable bokeh tool. It’s got a great selection of authentic-looking “distressed” frames. There are plenty of presets as well and it’s easy to make and create your own. It’s got one of the most comprehensive packages for making digital images look authentically analog.
RetroCamera supports a number of image sizes all the way up to the high resolution 3210×2400 pixels. It also preserves a ton of EXIF data, including Geotags.
The app is still not without its quirks. Most of them have not been fixed since my version 2.0 review. The app still doesn’t play too nice with square format images. Loading a square image into the app cuts off the sides of the image.
The app defaults to vertical processing, whether your source image is wide or tall, rotating it automatically. You have the option of importing a wide image into the app without rotating, but the app will add black matte bars to the top and bottom of the image.
TIP: Turn off the “Specify the layout of loading picture” option. Portrait or landscape, let the app process the image vertically so it fills the screen. RetroCamera gives you the option of rotating the image tall or wide when you save or share it. You can safely and easily correct the image orientation on output if needed.
There’s also an annoying message I kept getting about activating the position service, even though the app has access to Location Services. I just click past the alert and everything seems to be okay.
The new update has bug fixes, but not all of them. It has new features. Most of them are new sharing features, including Tumblr and mail. The app now supports PhotoAppLink which lets you send the image directly to other apps, bypassing the camera roll. I could not find the new Print function.
Despite its bugs, RetroCamera does what it does very well. There’s only one other app available that does a better job of recreating old film stocks and that’s FILM LAB which is also by the same developer. FILM LAB is a film simulation application program with 79 different film stocks. RetroCamera got the tools, FILM LAB got the stocks. Both apps get the look of film down pretty close. For me, they’re both worth working around the bugs to get the looks that these two apps provide.
RetroCamera is on sale now for only $0.99 — that’s a dollar off the regular price of $1.99 and the discount may make the app’s quirks a litte easier to overlook. This sale is for a limited time only.
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. This new update requires iOS 5.1 or later.
Check out the gallery of RetroCamera images below.
If you like this app, please share this post on Facebook and Twitter so that other iPhoneographers can take advantage of this sale, too. Hey, a buck’s a buck. Thanks!
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