Effexy, Motion Lite

It’s been a great couple of weeks for new photo apps. One of the more interesting ones is a new photo effects app appropriately titled Effexy. It has a number of cool and interesting effects and a unique way of applying them. It’ll be interesting to watch this app develop.

I’ve got more after the jump. >>>

Effexy is not another faux-retro app. In addition to a basic image editing toolset — color, brightness, sharpen and crop — the app lets you create some great looking effects not found in many other photo apps.

The interface is lean and easy to figure out. Effects and tools are neatly organized into well-labeled folders. Each effect is clearly named. There are no obscure “Aubrey”, “Windsong,” or “the cookies rise in the oven” effects names. The app has a link to a demo video that’s worth watching to give you a head start on the features of the app.

The real meat & potatoes of Effexy are the effects. In the apps Effex category is where the the fun is. Most of the effects here are applied by painting or pinching. Here are a few of the outstanding ones.

The selection of zoom and blur effects is very cool. By pinching out from your focal point, these tools let you add a variety of blur effects to an image. Effects can be dragged around until you find the look you like. This often yields striking results — it’s a pretty aggressive zoom blur. Unfortunately, when it doesn’t work with an image, there’s no way to alter the intensity of these effects.

There are also several “Lite” blurs that I like a lot. Rather than smooth transitions, these blur in steps and can be used to create a more modern-looking effect.

The Liquify and Melt “Effex” are of the Kai’s Goo variety. Both were fast and responsive and may replace one or two other apps on your device.

Two of the Texture effects are worth noting as well. Thee effects are adjustable in size or intensity. I love the Dots effect. It’s essentially breaking down your image into a regular pattern of basic dots. It’s similar to the effects created by Part, but more uniform. The Kuwahara filter effect is difficult to see on the small screen of an iPhone, but it adds a very nice painterly abstract effect to an image. It should look great on an iPad.

All effects can easily be stacked on top of each other, which gives you more creative freedom while reducing camera roll clutter.

Not all of the effects are hits. There are much better Halftone effects available in the App Store. The Handshake effect is pretty hideous.

The complement of effects lacks a cohesive theme and the groups of effects seem all over the place. While the Effex tab is really nicely fleshed out, other effects feel like they were just tacked on for quantity.

Effexy supports full 8 MP native resolution of the iPhone 5 and 4S. Larger files take noticeably longer to process. The app strips out most EXIF data including Geotags.

Still, Effexy is a compelling grab bag of effects and image editing tools. Several of the effects are simply outstanding. Others are more subtle while a couple of them are of the WTH? variety. Overall, there’s more than enough here to make it worth a look at a buck or two.

Effexy is $1.99 in the App Store. This is a Universal app designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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Have you had a chance to try Effexy yet? Let us know what you think in the comments below….

Effexy, Dots

Effexy, Kuwahara effect

Effexy, Zoom Blur

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"Photo App Focus: Effexy." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Digital Negative
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Bottom Line: Digital Negative has too many problems, bugs and lack of pro features to be considered for any serious use right now.

Having RAW format has been the Holy Grail of iPhoneographers for years. New photo app Digital Negative promises us with a flavor of digital RAW, but stumbles very badly in its initial release, to the point where it’s unusable as a camera for shooting high-quality photos in the iPhone.

I spent some hands-on time with this app over the past couple of days. Keep reading my review of this promising, but very disappointing camera app. >>>

This new photo app is getting a lot of attention because of the potential advanced capabilities it brings to the iPhone camera.

Digital Negative is the first iPhone camera app that captures uncompressed images that retain all of the information recorded by the camera sensor. That’s really cool! These Digital Negative (DNG) pictures are much like the negatives from a film camera, and the serious photographer can use standard RAW editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop for Desktop, or Digital Negative’s built-in raw editing tools to develop the photograph and display all of the features in the image.

Digital Negative saves to its own lightbox as DNG files. These files are similar to RAW files, but differ in a few key ways. According to the app’s manual, Linear DNG, unlike most raw image formats, contains data arranged in a rectilinear R-G-B format. This data has already been demosaiced, but can be edited by all popular raw image editing software such as Adobe Lightroom. You can read more about DNG and RAW files here.

Both formats preserve the settings of the image as shot, including Exposure, Gamma, Contrast, Vibrance, Saturation, etc. You can edit and reedit these settings in the app’s lightbox or tweak the settings when you import images on the desktop in Photoshop. It’s control over an image that serious iPhoneographers have been wanting for years.

It’s a great, high-end workflow that in theory should give you visibly better raw images to work with outside of the iPhone — images with greater color, better exposure and less noise and compression artifacts.

Problem is, there’s way too much wrong with the app, and many of its mission critical tools are flat-out broken in this release.

Digital negative functions as a very basic camera. It’s got some of the features of an advanced camera, but is missing some of the most basic ones like separate Focus and Exposure targets. That’s an essential feature in any high-end camera replacement.

The app has a live, onscreen Histogram to help composing better lit shots. There’s a Rule-of-Thirds composition grid. Both features can be toggled in the app’s settings.

The viewfinder crops the preview in not just a little, but quite a bit. it’s impossible for precision composition in viewfinder. Accuracy is paramount in a high-end camera app. This is another dealbreaking issue. See below. The actual crop of the image had the wider field of view as seen in the Apple Camera — itself an inaccurate viewfinder.

Digital Negative viewfinder

Apple Camera viewfinder

The app’s Darkroom functions as a built-in image editor where you can adjust many of the parameters of the raw image. Original exposure settings are preserved in the DNG file. In theory, you can also go back later and make different moves to the image as you “redevelop” it. It’s professional a workflow I use all the time in production when color correcting, retouching, and color matching images in the studio here.

When the Darkroom module works, it works well. The app is able to make some impressive color and luminance fixes to an image that are visibly better than performing the same moves in other apps. Colors look more natural. Shadows are open with good detail. There is less visible noise, especially in the darker areas of the image. That may have more to do with the processing algorithms, though, than the developers use of a limited DNG format. See my sample images below processed with Digital Negative, PhotoForge2 and the excellent but often overlooked Process app ( ). These were all corrected using these settings: Gamma +25%, Vibrance +25%, Saturation +10%. Nothing major, but enough to make the image pop a little bit.

Original exposure

Processed with Digital Negative

Processed with Process app

Processed with PhotoForge2

Here are detail area images:

Original image detail

Detail area, Digital Negative

Detail area, Process app

Detail area, PhotoForge2

Unfortunately, several of Digital Negative’s tools are broken. The Exposure tool, The Denoise Tool, and the White Balance Tool all break the image with incorrect hue and saturation aberrations. Adjustments look more like the pixel destroyer Decim8 than from a high-end camera app.

Bugs in Exposure and White Balance tools in Digital negative

After editing, saving over an image saves back as a JPG, not as a DNG which destroys the ability to go back to your raw data. At least a warning would be nice.

DNG files are large. Raw 8 MP files were 30 MB each on my iPhone 5, compared to 1-3 MB of a high-quality JPG. You’ll need the largest capacity device to work with more than a few of these files.

The app has the ability to upload to Dropbox, but the feature is almost useless for what it really needs to be. The large DNG files take up a lot of room on my iPhone and I’d like to move the raw files off to my desktop as soon as possible. The Save to Dropbox feature only saves smaller JPG files that lack the raw data. When it works. The feature crashed often for me.

In fact, Digital Negative has stability issues overall. It crashed unexpectedly for me about 10% of the time during my tests. This was after quitting all apps and rebooting my device.

Opening up the DNG files in the RAW Camera plug-in in Photoshop for Mac was a disaster. The imported raw image (using the default import settings) should have been pretty close to what I shot, needing only minor tweaks to my preference. Instead, colors, saturation and luminance were all unusably way off and the imported image was way too noisy to use, negating any advantages and features of the raw DNG format. My reference raw image imported fine using the same plug-in and settings. Maybe I’m overlooking a setting here?

Digital Negative Photshop raw file import

And here’s what my reference image looked like, same settings:

Reference image, Photshop raw file import

The in-app help is thorough, but not completely helpful. It’s also unreadable on an iPhone. Here’s a link to the Digital Negative manual on the web. You’ll need an iPad or a desktop to read it. Bad oversight making the help manual unreadable on most of the devices that will be using the app.

I really hated to come down hard on this app, but the expectations are high for a camera app that touts these professional-level features. I was very excited to read what it can do and was looking forward to getting some true high-quality files on my iPhone. However, I feel that the bugs and the lack of some key features make this first try very disappointing.

Many serious iPhoneographers will really tear up and do amazing things with raw format images, especially as the iPhone’s cameras improve. Right now, Digital Negative is not that answer. It could be a game changer when everything is fixed, but right now the app feels more like a late alpha than a real release. The app currently has too many problems, bugs and lack of features to be considered for any serious use.

Digital Negative is $2.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"New Digital Negative App Brings Uncompressed Raw Photos to iPhone — Poorly.." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Plastica
Version Reviewed: 2.0

Bottom Line: I like it. Not without its flaws, this is a greatly improved update with new features that differentiates from its obvious competition.

Plastica, by graf, the makers of the excellent PictureShow, is back in the App Store after a several week “hiatus.” After testing the new 2.0 update, I’m glad it’s back. It’s also FREE for a limited time. It’s definitely worth a second look.

The new re-release of Plastica isn’t perfect, but it’s now good enough to make me get over the first time it was released.

Plastica is another retro-analog-style app with a camera, lens and film type user interface. Sound like another app you know? I was extremely hard on Plastica the first time around, calling it (among other things) “a poor-man’s Hipstamatic, where Hipstamatic is the new Cadillac and Plastica is a used Ford.”

It’s back. It’s much better. The UI has been redesigned and now has much more of its own identity. Along with the makeover are a lot of new features — good ones that differentiate this app from Hipstamatic. This is the app that should have been released two months ago.

There are plenty of lens and film combinations in Plastica. Many look closer to the rich, saturated colors and tones of Hipstamatic than to the standard Instagram clone filters found in many apps.

The User Interface has been overhauled so Plastica now has an identity of its own, which is a good thing. Lenses and films are now stored in boxes and are easily accessible from the camera’s back.

Plastica comes nicely stocked with films and lenses. I’ve got the whole set in this version (I don’t remember buying them). There were a few $0.99 in-app purchase in the previous version.

In the expanded viewfinder, Plastica has separate focus and exposure targets that Hipstamatic lacks. They’re clearly labeled and fairly easy to move around the screen. The expanded viewfinder has been fixed in this update and now opens, shoots, and closes with ease.

Plastica has several tools available from the camera’s back, including a full-res digital zoom that Hipstamatic lacks, front camera and flash toggles, and a new randomize button which mixes up films and lenses with each shot. Especially with apps that have so many filter combinations, this is a great feature to use to discover “happy accidents.”

Plastica’s back toolbar, showing front cam toggle, flash, 5-shot burst, TiltShift blur, and randomize tools. Zoom slider is below viewfinder.

There is also a new TiltShift type blur, both round and square, that’s easily accessible from the collapsable menu bar. It’s less of a tiltshift and more of a really jacked up bad plastic toy camera lens. Fans of TiltShift effects will hate it. Fans of real-life plastic toy cameras, such as Dianas or some of the old Holgas, will probably like this lo-fi focus effect.

Plastica now supports full native square resolution on iPhone 5 and 4S devices — that’s 2448×2448 pixels. I suspect it’s also full square native support on an iPhone 4 as well. Sorry, 3GS users… you’re out of luck on this one. EXIF data? Some. Geotags? Nope.

Pro Tip: Before using this update, open the app’s settings and change them to your liking. Full Resolution, Save Original, and Auto Save all default to Off. Also, don’t forget to restore your purchases right away.

It now can also save your original image as well as the filtered one, an excellent feature that also gives you a raw copy of the image to play with.

Plastica now imports images from your iPhone’s camera roll — probably the biggest single feature the app could have to set it apart. Set your film and lens combination, import an image and the app automatically applies the effects. Hipstamatic users have been screaming for this feature for years. A big huge bug here that will hack many users off is that imported images don’t save at full resolution. Most of the time they saved back to my camera roll at 852×852 pixels, even with the high resolution setting turned on. Hopefully, this will be fixed soon. This will be a very popular and differentiating feature.

Plastica’s filter set is still similar to Hipstamatic’s, but not identical. I found them to be a little flat in comparison to Hipstamatic and other faux-LOMO apps like the old LOMO-LOMO/LEME-LEME apps. Vibrance and saturation is not as lush in many instances. For me, this works for several of the filters, but not all. This flatness and lack of punch gives many of Plastica’s effects a more accurate, lo-fi look.

It doesn’t support lens and film previews, which given the number of lenses and films, would be a helpful addition in keeping the filter characteristics straight. In fact, even in its own Lightbox, there’s no way to tell which filter combination shot an image which makes it very difficult to turn “happy accidents” into favorite lens and film combinations. It’s buried in the EXIF data, but you’ll need a separate EXIF viewer app like EXIF-fi to find it.

UPDATE 01: Reader Robin E notes that “Double tap on an image in the gallery to get info like location, lens and film.”

I was surprised to see this app return to the App Store. After testing this new update, I’m glad it did. The developers took a beating with the first version of the app. They’ve gone back to the drawing board. This latest version of Plastica, while still not without its flaws, now stands pretty well on its own. This is probably the biggest turnaround of a photo app that I’ve ever seen.

As an app on its own, there are enough filters with good-looking lo-fi qualities that have earned Plastica 2.0 a slot back on my iPhone. If you’d given up on Plastica, it’s worth a second look.

Currently Plastica is free. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 6.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Photo App Review: Plastica 2.0 Redeems Itself." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Handy Photo®
Version reviewed: 1.0

Bottom Line: Wow! Fast, nimble, an amazingly powerful toolset for any platform! I love this app!

ADVA Soft, the developers of AntiCrop and TouchRetouch, have just released an extremely impressive new photo app called Handy Photo®.

Before snagging a copy for myself, I had a chance to see the Handy Photo app in action in person at Macworld. What does it do? Everything… quickly and easily. It’s really awesome!>>>

Handy Photo lets you perform image editing, color moves, cloning, basic retouching, advanced retouching, and about the most advanced clip and paste I’ve ever seen on any platform. Any….

The color adjustment tools are on par with other image editors and perform all the major color moves you expect in this class of app.

The advanced retouching tools are where Handy Photo does its magic! It combines the toolsets of their previous best-in-class apps, AntiCrop and TouchRetouch, expands on those, and adds a bunch of software magic to create one of the most powerful reality distortion apps available on iOS.

The Retouching tool lets you easily and effectively fix blemishes and other small glitches in an image. The content-aware fixes are among the best available on iOS. Results contained fewer artifacts than using similar tools in other apps.

Anyone familiar with Photoshop for Desktop’s Clone tool will be right at home here. The tool lets you easily select one area of a photo and paint it over another. Brush can easily be resized and hardness easily adjusted giving you more control over the edits.

Handy Photo also integrate’s AntiCrop’s excellent content aware resize and fill tool with its Magic Crop too.. It works best on more simple objects — all content aware tools do, including Photoshop. But this tool can make a photo by adding just a little more sky or beach when needed.

The money tool, errr…, the Move Me tool is really awesome! Using a combination of smart clipping paths and content aware fill, the Move Me tool lets you easily clip out objects from an image and move them, resize them, flip them … whatever. There’s nothing like it on iOS and there’s really nothing as quick and easy on desktop that I know of, either.

With a fairly isolated object, the smart clipping tool, which automatically fits a loosely cut lasso, works pretty darned good with minimal tweaking. You can also fine-tune your selection by painting or erasing the quick mask. It works impressively well for iOS.

Handy Photo also has a large set of good filters to choose from. While not as strong a set as some of the high-end dedicated filter apps, there are many here that are useful and well done. There are also an extensive set of frames.

Handy Photo not only has an excellent Undo/Redo tool, but it also has a History tab where you can go back to each individual step in your editing process and perform different edits.

Each onscreen editing tool works where your finger or stylus are placed. I like this workflow. For me, this provides better precision when the tactile point of edit matches the position onscreen. There’s a handy loupe just up and over from your editing point to give you precise visual feed back.

Need to work in close? Pinch and zoom the screen for a full resolution preview. The user interface is great. It’s slick, it’s fluid. The appropriate tools fly in when needed and are out of the way when not. Most tool settings are adjusted with a swipe onscreen similar to Photoshop Express, except that here there’s excellent visual feedback as well.

But wait! There’s more (sorry, I couldn’t resist….)! On an iPhone 5, Handy Photo is fast, nimble, stable, and responsive even with all of the data crunching it’s doing under the hood. Image saves are remarkably fast, especially considering all of the processing the app does.

Handy Photo supports larger than the 8 MP native resolution of an iPhone 5. I had no problems with a 14 MP image I’d imported. It supports up to 36 MP images on an iPad (I suspect on an iPhone as well). Handy Photo also preserves EXIF data, including Geotags.

The app has a great tutorial section as well as onscreen tooltips to get you started. I highly recommend you spend a little time with the tutorials to get the most out of this powerful app.

I only have one minor quibble with the app. Opening up the iPhone’s photo library takes you to a seemingly random jumble of all of your iPhone’s albums. I had to search a bit for Camera Roll, which is not at the top. That is my biggest (and probably only) issue with this otherwise excellent app.

The app is a huge 161 megabyte download. This is not surprising considering all the tools and features this app has. You’ll need to grab this one when you’re on WiFi.

Keep in mind, that you’ll get best results with good, bright, well-composed images. Handy Photo won’t work as many miracles on a busy photo. I was delighted at how quickly and easily the app made some very serious and powerful moves to my everyday images.

The showcase video seems a little heavy-handed, but really Handy Photo does it all just as easy as demonstrated. “Wow!” is a word I said repeatedly while watching this app demonstrated on an iPhone. Handy Photo is an app that exceeds its hype. Handy Photo® gets an very rare five-star rating from me.

(My test images were done to test the app and don’t really look great for publication. I’ll upload my test images soon. Until then, Handy Photo does everything as easily in the Demo Video above. =M=)

Handy Photo is introductory priced at $1.99. It’s a Universal app designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Photo App Review: Handy Photo® – Wow!." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

New photo app Perspective Correct helps solve the long-standing photographer’s dilemma — the perspective distortion caused by not being as tall as that building over there.

There are several other perspective correction apps available. Keep reading to find out how this new one stacks up. >>>

Perspective Correct was created by iPhoneographer Misho Baranovic. You can also check out his excellent eBook, “iPhone Photography: How to Shoot, Edit and Share Great Photos” here.

Perspective Correct is an easy to use, gesture-based app that lets you fix as much or as little of the perspective distortion as you want. Simply load or shoot an image, swipe horizontally or vertically to correct distortion, crop. Save. It’s that easy. Perspective Correction lets see your adjustments right away, helping you focus on getting the right framing and composition.

Misho Baranovic, the app’s co-developer, says that “after struggling with a few other correction programs I realised that there had to be an easier way to fix perspective in photos.   It’s incredible (and fun) to see buildings snap back into place, whole street scenes straighten themselves out and squashed rooms return to normal.”

The app also features adjustable grid lines and advanced JPEG compression controls.

For me, Perspective Correct is among the easiest apps I’ve used to help straighten up perspective, including FrontView, dotfunc, and Genius Scan. It’s much better and easier to use than the clunky AndifTouch. It’s fast. The app has helpful “tool tips,” but the interface is very easy to figure out on your own.

Perspective Correct supports larger than the 8 MP native resolution of the iPhone 5 and 4S. I ran a 14 MP image through it and the app didn’t break a sweat. Be aware, though, that for the app to do its magic, it will shave off pixels when the image is cropped and your final photo will most likely be smaller than the original image.

Perspective Correct is an excellent, quick and easy to use utility for fixing or adjusting the perspective lines in your photo. It’s got a permanent spot in my toolbox. I recommend it for just about any iPhoneographer.

Perspective Correct is $1.99 in the App Store. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

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"Photo App Focus: Perspective Correct – Easy Perspective Correction." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Zitrr Camera, Halo live effect and frame

Zitrr Camera
Version reviewed: 1.0

Bottom Line: I don’t like it. A good camera module crippled by medium resolution and an underwhelming filter set.

Who is the PR firm behind Zitrr Camera? They are getting some awesome buzz from several other established websites. It’s been called a lot of great things, including competition to Camera+

Is Zitrr Camera the second coming of iPhonegraphy? Not by a long shot. It’s not a terrible app, but keep reading to find out why I think this app is way overhyped. >>>

As mentioned here and in a previous review for a different overhyped photo app, one of the reasons we test hands-on every app we review here on Life In LoFi is because you can’t always rely on the App Store descriptions (and sometimes App Store reviews) to be completely honest or to tell how an app is really going to work in the hands of an iPhoneographer. Websites that simply copy-and-paste a pressie under the guise of a review are doing their readers a huge disservice by not fact-checking the developer’s claims. Granted, most photo apps are only $1-$3, but it adds up when you buy a lot of them and if you’re using a “trusted resource” as your basis to purchase the app, it’s much better that you are given an accurate, unbiased picture before you buy.

Zitrr Camera is not a terrible photo app. I just don’t think it lives up to its hype machine. It puts itself in the same league as Camera+, Camera Awesome and ProCamera. When comparing this app to those great established ones, I think Zitrr Camera falls way short.

Zitrr Camera does have some great features including a clean shooting interface. The camera is easily accessible from nearly every screen in the app — a convenient touch. Separate focus and exposure targets are easily toggled with a two finger gesture or a center screen tap. The targets are very easy to set and move. They are nicely responsive.

The camera is loaded with tools that are easily accessible and don’t clutter up the viewfinder. The app has an excellent selection of composition grid overlays, including Rule of Thirds and Golden Ratio. There’s a great selection of shutter release modes including timer, big button, and anti-shake. There’s also a convenient horizon level that’s easily toggled on or off. The camera only supports portrait orientation. None of the tools and buttons rotate for landscape mode. That’s an irritating omission for those of us who really love landscape mode.

In shooting mode, the app has a number of filters, effects, and lenses all with live preview. Many of the filters are good although not outstanding. They consist of a lot of color tweaks or retro film re-creations. Each filter has a frame that you’re stuck with. There’s no way to turn it on or off like Instagram and many other photo apps.

I’m not a fan of most of the filters in the app’s Effects and Lenses categories. I found most of the “Effects” and “Lenses” to be underwhelming, although I thought a few of them were well-done and useful. Haze adds a nice dreamlike Orton effect to your images. The Sketch effect does a pretty good job of making your image look like a charcoal drawing. The Toon effect is an interesting high-contrast, posterized black & white effect. Most of the lens effects, however, are of the cheesy, funhouse mirror variety. Other’s are just bad.

What bothered me the most about the in-camera effects in shooting mode — the Filters, Effects, and Lenses — is that you can’t stack effects while shooting like you can in many other photo apps. There is no way to apply a color filter, then stack another effect or a lens effect while shooting.

Zitrr Camera saves images to its own internal lightbox. Usually this is a workflow that I like very much. It helps reduce clutter in your iPhone’s camera roll. So far, the app holds its own with the big all-in-ones.

But Zitrr camera uses an unusual lightbox arrangement. There’s no way to edit any of the camera effects once images are saved to lightbox. Editing the image in lightbox opens up a ubiquitous Aviary image-editing module that’s found in dozens of other photo apps. Aviary is an excellent image editor, but there are absolutely zero filters here that are unique to Zitrr. Unlike the smooth integration the Aviary module has with some other photo apps, it just feels tacked on and disjointed here.

Lightbox has a frustrating bug. Simply opening the image to edit in the lightbox creates another copy of it whether and not you make any edits to it. This bug is incredibly sloppy and frustrating and leads to lightbox clutter very quickly. Camera+ and Camera Awesome don’t have this problem.

Zitrr Camera only supports 2.8MP saves on an iPhone 5 — that’s 1920×1439 pixels. Once you save an image from the app’s lightbox to your iPhone’s camera roll, most EXIF data including Geotags is stripped out. To play with the big boy apps, the first thing you need is full native resolution on the device you are shooting on. Camera+, Camera Awesome, ProCamera all support both native resolution and EXIF data. Zitrr Camera does not support High ISO low-light mode on the iPhone 5. All of the other high-end camera replacement apps do.

Shot to shot time is pretty fast, about two shots per second. That’s to be expected because the app is not processing the full 8 megapixels of an iPhone 5.

Zitrr Camera has a very good but incomplete toolset when compared to the other big camera replacement photo apps. It has a good interface and with the exception of a few bugs has a good workflow.

Its filters and effects are not original nor are they outstanding. The lack of full resolution and EXIF data support is inexcusable, especially when it wants to be compared with Camera+, Camera Awesome, and ProCamera.

There is room for improvement in Zitrr Camera and the developers seem eager to improve the app. But this first release is better in print then it is on my iPhone 5. It is not ‘the only photo app you will ever need’ as the App Store description would like you to believe.

Zitrr Camera is introductory priced at $0.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation), iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, iPad (4th generation), iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular (4th generation), iPad mini and iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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Zitrr Camera, Turquoise filter

Zitrr Camera, Sketch effect

Zitrr Camera, Oval Shift lens

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"Photo App Review: Zitrr Camera Lands With a Resounding Meh." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

PhotoNova 2
Version reviewed: 1.0
Price: $59.99 $0.99

Bottom Line: An okay app. Good, usable one-click filter set. Many of the tools need better development. One star knocked off for misrepresenting the app’s true resolution.

PhotoNova 2 is the successor (paid upgrade) to an app most of you probably overlooked on its release. I got a press release about this app and it sounds really good in the pressie.

I took a look at PhotoNova 2. Unfortunately, the app does not live up to the expectations set overall and especially in one, very important way.

One of the reasons we test every app we review here on Life In LoFi is because you can’t always rely on the press releases to be completely honest or to tell how an app is really going to work in the hands of an iPhoneographer.

PhotoNova 2 is an “upgrade” and definitely a huge improvement over it’s predecessor, PhotoNova+. PhotoNova 2 has a slick new icon as well as many more filters, tools and features than the older app.

It’s basically a one-click filter app with a lot of additional bells and whistles. PhotoNova 2 has 210 filters in several categories which makes for an organized toolbar. The filters are all color moves of varying degrees. Some loosely emulate retro and vintage films. Others simply change the tone. Some are more dramatic color moves.

If you have the app, the filter set is pretty usable overall. There are some nice color moves and effects in this set. The number of filters I am likely to use on an image definitely exceeded my expectations for this app. There’s nothing here that is unique or really stands out for me, though. Not a bad filter set. Not a great one, either.

The user interface is clean and easy to use. The toolbar stays out of the way of editing yet keeps a fair amount of tools well-organized.

The app’s Focus tool is well done but limited. You can adjust the intensity of the blur. It’s only a circular focus and doesn’t include a linear, tiltshift-style focus or any options to reshape the blur area. That’s too bad because the tool has a good default blur radius. It’ll do, but even Instagram’s “focus” tool has more options.

The app has a basic but good vignette tool. It’ll vignette in black or white. Again, though, the tool is limited. You can adjust radius, but can’t adjust the blur. The default blur is pretty smooth and should work well in just about every instance. This tool is for fast and easy vignettes, not for custom ones.

The Fix tool is a content-aware style object remover. Again, this tool works okay. You’ll probably have better results using it on small fixes such as blemishes, pimples, etc. I tried it on a larger object — a small cloud in an otherwise blue sky — and results were murky and very visible.

PhotoNova 2′s Lasso (L) and Twirl (R) tools

I like selection options in a photo app, but here the Lasso tool is a mess. The tool itself is not precise in that its target drops about .25″ up and to the left of where you drop your finger. This takes some getting used to and also effects the accuracy of the selection of your initial placement. I realize that’s to better improve visibility when making edits, but when I want that level of precision, I’ll use a stylus. Here, it looks broken and annoying. There is also no way to adjust the blur of the edge of the selection, making your edits look very hard, pixelated, and most of the time pretty ugly.

The Twirl and Stretch tools can only be moved and resized. They can’t be adjusted. Just about useless.

I like that you quickly and easily stack filter upon filter, effect upon effect. Once you apply an effect, you can easily go back to the toolbar and apply another. This renders the undo useless, however, for any effects that have been applied. Once you hit okay, you’ll need to start over and reimport the image if you want to make changes.

Resolution Problems. App Store Description is “Mistaken”

My biggest problem with PhotoNova 2 is with the app’s resolution. The App Store description says that the app supports “Full Resolution Photos”. Maybe on import, but the app itself only saves images at 2048×1536 — that’s a 3.1 MP image. That’s not bad — certainly plenty of pixels for good sized enlargements — but where are my missing 4.9 megapixels?

PhotoNova+ had the same problem. That app also advertises “Full Resolution Photos” yet it only saves at 5 MP on an iPhone 5. These are pretty big oversights to continue through not just an update but an entirely new version of an app. Maybe it’s just a typo….

This app is otherwise okay — not really outstanding. The “mistaken” resolution support is a dealbreaker for me. If you have this app, it’s definitely usable and there’s a good selection of easy to use filters to choose from. That’s probably the app’s best feature. It’s a decent app, but far from essential. Minus one star for this developer’s continued “typos.”

PhotoNova 2 is currently $0.99 in the App Store. Watch out for some sketchy pricing issues with this app. It was recently priced at $59.99 for a day and then dropped back down. I’ve seen this dev do similar tricks with their other apps. I suspect it’s to get the attention of users who follow iOS app sale websites.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

UPDATE 01: I received this tweet from the developer, @lndyrm “Thanks for your feedback..You are right about the res on iphone 5…There was a bug we are working on..Have a nice day..”

The App Store description no longer says “Full Resolution Photos.” PhotoNova+ on the App Store has not yet been updated to reflect the same. =M=

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"Photo App Review: PhotoNova 2 Is Not All It Says It Is." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

I’m not sure that iPhone HDR has evolved enough to be its own sub-genre of iPhoneography yet, but HDR Art is a new photo app that presents a case for it.

In its initial release, HDR Art offers a ton of filters — most of them, surprisingly, are not HDR. I’ve got more info and a chance for you to win a copy after the jump. >>>

HDR Art is a pretty broad filter app, but at its core, it’s a single-image faux-HDR effect processor. It’s created by the same developers who gave us the excellent Dynamic Light which is a Dynamic Range Correction/faux-HDR hybrid app.

HDR Art has 50 one-click presets of mixed quality. There are a broad selection of effects ranging from black & white to super-saturated HDR to some interesting overlay scenic and grunge effects. Some of these effects are simply stunning. The “Summer Nights” filter instantly transforms an image into a gorgeous night scene that looks like it’s bathed in moonlight. Paradise adds an almost surreal oversaturation. The film effects — Clarity Film, Pro Film, Velvet Film and others — all do a good job of bumping up saturation and tweaking the color temperature either warmer or cooler. I like the Lomo filter; it’s not necessarily an accurate Lomo recreation, but it’s a nice, warm filter on its own. Many of the other filters do some surprisingly cool things to a well-chosen image like the “Cold Spell” filter on my urban canyon image. Very cool!

On the other hand, HDR Art has some pretty cringe-worthy filters. Many of the grunge filters are a bit too gritty for my tastes. Many of its HDR filters are all that’s wrong with iPhone HDR. Colors are way off and many are super blown out with very visible halos. Kudos to the developers though for giving these filters names like “Halo-Matix” and “Overdone”. Yes, they are.

Filters are one-click easy with the option to edit and change many parameters of each effect, including tint, vignette, halo, contrast and many other settings. Using a preset as a starting point, you can create some seriously altered color effects that can be very surreal and cool. Feeling lucky? There’s a Random button that really mixes everything up.

Of the two photo apps, I’m more likely to go for Dynamic Light, which you should probably look at regardless. For me, it’s the more practical of the two apps, and that takes into consideration the number of effect presets that both apps include. Dynamic Light is more subtle and effects seem smoother overall. I’m not a fan of super-blown-out, haloed HDR, but I’ve seen iPhoneographers put the effect to good use. For a dollar, there are plenty of filters here to make HDR Art worth a look.

HDR Art is $0.99. The app supports full 8MP native resolution on an iPhone 5 and 4S. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

HDR Art Giveaway

I’ve got a few promo codes for HDR Art to give away today. To be eligible to win a copy, simply enter using the giveaway widget below. If you follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll have additional chances for a free copy.

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Tuesday, March 12, 2013. Winners will be determined by Random.org. One code per reader, please.

Winners will be notified by email, Facebook message or Twitter direct message — be sure to check your spam filter. If you enter, be sure your email info is correct or your code will go to someone else. Your email address is used for contest entry and for contacting the winning entrants only. We will not use or sell your email address for any other purpose.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(If you’re having trouble viewing the giveaway widget on a mobile device, try viewing this page in landscape mode on your iPhone.)

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Big thanks to Roman Voska from MediaChance for supplying the promo codes for this giveaway.

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"Photo App Focus: HDR Art. Plus, We’ve Got Promo Codes!." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Fast Camera
Version reviewed: 5.2
Price: $1.99

Bottom Line: I like it a lot. Did I mention it’s really fast? It captures those “perfect moments” that happen just before or after you release the shutter.

My apologies for the most obvious headline I think I’ve ever written on this blog, but Fast Camera is really that fast and it does fast very well. It’s an app you’re likely to overlook in the App Store, but it’s an excellent camera app to have in your “camera bag.”

What it does is really impressive. Keep reading to find out why. >>>

Fast Camera starts up fast, shoots fast, and then lets you select the best captures after. It’s basic and it’s that easy.

Fast Camera starts shooting when you open it. You can change this in the app’s settings, but I’ve left mine as is. I think it’s better to wade through a few extra images than it is to miss your shot.

Fast Camera captures up to 800 images a minute in low-res mode and I got over 200 images per minute in full native resolution mode on an iPhone 5. You can limit how many exposures the app will store for review, up to 1000. That’s a lot to review. I’ve set mine a little lower.

The camera itself is has some surprising features in an app of this type. The rear camera supports a combination manual focus/exposure target. The Flash can be toggled for standard flash or Torch for continuous light. The app supports Front Camera on equipped devices.

Images are thankfully not saved to your camera roll, but temporarily stored in the app’s own lightbox for review. Select the images you want to save to your Camera Roll. The app automatically deletes all the rest when you get back to shooting.

Fast Camera is fast, easy to use, and amazing. Basically what it does is automatically captures dozens of hundreds of images and lets you choose the clearest or best composed one. It’s great for capturing photos of squirmy kids or friends, pets that don’t like to be photographed, or other scenes where you would want multiple exposures and back-up shots. I can also see how this app would be great for street photography and capturing the perfect image.

The rear camera supports the full native resolution of your device, including 8MP on an iPhone 5 or 4S. The number of exposures it takes in full res is almost unbelievable. You can also shoot in low res, high speed mode on the rear camera. It’s actually saving video screencaps, so images save at 1280×720 — about 0.9 MP. It’s mislabeled in the app’s settings — an annoying label that I wish would be corrected or fixed. The front camera saves at 1280×960 or 1.2MP. The app currently doesn’t save EXIF data, but that’s planned for a future update.

Fast Camera is a great utility camera to have. It’s really fast, stable, and doesn’t clutter up your camera roll. With Fast Camera, you can capture those “perfect moments” that happen just before or after you would otherwise release the shutter.

Fast Camera is $1.99. It’s a Universal app that is designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Photo App Review: Fast Camera is Really Fast!." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

While I love a good retro analog photo app (the name of the blog is Life In LoFi for a reason), I also really like a great modern-style app like Deco Sketch that creates effects that no other photo app does. It adds everything from a delicate web of geometric shapes to bold, colorful, modern patterns to an image.

I’m not sure how to describe Deco Sketch. Use it to paint about 100 geometric elements onto your images. Choose from a selection of eight overall styles, including lines, circles, hexagons and other patterns. You can create webs, patterns and flourishes. While other photo apps apply some of these effects randomly, Deco Sketch gives you far more control over size, look and placement.

While it’s a photo app, it feels more like a paint app except with shapes instead of traditional brush tips. You import images from your camera roll or you can create your own works from a blank canvas. Instead of a round or square brush applying color, the “brush” applies geometric shapes. You can set the brush opacity and size to be responsive to brush speed. Once you get the feel of that, it’s a powerful tool to use to vary effect size and see-through.

There’s a powerful settings pane that lets you easily adjust how the effects are applied. It’s out of the way, but quickly accessible from the main screen. From there, you can change brush size, spacing, opacity, colors and a lot more.

I found some effect responded better to long, brush-style strokes. Others worked great by constant daubing them on the image. I could not find a way to constrain strokes to a straight line. With many of these effects, that would be cool to be able to do.

At first, the tools seem random, but the more I used the app, the more I recognized patterns — cause and effect — and I was better able to get the brushes to do what I want. There is a fairly steep learning and experience curve with this app when compared with many other photo apps, but spending some time with it will let you add some very cool geometric effects and flourishes to your images.

Deco Sketch has a good Undo tool which helps with experimentation. It now supports full native 8MP resolution on an iPhone 5 and 4S. It’s got a clean, modern User Interface that’s very easy to figure out. It’s pretty slick. You can create much more amazing effects than my minimal examples here.

Some of the eight category styles are easier to master than others, but Deco Sketch lets you do some pretty cool stuff out of the box. Mastering the app is worth the time. The results are amazing works of iPhone art that you can get using no other photo app.

Deco Sketch is $2.99 in the App Store. It’s a Universal app that’s designed for both iPhone and iPad. It should really be nice on the larger screen of an iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. There is also a free, feature-limited Lite version with fewer brushes and no high resolution support.

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"Photo App Focus: Deco Sketch is Pretty Slick." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone
Version reviewed: 1.0.0
Price as reviewed: $4.99

Bottom Line: I like it but I’m not wowed… yet. In its initial release, Adobe Photoshop Touch for phone comes very close to earning the “Photoshop for iPhone” moniker.

With all the missteps Adobe has had over the years I was surprised at how good this initial release of Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone is. It’s the newer sibling of the iPad app of the same name so, of course, many of the bugs have already been worked out.

This initial release of Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone is pretty good. Not really good yet, but there is potential for it to get really good very quickly and easily with just a well-appointed update or two.

There’s nothing really new or groundbreaking about Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone. All the major tools are there. There are no new, “wow!,” must-have tools.

APT has a mostly full toolset. All the classes of tools are here and are well-designed for iPhone and very usable. Everything you need is here and the app has a better toolset than most other image ediotrs for iPhone, but many of the tools feel incomplete when compared to the desktop version of Photoshop and other high-end image-editors for iPhone.

All of the tonal, color, and luminance tools you expect from Photoshop are here. The interface is a great blend of old-school windows and accomodations for the small screen real estate of iOS. In order to save screen space, menus fly in and out. Tools with larger areas like curves and levels have a see-through overlay.

The toolset is mainly designed for image-editing, color and tonal correction on the fly. Many of Photoshop for desktop’s artistic-targeted tools are missing from this version. I think that’s a good call to keep the focus of APT on image-editing. Trying to turn the app into an image-editing and paint program would add too much complexity to the menus and clutter up the interface. Plus, the additional drain on the iPhone CPU would probably melt its dilithium crystals.

One of Photoshop desktop’s many strengths is its ability to select, mask, adjust, isolate, layer, and composite. That’s pretty much my day-to-day Photoshop workflow on desktop. Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone allows me to do most of that on my iPhone, but there are some curious omissions in the tool set which keep it from being on par with its desktop counterpart or even other image-editing apps currently available for iPhone.

One of the powerful tools Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone has is a versatile layers tool. The layers themselves are the best implementation of the feature I’ve seen on an iPhone app period. If you’ve worked it all in Photoshop desktop, layers work like you expect. There are no surprises, no quirks, no hiccups. In the iPhone implementation, layers are smooth, easy, and fast.

Like Photoshop desktop, you can easily access and edit each individual layer. You can merge a layer down, merge visible (an easy way to merge select layers in a file), or flatten all layers. That’s a great, useful feature carried over from Photoshop desktop and one that doesn’t exist in other iPhone image-editing apps that I know of. Previously on iPhone, it’s been either an all or nothing choice.

Like it’s desktop counterpart, APT has easy-to-use blending and opacity modes. Here’s where APCs layers start to lag behind other apps. APT only has about half of the layer blending modes that are available in Photoshop desktop, ImageBlender, Filterstorm, PhotoForge, and other image-editing apps.

Another huge omission from the layers tool in APT is the lack of masks in this initial version. Again several other image editors for iPhone already have this feature and have for some time. While there are workarounds that you can use involving layers, selections, and the erase tool, a dedicated mask tool is faster and easier and makes edting easier to make changes to your selection than starting over with a completely new edit.

Masks are possible on a high-end app for iPhone. I hope this is one of the first new features that Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone gets an update.

After first writing this review, I realized how good the Selection tools in APT are. The app’s Selection tools function very much like their desktop counterparts but are optimized for the iPhone smaller screen. There are several selection modes including lasso mode, brush mode, and a scribble mode. There’s also an edge finding mode that behaves similar to magnetic selections in several of Photoshop desktop’s tools. Selections can easily be inverted, added to or subtracted from. These options are optimized for the small screen of the iPhone and they make the workflow as easy as it can be on the device’s small 4 inch screen.

You can do some very cool things with APT’s selection tools that you can’t easily do in any other image editor for iPhone. Like Photoshop desktop, APT’s Selection tools let you clip out and fine tune areas of your image or layer so you can selectively make adjustments to that area. The tools let you choose between a hard or soft edge and everything in between. The selection tools are among APT’s more powerful tools because they behave so much like the desktop version.

In my tests, I mainly used the brush selection tool which behaves pretty much like QuickMask on its desktop counterpart — only with iOS enhancements which made it even easier to use.

Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone has an excellent undo/redo tool, but there’s currently no history tool which I’d really like to see an update. Several other photo apps to have this feature and I’d really love to see how Adobe implements it.

All of the tools that I tested in Photoshop were fast and responsive. The app lets you use two-finger gestures to pinch and zoom in or out. There was no lag. Even my large fingers were able to do some detailed edits and selections. All the tools have visual feedback for precision edits and adjustments. I was able to easily learn my way around the user interface in minutes.

Some standout tools, both good and bad…. The Gaussian Blur tool works very nicely. There is a great Distance Blur tool which you don’t see too often on iPhone. And the Denoise trouble needs a lot of work. The Denoise tool in Adobe Photoshop express is one of the best available for iPhone. The same tool here in Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone barely reduces noise. There are much better options in other apps, such as Perfectly Clear.

Testing Photoshop Touch’s Denoise filter. Set to 100% for emphasis. Click to enlarge.

Layered projects files can be saved to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. You can sign up and get 2 GB of storage for free. You can also sign in with your existing Adobe ID.

Creative Cloud integration is pretty slick for the most part. It allows you to seamlessly share your files between your iPhone, iPad, Android, and Adobe desktop products. Creative Cloud integration was seamless from my iPhone. In fact, the only problem I had with Creative Cloud was the inability to sync certain file types to the cloud. A PSD file from my desktop did not sync to my device, which needs the enhanced PSDX files. Apparently, not all file formats are supported across the platforms.

To save bandwidth, Creative Cloud synchronization automatically defaults to only syncing with a Wi-Fi connection, although that can be switched to use your data plan as well. That’s a great touch and I’m leaving mine in WiFi mode to save my data.

Another problem I had with the app is when you are finished editing and are ready to save your work, there is no “Cancel.” There are only two options… “Save” and “Don’t Save”. Don’t Save deletes your image and loses all of your work. Be careful with this one.

How does Photo App Review: Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone compare to Adobe Photoshop Express?

Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone is a much more polished, much more robust image editor then its older sibling Photoshop Express. The user interface is more of what I expect from a powerful image editing tool. The toolset has more business and fewer toys. This is the Photoshop that Adobe should ahve released first for iPhone.

How does it compare to other photo editing apps? Despite its flaws which I suspect will be fixed very very quickly, Adobe Photoshop Touch is late to the game. Other photo apps including PhotoForge, Snapseed and Filterstorm have already done the groundbreaking.

This version of Photoshop touch for iPhone holds its own with those powerhouse apps. In some ways, such as layers, there’s nothing better for iPhone. In other ways, Adobe Photoshop Touch lags behind.

In the end, it’s a wash. Adobe Photoshop Touch is still a very usable app and a dream to use. I suspect that very quickly with a few updates this will be the standard image-editing app for iPhone.

There are a lot of things I really like about Adobe Photoshop Touch. Even without the Mask feature yet, the layers are awesome. Adjusting and compositing is faster and easier than any other iPhone app I’ve used.

The interface is what I expect from Photoshop. I think Adobe has nailed it by reinventing what needed to be reinvented and simply adapting what didn’t need to be redone.

The app supports up to 12MP images. The app defaults to 3.1MP imports, so be sure to change the settings in the Image Import menu. APT strips out most EXIF data, including Geotags.

Think about this — for five bucks, Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone can do more than the Mac desktop version of Photoshop 3.0 which cost hundreds. I still have those floppies.

What Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone does is not groundbreaking but it feels slicker than just about everything else out there. What it doesn’t do at this time is inconvenient but not a dealbreaker. It doesn’t destroy the usability of the app. And like I said, I suspect that these features will be added soon.

I was extremely disappointed by Adobe Photoshop Express, their previous attempt at Photoshop for iPhone. Recent updates have improved that app but it’s not an app that I would consider using for serious work. With that in mind, I didn’t want to like Adobe Photoshop Touch and initially my tests were clouded by the missteps of both Adobe Photoshop Express and the lousy early versions of Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad.

I like Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone. Maybe my initial expectations were so low that if the app was just “good” it would exceed those expectations. Like all other image-editing apps I test, I reviewed this is a standalone iPhone app and compared its feature set to Photoshop desktop. I did not compare it to the iPhone to the iPad version. I realize that the feature set is close, but does not have complete parity between iPhone and iPad.

I’ve given the app a very high three and a half stars because I feel this app should have Masks. Adobe Photoshop pretty much invented layer masks. When APT gets Layer Masks, this will easily be at least a four-star or higher app.

As an iPhone app, Adobe Photoshop Touch is what Photoshop for iPhone should’ve been all along. This initial version has many good features that are very well done. I look forward to the updates to see what magic Adobe has up its sleeve. Overall this is a solid new image editor. As it’s updated and the missing features are added (as I’m confident they will be), this will be a Wow! app.

Adobe Photoshop Touch for phone is $4.99 in the App Store. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod touch (5th generation). Requires iOS 6.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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Update 01: Added Denoise test image.

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"Photo App Review: Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Over the weekend, Typic Pro was released. It’s the more robust sibling to the popular Typic app.

Both Typic apps let you add some good looking type treatments to your photos. Typic Pro is limited in what it does, but depending on where you do most of your sharing, it may be just what you need to add some eye-catching captions.

Typic Pro creates some of the best-looking captions I’ve seen for iOS. The font selection is well chosen. Rather than go for the typical freeware typefaces, the developers chose some very useful and visually appealing fonts. In this initial version, all Typic fonts are included in the purchase price. Entering, selecting and changing the type is very easy and the text block can easily be resized and moved. Type can then be placed over one of several tasteful design elements — banners, starbursts, background overlays.

Everything about Typic Pro is very visually appealing, from the fonts to the design elements — even the slick, easy to use User Interface. There’s even a small selection of usable, Instagram-style borders and frames that could let you keep all of your processing in-app if you wanted to.

The results are great looking short captions that are much better looking than straight Arial Bold captions.

Typic Pro is a work in progress and there are a few things I didn’t like about this initial release. The color palette for the text and design elements is very well chosen, but it’s limited to just several colors. I want more of these great colors! I’d love to see more color sets and possibly the ability to choose my own colors. More of the great design elements would be great, too.

Typic Pro is square format only. That’s great for sharing to Instagram and Starmatic, but I was unable to use the app to create a slick-looking caption for a postcard i wanted to send from my iPhone.

You can only work with up to two text blocks. You can create some basic type contrast with just two blocks, but doing much more than that is impossible with just one pass through the app. Two text blocks should be good for most uses. As a graphic designer, I like to set my determiners in a smaller size sometimes. One or two more text blocks would be handy for users like me.

Typic Pro supports up to 1936×1936 pixel output on an iPhone 5. That’s a pretty respectable and definitely usable image size. To get there, though, the devs used a little bit of programming prestidigitation. Images are resampled up from low-res versions. Comparing the source and processed images shows pixelization and a very visible loss of detail. I applaud the developers for supporting high-resolution and I hope that image quality will improve in future updates. For now, image quality from Typic Pro should be fine for most online sharing, including Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can probably even make small to medium sized prints that’ll look great.

Typic Pro comes from an active developer who listens to user feedback. Even in its current state, which feels a little unfinished, the app adds some great-looking, slick type elements and captions to your images. What it does well now looks great. It has a lot of potential. I suspect that the app will grow and improve fairly quickly.

Typic Pro is $1.99. There is a free version, Typic ( ) that adds type but lacks many of the Pro version’s cool features. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 6.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Photo App Focus: Typic Pro." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Big Lens has been out for a while, but until now I haven’t shared a look at it here, despite the fact that I use the app regularly.

Big Lens is FREE for a limited time. The app has now returned to its regular price. =M= It’s normally $0.99 and well worth a dollar. It’s more than another fake focus or tiltshift app. It’s an excellent faux depth of field app. I’ve got a download link and my belated review of the app after the jump. >>>

More than Instagram’s tiltshift blur, Big Lens more precisely and accurately recreates the look of a more focused, even narrow depth of field. It creates this by adding a slective gradient blur to parts of the image. The end result is a more precise, more versatile, more realistic faux depth of field than Instagram’s simple tiltshift effect can create.

Big Lens has two modes, Basic and advanced. The Basic mode is similar to the popular tiltshift effect in many apps. There are two blur tools — a circle and a bar. Pinching and moving resizes and places the blur effect as it behaves in other apps.

That’s where the similarities end and where Big Lens earns its keep. Big Lens has an excellent set of camera-style tools that give you much more control over the blur. Simulating the effects of a DSLR lens, the Aperture tool lets you adjust the intensity of the blur and amount of the gradient. There is a Lens tool — more like an aperture shape tool — that also effects the look of the blur.

Advanced mode has all of these tools except the area of focus is painted and erased onto the image, giving more precise control of the effect and allowing the artist to paint in an accurate depth of field focus effect. There is also an intelligent Lasso tool to help quickly select and isolate high-contrast objects.

All of the tools work well and are very responsive. Nothing felt laggy or inaccurate to me. Even switching between a one finger paint and a two finger pinch and move gesture was solid and worked well.

Unlike many focus apps, the edges of the focus are soft and have a natural fade. By experimenting with the Aperture and Lens tools, you can really fine-tune the gradient and roll-off of the blur to create very natural-looking focus effects.

Big Lens has 18 filters, many of them recreating the looks of various LOMO cameras. The filters add contrast and color tweaks, as well as other aberrations and effects to the image. They’re well done, easy, one-click looks for your photos, but they’re not the primary use of Big Lens. Creating great focus effects is and Big Lens does an outstanding job.

I’ve used many of the good focus effects apps available, including TiltShift, FocalLab and BlurFX. Nothing comes close to the ease of use of this app along with the detail and natural looks of the effects Big Lens creates.

Big Lens supports full 8MP native resolution of the latest iPhones and it preserves EXIF including Geotags.

Big Lens is FREE for a limited time. That’s an essential download. Even for a buck, I still highly recommend it.

Grab it now. I have no idea how long this discount will last.

Big Lens is normally $0.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Photo App Focus: Big Lens." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Today I’m going to talk about an app I’ve been looking for a long time to replace my love for Fractaluis. It’s called Tangled FX by Orange Qube. Up above is a photo edited by the plugin Fractalius developed by Redfield. The only app at the time that came close to Fractalius in mobile editing was ShockMyPic by GOST Software. ShockMyPic is still a great app for doing crazy outlines blending.

Let’s talk about the Tangled FX app, you can pick up this app for $1.99 at the App Store. The app is universal to the iPad, so it’s worth the $1.99. After the app is loaded, you will noticed the previous photo I was using for sample editing, posted on Instagram and EyeEm. Tangled FX is a very intuitive app with a very easy to use UI (user interface).

When you tap on the “gear” button you will get these options, it’s important to do the setting with the app first before you play and edit your photos.

Tap on the “i” button and you can get info about the app and contact the developer too.

Now let’s get started with editing your photo but tapping the “arrow box” button, I’m going to tap on the “Open Photos” button. I’m going to pick a photo I already took in my camera roll.

My photo is loaded up and the default setting has begun with the app. I’m going to tap on the “TUNE” button and show the manual controls.

There are 8 different sliders with 3 sub-sliders and one button. This is how you manual control your edits to your liking…it’s fun to play. I also wanted to mention a top slider called “Effect scale factor.” It way up on the top so I missed the slider. This slider does determined on the detail scale of your photo while editing.

Tap on “Dark” and get dark lines instead of light lines.

Now you can save, share and send you photo to another app to be edited. I will warn you if you do send your photo to another app to be edited there rather than saving. Your photo will be transferred at a lower resolution 2592?1944 which is iPhone 4 standard res. I have a 4S so I prefer the 8MP res. Make sure you tap on the preview res button on top so you know your saving at high res. I’ve found out if you transfer the photo to Camera+. Your photo will transfer to full resolution. I didn’t know that because I don’t use Camera+. Thanks to the developer to clarify that with me…no pun on the “Clarify” LOL !!!

Now let’s talk about the resolution settings. Remember I told you to make sure you set your resolution first before you edit your photo — it’s really important. You will know by the preview res on the top middle of the screen. It will also take longer to process your photo, so make sure you turn off your other app in the background (prevents from app crashing in the middle of processing) and have lots of battery power. Tangled FX does take a lot of processing, especially at high resolution.

Here’s my edited saved photo from Tangled FX.

This is my edited photo transferred to Rainy Daze and saved. I then loaded it into FX Photo Studio and blended and layered with DXP.

What I like the most about Tangled FX is you can do really crazy looking outlines with an electric looking effect to your photo editing.

Tangled FX is $1.99 in the App Store. It’s a Universal app that runs great on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation), iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, iPad (4th generation), iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular (4th generation), iPad mini and iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

If you have any questions about this post, please leave comments over on The Combo Apps blog or email the author Tina Rice, ashcroft54@gmail.com. This post originally appeared on The Combo Apps – Mobileography Extreme Editing blog and was reprinted with permission. Check out Tina’s blog for many more great reviews and photo app techniques.

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"Photo App Focus: Tangled FX by Combo FX’ Tina Rice." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Cortex Camera is free for a few more hours today, February 6. An App Store link is after the jump.

We get questions. Often times, I just respond with a short email. However, every time I mention the camera app Cortex Camera, I usually get at least one query, “What exactly does Cortex Camera do?”

Cortex Camera is actually a pretty cool app to have in certain situations, including low-light situations and others where reduced noise is desirable. Keep reading for what Cortex Camera does, some comparison shots, and why I have it on my iPhone. >>>

Cortex Camera is a simple, camera-only app that combines dozens of individual exposures to create a single high-quality and noise-free image. It creates the high quality still photo by combining 100 frames of video. It aligns the captures in real time so the image will be sharp even when no tripod is used. All of this happens automatically and in a matter of seconds. On an iPhone 5, the raw images that the app combines are pretty good sized — 1920×1080 pixels. They are combined into the full native res 8 MP files or larger 12.6 MP, 4096×3072 pixel files that are saved to the camera roll.

Cortex Camera and the excellent ClearCam do the same thing, except that ClearCam shoots 6 full-resolution source images and doubles the image resolution in-camera. ClearCam images also share the reduced noise and improved exposure of Cortex Camera, without many of the low-light benefits 100 exposures provides.

The good? Your images will have much less visible noise. The app automatically applies digital blending algorithms. When the source images are combined, the noise (which is random) will cancel out and the detail (which is constant) will hold and in many cases enhance.

This is especially handy in low-light situations where a fast ISO single exposure would also add a lot of noise to the image. Using Cortex Camera, darker images have greater detail and clarity without the noise, even with the new low-light enhancement of the iPhone 5. You can read more about here on the Cortex Camera website.

One of the things that I noticed using Cortex Camera in normal light situations is better, more vibrant colors and a fuller, more balanced exposure.

The bad? Cortex Camera is not for every shooting situation. Cortex Camera is a slow shooter. In my tests, Cortex Camera took 7 seconds to go from shutter release to image save. Almost 4 seconds of that were the image captures. Overall, Cortex Camera does an excellent job of aligning its raw exposures, but it’s not for scenes where there is a lot of movement, such as scenes involving people or windy landscapes.

Cortex Camera can be used handheld, without a tripod with good results, however if you drink a lot of coffee (like me) your results may be iffy more often. When Cortex Camera does align all of its exposures properly, the results are very impressive. Image clarity is visibly sharper than a comparable image shot with an iPhone 5. If the exposures are off just a hair too much, parts of the image may show blur when blended.

Cortex Camera supports the full native resolution of the iPhone 5 and 4S. The image quality, sharpness, and reduced noise from the app make its photos a prime candidate for upsampling and enlarging using Big Photo on iOS or Photoshop on your Mac or PC.

I don’t use Cortex Camera often, but I keep it on my iPhone for times I need super clear, noise-free image images; static, low-light shots; or noise-free, vibrant landscapes.

Cortex Camera is $2.99 in the App Store. It’s FREE today only, February 6. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Here’s a gallery of test shots I did with both Cortex Camera and Apple’s Camera on an iPhone 5. In particular, notice the improved detail and lack of noise in the Cortex Camera samples. The first two sets of images were shot in fairly low light. All images are unprocessed. They’ve only been cropped.

There’s more information and photos on the Cortex Camera website.

Cortex Camera sample, detail. Click to enlarge.

Apple Camera sample, detail. Click to enlarge.

Cortex Camera sample, detail. Click to enlarge.

Apple Camera sample, detail. Click to enlarge.

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UPDATE 01: Clarified the app’s resolutions a bit better. =M=

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"What Exactly Does Cortex Camera Do?." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

A very cool iPhone 5 accessory gets Kickstarter funding

Photographers have long used polarizing filters to help improve image quality and naturally enhance the light and color of a photo. I missed this one when the funding started (I’ll explain later), but here’s a Kickstarter project for the iPhone 5 Trygger Camera Clip. It adds an adjustable polarizing filter to your iPhone 5.

There are about three days left on this Kickstarter and I really hope this project gets funded. Keep reading for why. >>>

The iPhone 5 Trygger Camera Clip is a lighweight, easy to use clip with one function — it adds a polarizing filter to your iPhone 5. It’s the smaller, sexier, better built sibling of last year’s Trygger iPhone 4S/4 Case.

A polarizing filter like that on the Trygger Camera Clip cuts out bright unwanted reflections. Like the popular olloclip, the Trygger Camera Clip fits snugly over the case and lens of the iPhone 5. On my 5, the review unit slipped smoothly and securely into place. The unit has a protective interior to prevent wear and scratching of the iPhone 5′s bare case. Alignment to the lens was just about perfect. It is removable so it doesn’t block your flash when not in use.

Using the dial on the outer edge, the filter is adjustable so you can change the level of light that comes through.  This gives you more control over the look of your photos than a fixed-position filter.

Geek alert. If you haven’t had your coffee today, skip this paragraph. When I was a kid my dad taught me how polarizing filters work. They’re really cool! In short, they are designed to filter out targeted wavelengths of light. For example, light coming from a reflected surface such as water or glass window is at a specific wavelength. By adjusting or rotating the filter to the corresponding angle, it’s possible to block the reflected light on that specific wavelength from entering the lens, making the reflections fainter. That’s the very short version. I left out the parts about linear and circular molecular structure. Longer, more detailed versions are here and here.

In short, the Trygger Camera Clip helps reduce glare and reflections, and helps enhance colors within your image. For one thing, it’ll really make your sky look vibrant and rich. It’s an effect that you can’t replicate with a photo app or a software filter. The polarizing effect works with both color and black & white camera apps.

Trygger’s hand-made polarizing filters are created by placing a color neutral polarizing film between two layers of scratch resistant, high-grade optical glass. The filter is well-recessed to help protect it further from any scratches or dust. It only causes a very slight exposure hit on an iPhone 5. In lower light situations it may cause the iPhone’s ISO sensitivity to increase a tiny bit or may cause a slightly slower shutter.

Here’s why I missed this Kickstarter. Honestly, this was low on my radar. I was very disappointed with Trygger’s iPhone 4/4S case Kickstarter last year. Not only was there a bad case of production creep where the delivery date slipped significantly, but I was really disappointed in the quality and usability of the original case.

Then, I was sent an early production model of the new clip to have a look at.

The new iPhone 5 Trygger Camera Clip addresses all of the flaws in the original case. According to the Kickstarter page, the filter itself is more durable than the previous version, although I never had a problem with filter or case durability with mine. The photos from the review unit I received are perfect and crystal clear. The filter itself is visibly wider in diameter and doesn’t cause any of the vignetting I had with the original case.

I actually think that these will be delivered on time. I was sent one of the early production models and it’s ready to go. It’s a slick, finished out unit. I believe that Trygger has already worked out the kinks in the product and their production cycle with the first case. They’ve already got engineering teams and manufacturing partners with experience from launching one of these products.

More important, it looks like they’ve listened to user feedback to improve the unit. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that I suspect that includes taking into consideration customer satisfaction as well.

The iPhone 5 Trygger Camera Clip is a $30 Kickstarter pledge and it’s available in black or white. That’s almost $10 off the normal $39.95 retail price this will have if the project gets funded. This project will only be funded if at least $10,000 is pledged by Friday Jan 25, 8:59am EST. Currently, they have not yet achieved their goal. This is a cool accessory for improving your raw images . I really hope this gets funded.

You can pledge here on the iPhone 5 Trygger Camera Clip Kickstarter page. There’s a lot more information there as well. More information can also be found on the Trygger website.

UPDATE 01.25.13: With 30 minutes left to go, it looks like this Kickstarter has reached its goal and will get funded! =M=

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"Kickstarter: iPhone 5 Trygger Camera Clip (UPDATE)." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Photo Remind is a slick utility that will help you keep track of all those shots you pass by but intend to return to.

Photo Remind is for FREE today for a very limited time. Grab it fast and save $1.99. This one’s been discounted for several hours now and the price may go back up at any time. UPDATE 01.22.13: Photo Remind has now gone back to its regular price of $1.99.

Keep all the great locations you find and want to return again, add notes and supporting images. Photo Remind is a good app for any photographer, not just iPhoneography.

When I’m out shooting, we often drive by great photographs that we don’t stop for but still want to get back to someday. There are a number of reasons — lack of time, the light might be better at a different time of day.

Easily shoot a reminder snapshot. The app Geotags it for you, or you can manually position the location pin. You can write a location summary and notes about the shot. The app can even notify you when your back in near proximity, although I haven’t tested this feature and have no idea if it chews up your battery or not.

Photo Remind is a good utility to help you keep track of those shots that you really want to come back to, but eventually forget about. Photo Remind gives you a second chance at some once in a lifetime shots.

Hurry up and grab this. Normally $1.99, it’s free for a limited time only. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation), iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, iPad (4th generation), iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular (4th generation), iPad mini and iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Keep Track of Wanted Shots and Locations with Photo Remind." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Wood Camera is currently on sale for 50% off. How does it stack up?

Wood Camera is a very popular vintage/retro/grunge photo app. It’s fast, easy to use, and has received glowing reviews from other, non-iPhoneography websites. While not as powerful as other iPhone photo apps, overall it balances a lot well.

It’s been in my review queue for a while. I thought the recent 2.0 update is a good opportunity to have a look here at this high-charting photo app. Is it worth the hype? >>>

As I write this, Wood Camera is the number one paid app in the App Store. Not just the Photo & Video category, but the entire App Store. Going back a couple of years, I’m unable to find another photo app that’s topped the overall charts. Camera+ by tap tap tap and Vintique by GMY Studio topped out at #2 overall. This is quite an impressive feat.

Fortunately, Wood Camera is not an emulation of a classic camera that’s made of wood, nor is it an app that adds natural, wood grain effects to your images. Wood Camera is an easy to use camera and effects app. The app adds retro and vintage effects, mostly through color overlays. In addition to a very basic tool set, you can also add textures, tiltshift blur, vignette and frames.

Wood Camera starts you off with a very helpful overview of the app’s features — a great touch for users stepping up from more basic photo apps like Instagram. Like Instagram, filters are one-touch. There’s just a lot more of them and there are a few more easy adjustment options.

Wood Camera mostly delivers. In each filter category, there are plenty of choices and the bulk of them look good and are very usable for this style of app. The selection of color filters add everything from retro toy camera looks to more surreal color combinations. Unlike many apps in this class, the combinations overall look pretty good. Like Instagram’s one-click filters, users will find their favorites in Wood Camera’s selections. I seemed to land on Paris and Devonshire a lot.

I’m not usually a fan of textured overlays, but the selection here again is well done and I found nearly all of them to be usable for appropriate images. There’s very little fluff here. The overlays are static. I wish there were a way to rotate them in the app to be able to give the appearance of more randomized finished effects.

The intensity of each effect can be individually adjusted back for a more subtle look. Or you can toggle any of them off.

Wood Camera has an easy to use basic tool set which lets you easily select from freestyle or preset crops as well as adjust brightness, contrast and hue.

Wood Camera’s Frames are the app’s weakest feature, in my opinion. Although the app lets you crop to any aspect ratio, most of the frames here are optimized for a square format photo. Many of the frames looked irritatingly distorted on standard, uncropped 4:3 images. Many of the frames also look a little soft to my eye when enlarged and viewed closely. For most purposes, this shouldn’t be a problem. I found myself using only a handful of the frames in my test images. In particular, the instant print frames looked badly distorted and the faux-Hassy frames, while not as bad, still looked unnatural to me. I found trying to use the frames on a portrait or landscape image to be frustrating and irritating and it really took me out of an otherwise pleasant experience using this app.

Wood Camera uses a Lightbox workflow. This may use up more space on your device, but as long as an image is still in the app’s lightbox, you can change any edit in the image, including crops. That’s a great feature for users who like to experiment with different looks. From the lightbox, photos can easily be saved or shared over the usual photo sharing networks.

Wood Camera has a lot of filters and features and more are added through regular updates. It’s essentially several easy one-click workflows. Users who are stepping up from more basic photo apps will appreciate that. Wood Camera is also very fast. Saving to the camera roll was almost instant. It was so quick, I double checked to make sure it was saving full resolution images. Not only does Wood Camera save full res 8MP images, but it also saves an image’s EXIF data including all Geotag info.

So, how does Wood Camera stack up? For people new to iPhone photography, I usually recommend Camera+ hands down. Not only does it have a great camera, but it’s got a great set of easy to use effects as well. I would also recommend Wood Camera for users who are looking to grow from Instagram’s limited set of one-click filters, but who still want an app that’s fast and easy to use.

For users who’ve been shooting iPhoneography for a while, for a buck or two, Wood Camera offers a good set of vintage, grimy, scratchy filters and textures that’s just different enough than other similar apps, such as 100 Cameras and Distressed FX. If you like this style of app, Wood Camera is worth looking into for a buck or two.

Wood Camera is normally $1.99 in the App Store. It’s on sale for a limited time for $0.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Have you got Wood Camera? Share what you think about it in the comments below.

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"Photo App Focus: Wood Camera." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Swipe is a new app allows you to add beautiful typography to your images with a simple swipe of your finger. Select from over 100 fonts, adjust size, color, transparency, rotation, and alignment.

I had a chance to have a look at the app. I’ve also got some promo codes to give away this weekend. Keep reading for more. >>>

Swipe is a pretty slick, easy to use app for adding typography and text to your images. You simply set your type’s baseline with the swipe of a finger and enter text. Swipe has over 100 fonts and it’s one of the nicer collections of typefaces available on iPhone. The emphasis on the typefaces is good-looking and usable, not cheesy and puppies. There’s even a great-looking adjustable drop shadow. Nice!

Swipe is very responsive. Moving text lines was as easy as grab and move. Even my large fingers didn’t have any problems. Changing any aspect of the text line is easy. Simply double tap the text line to bring up the editing window, where you can edit text, font, size, transparency and rotation. The app even has a snap-to guide in case your swipes aren’t as accurate as you would like. It’s a nicely done app and one of the more easy to use ones for iPhone for creating some good-looking typographic effects. You can do much more with Swipe than just watermark images.

Swipe shares to all the major photo sharing networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It saves the image in its original resolution. No pixel loss. It strips out most EXIF info, though, including Geotags.

Swipe is only $0.99. It’s a Universal app and is designed for both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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Swipe Giveaway

This weekend, I’ve got several promo codes for Swipe to give away. To be eligible to win a copy, simply enter using the giveaway widget below. If you follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll have additional chances for a free copy.

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Monday, January 21, 2013. Winners will be determined by Random.org. One code per reader, please.

Winners will be notified by email, Facebook message or Twitter direct message — be sure to check your spam filter. If you enter, be sure your email info is correct or your code will go to someone else. Your email address is used for contest entry and for contacting the winning entrants only. We will not use or sell your email address for any other purpose.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(If you’re having trouble viewing the giveaway widget on a mobile device, try viewing this page in landscape mode on your iPhone.)

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Big thanks to developer Dana Shakiba for sharing the promo codes for this giveaway.

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"Swipe: A New iPhone Typography App and We’ve Got Promo Codes!." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Vint B&W and ClearCam, two of iPhoneography’s oldest apps got updates this week. I covered ClearCam earlier today. I was told that there would be additional development on Vint B&W, but the last update was years ago. Better late than never.

Vint B&W (not to be confused with the different Vintage B&W) got a new update this week. It sports a new interface, tools, icon, and name. It’s now called Vint B&W MII. The update is bound to make a lot of old iPhoneographers happy in a nostalgic sort of way. How does the update stack up? Keep reading to find out. >>>

Vint B&W was truly one of the classic iPhoneography apps. It was one of the earliest photo apps in the App Store. In fact, until this update, you could run it on any iPhone using iOS 2.1 or newer. That’s old!

When nearly every other black & white photo app was simply desaturating a color image, Vint B&W was one of the first to make black & white photography look appealing on the iPhone. The conversion algorithm it used gave richer blacks, deeper shadows, nicer contrast, and I swear I saw a hint of a vignette. My guess is that it was the first photo app to use a color filter to convert to black & white many years before that became fashionable. The original was just a camera that shot then saved your photo in black & white.

Vint B&W MII is not only an update, but adds new features to the highly regarded original app. Vint B&W MII seems to be a complete makeover of the classic app except for the excellent black & white conversion algorithm. On the balance, it’s a good makeover. There’s give and take to this new version of the app.

The new update no longer uses Apple’s built-in camera. It now has its own basic camera. It’s now a very basic, bare bones camera with no flash, no front camera and no zoom. The camera now shows a live preview in the viewfinder. The app’s built-in camera also only saves images at 2592×1944, about 5MP. There are definitely better cameras available.

Vint B&W MII now lets you import images from your Camera Roll. That’s where this app shines. You can import a photo taken with any photo app and give it the great black & white look of this classic photo app. The tonal qualities, the contrast — it’s all the same as the classic version of this app. The app no longer seems to add the subtle vignette, but the black & white conversion is still great. Imported images are saved at full resolution, including the 8MP of an iPhone 5 and 4S. Vint B&W MII still does not save EXIF data.

Unlike Hueless, Simply B&W, or Monochromia, there are no options or settings for the black & white conversion. That makes the app super easy to use, but more limited than other app choices. Fortunately, whatever Vint B&W MII does, it looks great.

It’s good to see Vint B&W MII updated and back in the App Store. It’s a true piece of iPhoneography retro in an art form with very little retro of its own. The update is free to all previous owners of Vint B&W. The new app is $1.99 for everyone else.

I hope Vint B&W does well, simply for nostalgia’s sake, but there’s a lot more excellent competition in the black & white conversion apps. Photo apps like Simply B&W and MonoPhix do a lot more than Vint B&W MII or than any black & white photo app from years ago.

Vint B&W MII is a welcome update to this classic app. The black & white conversion is still among the best available. It’s easy to use and everything about it is just about automatic. Other apps may have passed it by, but it’s a good simple app for creating one beautiful effect.

Vint B&W MII is $1.99. It’s a Universal app that works great on iPhone or iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"iPhone Classics: Vint B&W Updated." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

A Couple of Classic iPhoneography Apps Get Surprising Updates

ClearCam and Vint B&W, two of iPhoneography’s oldest apps got surprising updates this week — surprising in that they were even updated at all. I’d seriously thought that both apps were end-of-lifed and I’m glad to see any development continue on both of these.

I’ll be covering Vint B&W in a separate post. The ClearCam update isn’t groundbreaking any more than it was were when it was brand now, but it’s gotten performance enhancements, bug fixes and now works nicely on the latest iPhones and iOS. Keep reading for more! >>>

ClearCam – When It Absolutely Positively Has To Be Big

ClearCam by Occipital is a camera app that promises clearer, sharper and sometimes larger images from any iPhone. It claims to eliminate the blur without “missing the moment”. It does so without waiting for an anti-shake setting to kick in. It claims to take clearer, sharper pictures with twice the resolution in enhanced mode.

Quick history lesson. ClearCam predates the App Store. Originally, it was only available in Cydia on jailbroken iPhones for about $10. ClearCam JB really did some amazing things to images — sharpening, enlarging, reducing noise. It created very impressive results on an old, muddy, noisy original iPhone camera.

It still does, even on the new 8MP iPhone 5. ClearCam is a camera app that shoots in two modes. Quick Mode shoots four exposures in rapid succession, analyzes them and saves the sharpest, clearest one to your camera roll.

That’s pretty cool in itself, but where the magic happens is in Enhanced Mode. There, ClearCam shoots six exposures quickly then stores them to a queue for you to later perform alignment and enhancing. The end result will be a great looking 18MP image shot with your iPhone. This workflow gets you back to shooting in about 6 seconds on an iPhone 5.

Enhanced Mode is not very fast, but it does some amazing things to your image. It’s a two pass process. First, the six images are automatically aligned. Then, they are combined and enhanced. This function preserves the detail and sharpness while minimizing the noise. Both of these functions need to be started by the user. I’m not sure why they have never been automated, but my hunch is that there is that the iPhone’s CPU is being asked to do a lot of work and it’s best for the user to choose when that’s done, rather than be at the mercy of the app.

Enhanced images are huge — 18 MP on an iPhone 5 and 4S. They are still sharp and vibrant. Even at the larger size, details look crisp and free from the pixelization of upsampling. There are no halos like those found in multi-image HDR photos. Images shot with ClearCam are sharp, vibrant, and BIG. Because of the number of exposures Enhanced Mode requires, it’s best suited for static subjects. Quick Mode, however, is ideal for capturing the best exposure of a moving subject.

ClearCam sample image showing detail area

ClearCam 18MP test image, detail

Apple Camera 8MP image, detail

Click to enlarge the two sample images above. The Apple Camera enlargement really shows the image breaking up and pixelating much more than in the same area from the ClearCam image. That clarity comes at a size premium, though. Each 18MP Enhanced image will use about 9MB of space on your iPhone, compared to the 1-2MB of the images from Apple’s Camera.

ClearCam works great on the new iPhones, but where it can really work some great magic is on devices with older or lower-resolution cameras. ClearCam can dramatically improve the quality of everyday photos from an older iPad and iPod Touch — the devices with the very low sub-2MP cameras. While it won’t perform miracles, shooting with ClearCam not only increases image size from these low-res devices, it also visibly improves image quality, helping to minimize the muddiness and noise that are characteristic of these cameras.

The previous update broke on my iPhone 4S. This update works smoothly, quickly and flawlessly on my iPhone 5 running the latest iOS.

I’m really glad to see ClearCam back in the App Store. I asked Jeffrey Powers from Occipital about the future of ClearCam. He answered “If the public reaction is good and sales improve, we have a lot of other fun ideas up our sleeve.  ”

Once again, I recommend ClearCam if you are interested in taking supersized iPhone photos. The image quality you will get in-camera is unparalleled. If you own an iPad or iPod Touch, this is an essential purchase. It’s the single best camera app you can buy to easily improve the quality of your camera.

ClearCam is on sale now for a limited time for $0.99. It’s normally $1.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation), iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, iPad (4th generation), iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular (4th generation), iPad mini and iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"iPhone Classics: ClearCam Updated? Yes!." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Plastica
Version 1.0
Price: Free, introductory. Regular price, ?

Bottom Line: I don’t like it. It tries too much to be Hipstamatic, but offers nothing new or original and lacks Hipstamatic’s finesse

Although I don’t use it as much as I did in the past, PictureShow was one of my favorite retro, analog photo apps. The app gets a lot right — interface, effects, frames — and there’s really nothing like it in the App Store.

It’s hard to believe that new photo app Plastica is from the same developer. There’s nothing original about this app. Everything about it reminds me of Hipstamatic, except while I was testing this app, I kept thinking how Hipstamatic does everything so much better. >>>

Plastica is a blatant copy of Hipstamatic. I don’t necessarily think it’s a terrible one per se, but there’s a lot I don’t like about it.

First, the default black plastic camera case and reduced size square viewfinder is a direct ripoff. The look, layout and textures are too close to be a mere “nod.” The Haus of Hipstamatic and their attorneys may not like this one. It also makes me feel like I’ve downloaded one of the scammy knockoff apps, even though this comes from a respected developer. The viewfinder flies out larger just like Hipstamatic, except it’s not as responsive when trying to collapse it. I ended up wasting several shots every time I tried to close the larger viewer.

Plastica has a film and lens filter system that is also very similar to Hipstamatic, only more clunky in my opinion. Instead of simply selecting a film and lens combination, you have to build a “camera.” This is similar to Hipstamatic’s presets, except that managing all the various combinations will quickly get bloated and cumbersome. One of the good things about not being forced to use a preset is that combinations you don’t like are quickly and easily changed. One thing missing from the lens/film UI is Hipstamatic’s excellent “Shake to Randomize” feature, which is the setting many Hipstafiends use most. Oh, and the murky green tints of the Boris lens is a ripoff of the John S lens (minus the grit and texture that makes John S. classic).

The film and frame effects look a lot like Hipstamatic’s for the most part. Users of both apps will see a lot of similarities. They do look good until you look at them closely. Plastica’s filters lack vibrance, lushness and much of the randomness in the aberrations that makes Hipstamatic images seem really rich and analog.

The App Store description says that 14 lenses, 12 films, 11 bodies and 11 stickers or camera textures are provided. That’s misleading. Most of them are available as a separate in-app purchase. The app actually comes standard with 4 lenses, 3 films, 2 bodies, and 3 stickers. It’s currently missing from the App Store description but you can buy more lenses, films and cases just like … oh, never mind. They are available in several in-app purchases each running $0.99 a piece. Each has several lenses, films, cases and case textures or a combination of each. Buying the entire kit will set you back about $3 or $4 and makes Plastica on par with Hipstamatic from early 2011.

I don’t like the lack of native resolution support. Why couldn’t they nick that feature from Hipstamatic? Images save at a maximum 2048×2048 — lower on an iPhone 3GS. Plastica doesn’t save much EXIF data and none of the Geotag location data. Like Hipstamatic, Plastica is a camera only. You can’t import images from your photo library to process them. This is one area where Plastica could have differentiated itself but didn’t.

Hipsta… I mean Plastica has a pretty good recovery time on an iPhone 5. I was able to shoot about 2 exposures per second and shoot a lot of them. The app caches images while processing very well. Even testing the app under extreme shooting conditions, it didn’t crash. I beat it up pretty well and it held up.

There’s a per-roll limit that concerns me. Each “camera” is limited to 64 shots, including any that you delete. This is similar to Hipstamatic Disposable’s rolls except that images are shared immediately instead at the end of the roll. At least you don’t need to buy more rolls of film when it’s finished, like the much-reviled Lomora and Hipstamatic-Disposable apps. You simply need to “rebuild” that camera again. Cameras also serve as the app’s albums, so this could start to make the number of albums bloated if you shoot a lot of photos.

There’s a big green shutter release button instead of a yellow one. Even the icons are similar.

Under different circumstances, I probably would have given this app at least three stars, but Plastica tries too hard to be a copy of one of iPhoneography’s most iconic apps. Points off for that. If you’re going to try this hard to nick a well-known photo app, you’ve got to hit it out of the park. The only thing this first release manages to do better is be less expensive.

It’s a poor-man’s Hipstamatic, where Hipstamatic is the new Cadillac and Plastica is a used Ford. I still like PictureShow, but I think that developer Graf may have misstepped with this one. As long as Hipstamatic is available in the App Store, Plastica is an unnecessary app.

Plastica is introductory priced at Free with several in-app purchases. It’s not optimized for the larger screen of the iPhone 5 and it’s not a Universal app, although it will run on an iPad with a camera in compatibility mode. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 6.0 or later.

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It’s a free app for now. Am I missing something here? Let us know what you think about the app in the comments below.

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"Photo App Review: Plastica – An Unnecessary Hipstamatic Knock-off." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Not all photo apps save EXIF data on an iPhone. In fact, a lot of them don’t. We have a list of many of those that do on our Photo App Resolution page. The iPhone camera didn’t always support this feature but since its introduction on iOS, it’s become a popular feature among iPhoneographers.

EXIF-fi (Photo GPS/EXIF viewer and editor) is a new, free photo app that quickly and easily allows you to edit or add some of the EXIF data that’s either in or missing from your images. Keep reading for more on EXIF data on iOS and this app. >>>

You may hear a lot of talk about EXIF data in iPhone photos. EXIF data refers to the data that the camera (or app) saves in an image. On an iPhone, it often includes camera info, shutter speed, device ISO number used for capture, the F stop and other data including a Geotag of where the image was taken. In many cases, the app will also add extra information about the filters used. Both Hipstamatic and Popsicolor use these tags.

EXIF-fi is a new free iPhone utility that lets you view, edit or add EXIF data that may be incorrect or missing. It’s a lean, easy interface that allows you to add or edit date, photographer and copyright information to your photos. Most photo apps don’t save this info in the image and this adds another layer of copyright protection to your photographs. This is different than adding a visible watermark to your image as this info is stored as part of your photo’s metadata. You can also add or edit app information, including app used and filters in case you want to keep that recipe a secret.

EXIF-fi can also add or change missing or incorrect location data in an image. To add or change location data, simply tap on the map and drop a pin onto the correct location. There is no need to enter clunky geo-coordinates. You can do this to either add or move a Geotag.

The app won’t let you edit all EXIF data. Camera data is not editable. If it’s not already in the image, there’s no way to add it with this app. Also, the copyright field is obscured when the keyboard slides up (which prompted me to write a how-to on the copyright symbol earlier this week).

The free version is fully functional and lets you edit one image at a time. There’s a $0.99 in-app purchase that lets you batch edit images easily. The in-app purchase will also disable any iAds. The first release of the app is ad-free, but I’m certain this will be fixed in an update. EXIF-fi saves images at their original resolution.

There are other iOS utilities that let you edit EXIF data and Geotags in your photos, but EXIF-fi is easy to use and fully functional as a free app.

EXIF-fi (Photo GPS/EXIF viewer and editor) is a free download with a $0.99 in-app purchase. It is not a Universal app, but will work on an iPad in compatibility mode. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Edit or Add EXIF Data With EXIF-fi." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

Instant: The Polaroid Instant Camera
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
Price: $1.99. Introductory priced at $0.99 for a limited time.

Bottom Line: I like it. It does a lot right. By fixing a bug or two and building on its strengths, it could be a really fun fauxlaroid.

In their day, Polaroids were the analog equivalent of instant lo-fi photography. Since the Polaroid company began licensing the name and instant film aesthetics, many iPhone photo apps have tried to capitalize on that nostalgia by recreating the trademark frames, looks and sounds. There have been both great and bad official Polaroid apps.

Here is my hands-on review of Instant: The Polaroid Instant Camera, the latest official fauxlaroid photo app. It’s got some very cool features including some not found in other instant camera apps, but some areas where it still needs work. >>>

Instant for iPhone is the newest sibling of Instant: The Polaroid Instant Photos for iPad and Instant: The Polaroid Maker for Mac OS. Like Polamatic, another Polaroid app that’s a fave of mine, Instant is licensed by Polaroid so the looks, shapes and sounds are authentic and fairly accurate.

For the most part, Instant’s user interface is pretty slick. Instant mimics the workflow of a real classic Polaroid instant camera, with realistic visual and sound effects.

You can shoot with Instant’s own camera or import photos. The camera is created with the looks, textures and sounds of a retro plastic camera. After capturing a shot, the undeveloped “print” slides out from a slot in the top of the screen with the sound of an old SX-70 camera. A nice touch! For me, the viewfinder is annoyingly small, making composition a point-and-guess production. The classic retro app Hipstamatic pioneered the tiny viewfinder but it’s had an optional larger viewer for some time now. Although I prefer to import images, like Hipstamatic, shooting in Instant is fun!

Instant comes with a great set of filters to add unique, realistic touches to your images. Rather than spit out a cookie-cutter fauxlaroid, Instant lets you change the film tyope of the image, add vignette to the photo and do a lot of cool things to change to look of the frame.

Instant comes with 30 retro film effects. The first ten are outstanding and worth the app purchase alone! They the “money” filters. These do a great job of recreating the looks of classic Polaroid films, including several variations of T600 and Time Zero films. I remember the tonal qualities of these films could vary based on a lot of factors, but these first ten film effects look great. They seem very close to the color and tonal qualities I remember the old SX-70 film stocks to be. The other 20 are the standard selection of non-specific, obscurely named, retro-style film effects. They look good, but are not special like Instant’s Polaroid effects are. Unlike Polamatic, another great Polaroid app, there is no lightbox. Once an image is edited and saved, you can’t go back and make changes.

Everything about this app seems to be adjustable. You can adjust the intensity of the film effect. One of the things I really like about this Polaroid app is that it allows you to add and adjust anomalies in the emulsion. Dirty roller bars or a weird batch of film could cause unique streaks to show up in the emulsion of a Polaroid and Instant recreates that. You can also increase vignette and add a nicely subtle amount of film grain.

Instant’s adjustable frame effects

The border is another trademark of the classic Polaroid and the frame of the SX-70 is so classic, it’s been trademarked. Instant does an outstanding job of recreating the look of this classic frame. The app also has a unique set of tools which allow you to customize the look of the frame into countless variations. There are tools to change the color of the border and add crosshatch texture, grime, wrinkle and fingerprints effects, adding realistic damage to the image that would naturally happen to a Polaroid print.

The frame effects look great and are the best available in this class of app. Each effect has a slider to adjust the intensity. The crosshatch effect mimics the texture of the frame that often appeared as part of the manufacturing process. The stain and wrinkle effects add the look of grime and frame damage that come with age and handling. The fingerprint effect is pretty cool. Fingerprint intensity can be adjusted to make it look natural. There are enough fingerprint templates to give them a feel of randomness.

Filters, effects, frames — one thing I really like is that you get everything with this purchase. In this first release, anyway, there are no additional in-app purchases.

By individually adjusting any or all of the effects, you can create real-looking, one-of-a-kind instant-style photos. Generally, nearly everything about Instant is designed to create a unique-looking Polaroid-style print and the app does an excellent job.

Like other instant print apps, Instant gives you a tool to add text to the chemical tab of the frame. It comes with 10 handwritten-style fonts. This is the weakest tool in the app and didn’t work for me at all. Type previews onscreen correctly but is misaligned and placed over the image in the actual output. The font selection is okay, but most of them lack weight. I only found one or two in the selection that I liked enough to use. Entering too many characters forces the type off the edge of the image. It doesn’t automatically shrink to size or wrap it. Editing text is clunky and frustrating. The text entry box wasn’t very responsive for me when trying to edit.

Instant supports high-ish resolution, but not full res. Images are saved at 1540×1848 pixels — about 2.8MP. It strips out nearly all EXIF data, including Geotags. In a Polaroid-style photo app, I am not put off by lack of full resolution support if it’s high enough to be usable and printable, which Instant certainly is. SX-70 prints are about 3.5″ x 4.25″ and for me, enlarging them much beyond that looks unnatural. If you choose, you can enlarge Instant prints up to 10.25″ x 12.25″ (or larger) and they’ll still look good. Instant photos will look great when shared on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and other photo sharing sites.

Instant misses in a few areas. I don’t like the generic, obscurely-named retro-style film effects. I understand that they add value to the app, but at least name the filters something a little more descriptive and relevant to photography. And when did X-Pro stop being a chemical process and become an expired film? I don’t mind a small viewfinder — I love Hipstamatic’s and still shoot with its tiny viewer most of the time — but Instant’s is just too small for my taste. Without even an option for a larger or a flyaway viewfinder, framing is more guesswork than it needs to be when shooting with this app. The text feature needs a lot of fixing and improvement. There is only one wrinkled frame damage overlay. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue for me except everything else about this app has more options and the perception of randomness. Some users may not like the lack of full resolution support.

Overall, Instant is a good app with a lot of great features and a very good Polaroid app with the potential to be exciting. Overall, it’s a great throwback to not only a classic era in analog photography, but a solid photo app that successfully recreates the classic “instant photo” experience for iPhone.

Instant is $0.99 in the App Store for a limited time. It’ll go up to its normal price of $1.99 in a few days. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

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"Photo App Review: Instant – A Solid New Polaroid App." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.

A tripod mount is one of the best purchases you can make to help stabilize your iPhone for clearer photography. It’s essential for long-exposure photography. Currently, there are still relatively few accessories available for the iPhone 5, and there are few options for mounting an iPhone 5 to a tripod.

The ANYCASE Phone Tripod Mount is a great accessory. This versatile piece of gear lets you easily mount an iPhone 5, iPhone 4s/4 or just about any smartphone to a tripod with or without a case. It’s a slick little device. Keep reading for my full review. >>>

The ANYCASE Phone Tripod Mount is precision machined from aluminum making it really sturdy, yet lightweight. The ANYCASE is larger than the popular Glif Tripod Mount by Studio Neat, but not by much. It’s about 4.5″ long and the mounting screw makes it 1.375″ deep. ANYCASE is fairly low profile and will easily fit into a pocket, purse or backpack.

The ANYCASE is more than an iPhone 5 tripod mount. It’s designed to be a universal mount — it’s not limited to any one device, making it a great purchase if you have more than one type of phone in your household. Rather than a custom fit for only one style of iPhone, the design of the ANYCASE is more practical. Your phone sits in the frame and is held securely in place by simply a mounting screw to the back of the device. The ANYCASE has a has a 1/4″-­20 thread that fits any standard tripod or camera mount.

The ANYCASE will fit any device up to about 2/3″ thick. We have a mix of iPhone 2G, 4 series and iPhone 5 phones here at the house — our collection spans the iPhone line. One of the things that I really like about the ANYCASE is that it not only works with any phone, but that it fits most iPhone cases as well.

While a “naked” (caseless) iPhone is a thing of beauty, I prefer the scratch and bump protection of an iPhone case. My current case is a cool, slim, rubberized Incipio case for my iPhone. A Glif mount would require me to slip my iPhone out of the case before using it. However, my iPhone and case fit nicely and securely into the ANYCASE mount. The ANYCASE mount also worked well with a Trygger iPhone 4 case and a Mophie Juice case which is fairly bulky and adds quite a bit of thickness to the iPhone 4. In fact, the only iPhone cases ever made that I can think of that wouldn’t work with this mount would be some of the very bulky OtterBox cases.

Protective rubber pad on the ANYCASE mounting tabs

“Won’t it scratch my iPhone?” Under normal use, no, it shouldn’t. When I first saw the Kickstarter project for this accessory, I was worried that this metal tripod clip would scratch and damage the case and screen of my iPhone. The ANYCASE uses three 3M rubber pads which not only provide a secure grip of your device, but also protect the screen and edge of the case from being scratched by the mount. The holding screw is nylon with a protective tip and didn’t scratch or damage my iPhone with normal use. The grip of the ANYCASE is at least as good a Glif. Because my Incipio case is rubberized, it actually felt more secure in the mount.

The ANYCASE blocks none of the iPhone’s buttons, lenses or flash. The Home button is easy accessible and both volume buttons are available unobstructed for use as shutter buttons with apps that support Volume Shutter. The two front mounting tabs block very little of the screen on an iPhone 5. UPDATE 01.06.13: ANYCASE have made a running change in the design, and now the iPhone 5 screen is completely unobstructed.

I really like the ANYCASE tripod mount and it’s become an essential addition to my camera bag. Its small size makes it easy to carry. It’s a solid, well-crafted piece that will not only work great for the iPhones and other smartphone cameras you use now, but its design makes it useful for a broad range of current and future devices. The ANYCASE is not quite as sexy as a Studio Neat Glif, but as a tripod mount, it’s a lot more versatile.

The ANYCASE Universal iPhone Tripod Adapter is $34.95 and is available from Amazon.com (Click here).

For more information and a great backstory, visit the ANYCASE website.

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Disclosure: Life In LoFi is an Amazon.com affiliate. We get a small spiff if you buy this accessory through this link which helps keep this blog going and is very much appreciated. That’s not the reason I recommend this accessory. I really like the ANYCASE. =M=

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"Gear Review: ANYCASE – A Slick Tripod Mount For iPhone 5 or Any Smartphone." originally appeared on Life in LoFi: iPhoneography. © 2013 LifeInLoFi.com. All rights reserved.