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UPDATE: Post now includes info about Red Giant’s International Plastic Bullet Photo contest. =M=
I don’t get all the commotion over at iTunes about some band that hasn’t released a new album together in over 40 years….
Okay, enough with the sarcasm. Actually, with all of the hoopla surrounding the cool release of The Beatles’ catalog on iTunes (Go Apple — both of them!), some of the other happenings in the App Store may have been overlooked, including the release of some new app updates. Plastic Bullet Camera 1.2 is one of those apps.
To celebrate the update, Red Giant, the developer of Plastic Bullet are giving away an iPad.
Plastic Bullet Camera from Red Giant Software is a very good toy camera-style app. It randomly applies a variety of color and saturation effects, blurs, vignettes, as well as well rendered, grungy analog-looking borders. It doesn’t recreate the look of any one type of plastic camera like a Diana or a Holga per se, but randomly generates the look of many combinations of cameras, lenses and films. It’s a true electronic lomography app — one that encourages you to explore the “happy accidents†in your photography.
Plastic Bullet doesn’t really get many new features in the 1.2 update. It gets a really cool new icon, high resolution “assets” for devices with retina displays — basically, the icons at the top of the screen are a little sharper. It also now has localization for several new languages. With the number and variety of random effects this app creates, it’s hard to tell if any new filters were added. I don’t think there were.
As far as updates go, this a classic 1.x maintenance update. There’s really little to get excited about except the app itself. I wrote this post not so much to review the update, but to call attention to the app again. With dozens of new photo apps released each week, it’s easy to for an app to get lost in the noise.
There are no filter settings for Plastic Bullet — just a screen refresh. The app does the work, randomly applying some very lush and gorgeous toy camera effects to your photos. It’s easy to use, but as some iPhoneographers have called it, very hypnotic exploring the possibilities for your images.
Despite the lack of new features in this update, it’s still a great photo app. I gave Plastic Bullet four stars in my review of its previous version. It’s an easy to use app that produces great effects. I think it produces among the best toy camera effects available on the iPhone and probably better looking than analog photos taken with the real film toy camera.
If you have the app and haven’t used it in a while, this is just a reminder to dust it off and experiment with it. Since the last update, there have been many other excellent app releases and updates to get distracted by. If you don’t have the app and like toy camera effects, Plastic Bullet is an app you should consider adding to your toolbox.
Plastic Bullet: International Photo Contest
As a nod to the new international localization of the app, Red Giant are celebrating the 1.2 update with the Plastic Bullet: International Contest. Tweet a photo that uses Plastic Bullet, and you could win an iPad or other prizes. This contest ends on November 22nd, at 11:59 PM PST. Winners will be announced by Red Giant a few days after that date. Click here for more full details and contest information on the Plastic Bullet website.
Plastic Bullet works on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 3.0 or newer. It’s $1.99 in the App Store.
=M=
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