Percolator is the Retro, coffee-inspired, modernist photo app that adds colorful, unique, geometric effects to your photos. I reviewed the original release here. I loved it then and subsequent releases have improved the app signficantly.
Percolator 2.0 has been “brewing” for a while. It’s the biggest update yet to the app. The update includes new “brews”, new controls, and some spiffy new animation. It’s a great, fun update packed with new features, but still retains the ease of use that made the previous versions great to work in.
The full set of new features is below, but among the highlights are the improved processing speed of the app — a pretty big feat considering all of the math that’s going on under the hood. Also, there’s some great new animation that assembles the image after it’s done processing. It serves no other function than it looks cool. Works for me.
The myriad new tools are rolled into the app’s familiar interface without adding clutter. New “brews” are simply added to the settings dials, but the new fine-tune settings are in the new fly-out menus that have been added in this version. They’re hidden way until you need them, keeping the interface clutter free. There are now a lot of new options for fine-tuning your creation.
UPDATE 12.13.11 @16:30 CST: Percolator 2.0 saves at the same 2048×2048 pixels resolution that the previous version did on an iPhone 4 and 4S — that’s 4 MP. Not full res, but certainly usable for most print enlargements.
Percolator 2.0 is now a Universal app, meaning it takes full advantage of the device it’s on — iPhone, iPod Touch or the larger screen real estate of the iPad. The new update no longer supports older devices running iOS 3.x.
The previous release was fun. The new update is faster, better than previous versions, and more fun.
Percolator 2.0 is on sale now for $1.99 — a dollar off the regular price. It’s a free update for current users. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.
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From the press release, here’s all that’s new:
Percolator 2.0 is a substantial upgrade to the popular circle-based mosaic photo app and expands the possibilities for “percolation†in many exciting directions. Now a Universal app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, Percolator 2.0 sports finer control, new effects, and shorter percolation time for better images, faster.
Percolator’s elegant, retro-inspired user interface has been given extra attention, showing several innovations & refinements:
New Grind, Brew, and Serve controls are cleverly hidden away until they’re needed, keeping the unique dial-based user interface as streamlined as possible on both iPhone and iPad screens. These new dials give the user extra control over detail, transparency, color and texture. New filters and effects, like Treble, Superstar, and SteepiaTM, and textures ranging from Paper Cup to Clouds, extend the creative possibilities.
Watching your photos brew just got more animated with new visual effects that reveal the percolated image–as circles bubble and boil up, they transform into the final image with a flourish.
Percolator 2.0 now features in-app sharing through Twitter, Facebook, and email. Each image created by Percolator contains a metadata string with a human-readable description of the recipe. This string is honored by iPhoto and Flickr, so users can remember and share the settings of their favorite percolations.
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UPDATE 12.13.11 @16:30 CST: My previous report that the output resolution of the 2.0 update had dropped to 3.2 MP was incorrect. It’s been deleted from this post. My apologies for any confusion. =M=
