An app in the App Store Top 25 gets more visibility and more important to the developers, many more sales. Top 25 photo app Vintique was recently updated. It’s currently sitting at the number 18 spot.The new update is better, but it’s still not better than FX Photo Studio, Hueless, or LensLight — apps ranked just slightly lower in sales on the charts.
The big new feature in the 1.2 update is higher resolution. Not high resolution, but still higher.
Vintique is a square format, low-res Instagram companion app. It applies vintage and faux-retro effects to your photos. It has 32 vintage filters, 49 frames, 19 different vignette styles and a good set of image editing tools — surprisingly better than many others in this class of app. You can read my full review of the app here.
The new update now supports both 612×612 px and 1224×1224 px image sizes. It now tops out at 1.5 megapixels. Images created with Vintique will now look better when shared to Facebook, Flickr and other image sharing services. Not horrible and definitely more usable for making prints and enlargements. If you are looking to print out an image shot with Vintique, see our guide to printing iPhone photos here to see how large you can safely print.
Frames are not supported for high resolution images. Hi-res support is planned for a future version. I wasn’t a fan of the frame set to begin with. I found them pretty cheesy and not very useful. That’s just me and I think it’s a good choice to rework the frames for higher resolution rather than simply rez them up in-app.
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this. When reader Miki Ballard contacted the developer, they sounded pretty insistent and cavalier that they were fine with 612×612 and the resolution wasn’t likely to change. Images look a tiny bit fuzzy and resampled (click the samle image above to see a full-size sample), but kudos to this developer for at least moving image size in the right direction.
If you have no other vintage effects photo app, Vintique has some good vintage effects. The higher resolution makes this update better for a broader range of users. The recent updates definitely improve the usability of the app. It’s not my favorite app, but for an Instagram front end, Vintique can create unique effects that aren’t found in the Instagram stock set.
Vintique is currently $0.99. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad.Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
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