iOS app developer Mr B Ware is closing up shop. With it, one of my favorite photo apps, Simply B&W, will be end-of-lifed.
The Mr B Ware developer account with Apple expires February 12, so all three apps of his photo apps — Simply B&W, Posterize, and Pixel It — will be free until then. I’ve got more info and App Store links after the jump. >>>
Mr B Ware is/was a one-man shop — a side project of Brian Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy explains his decision to close up shop on a post on the Mr B Ware website.
“In August I accepted a Software Engineering Manager position at an amazing company… that also afforded my wife the position she wanted, “Stay at Home Mom.” Kennedy says.
“Over the last month I’ve thought long and hard about the future of Mr B Ware and yesterday I decided it’s best to close my doors. I had lots of ideas about improvements and additions for Simply B&W and also had a few ideas for new apps (one was very close to being finished) but I don’t see myself having the time to see these out.”
Simply B&W in particular was innovative in its time yet elegantly simple. It was one of the first black & white photo apps to use colored filters to convert from color to grayscale, much like using colored gels on black & white film to block colors of the light spectrum and to enhance the look of the black & white. This often makes for a much better black & white conversion that just desaturating an image like many photo apps still do. It’s an awesome app and is my go-to color-to-black & white app.
Posterize is an app for easily creating two and three-color posterized photos. You can easily adjust the thresholds and select the colors within the image, giving you a lot of control over the color conversion.
Pixel It is another easy-to-use photo app for converting your images into 8-bit images. These are true digital lo-fi images, adding the qualities of an early color computer monitor or an old game console. You can create pixelated and chunky images with very sharp color gradations.
All three apps will continue to run fine on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch for the foreseeable future, but as the iOS is updated, there may come a time when an iOS update breaks one or more of the apps.
I wish Brian luck in his (very awesome) new city and success in his new job. Although the Mr B Ware portfolio wasn’t as expansive as other app developers, you made some awesome apps, Brian. Thank you for taking the time to make and update the cool apps you created. Enjoy your spare time and I look forward to seeing your iPhoneography.
All three Mr B Ware apps are FREE until February 12, 2013.
Simply B&W | 
Posterize |
Pixel It |
=M=
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