I’ve got a new favorite photo app for the iPhone and it’s called PictureShow. I swore by the awesome Camera+ app just a week ago but I wanted to do some crazy image effects lately and PictureShow is so much better when it comes to wild, over-processed stuff. The developers behind Camera+ are somewhat crazy on their own — their app was just yanked from the App Store by Apple since they sneaked in a “banned” feature in their app. The feature was welcomed by the users of the app, you could use the hardware volume sliders as a shutter when taking photos. Apple didn’t like that, at all. They asked developer tap tap tap to remove the “feature” which they didn’t and now the app is gone until they comply with Apple’s rules. Read more about the incident over at TUAW, I don’t wanna talk about it any longer. I’ll just add this: it’s a viral marketing stunt orchestrated by tap tap tap. Hey, this post was supposed to be about PictureShow! OK, Let’s start off with a video. Um, no — let’s not. Their promo video is so badly shot that I refuse to post it. But how will we know what the app is all about? Well, see the pictures above? Compare them to the original files straight from my iPhone 3GS by clicking the “Read More” button. The post continues after that you see. Click it and read the rest — it’s that simple. Trust me. Click it.
So, here are the pictures before being totally destroyed in PictureShow. I’m afraid you’ll have to scroll up and down to be able to fully compare the (in this case) “After & Before” pictures. Kind of like an adventure. Scrolling is a huge part of being on-line and on the computer these days — I’m sure you’re already used to the technique. It’s real easy, try it! Mac and iPad readers can swipe with their fingers. So cool.
If you’d like to you could do more gentle and discreet editing in the app, stuff like adding a soft vignette or simply make it look like it’s scratched and worn. there are 25 photo styles to choose from including the mandatory PopArt, Holga, Retro and Lomo effects. In the upper right corner of the app is the handy “Randomize” button, it’s pretty handy if you run out of inspiration or further editing ideas. Bare in mind though, the button won’t take amazing pictures for you, it simply messes around with what you already shot. You have to take the pictures yourself, the app won’t do more than it’s designed to do which is apply filters and effects to whatever you provide it with. It won’t add delay to your songs and it wont add subtitles or slow motion to your videos. It only does photos. I like that you can edit the color values separately; red, green and blue. You can also mess around with brightness and contrast. There are a bunch of frame styles and stuff like that, they are all useful in one way or the other. It’s really cheap too, maybe they lowered the price to get even more people to buy it now that Camera+ is out of the App Store. Sneaky! Normal price for PictureShow: $1.99. Current super low price: $0.99! It’s totally worth it, trust me. Oh, and thank you for reading all of this. A whole post without correct formatting, all the text just blends into one big mess. Makes your eyes bleed, doesn’t it? You are brave my friend.
Links:
PictureShow | App Store | Site | Flickr Group (not the official one – but the best).
