Review: Fat Booth & Aging Booth - How Would You Look Fat, Old, Or Both?
by Staff Writer
June 30, 2010
Overview
Fat Booth and Aging Booth are made by the same people, and are practically the same app with one making you look fat, and the other old. They're similar enough to review together. You begin by taking a picture with your iPhone camera or selecting one from your camera roll.
Then the app detects the face, and you align markers to the eyes and mouth plus the chin in Fat Booth. Then a few second later you will have a fat or old version of you, your friends or anyone you have a picture of.
Features
The app let's you share the morphed photos via e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook. After the photo is transformed you can simply shake to switch between the before and after. Note that these are two separate apps for $0.99 each and not one that makes you fat and old.
The Good
Fat Booth is funny there is no doubt about that. Whether it's your own picture, a friend’s, a family member or anyone it's hilarious to see them obese. Though I must add it's much more humorous when the person is thin.
The app is super simple to use, and it can be done at any time with no internet connection required. It can also be done on any photo, so you don't even need a camera. You can even take celebrity photos, and morph them too.
The app detects the face well, and then it's super simple to place the eyes, mouth, and chin markers. It only takes a few seconds to get the finished product, and then you can shake to switch from the after to the before.
Aging Booth isn't as funny because it makes you look so terrible. It's made exactly the same though, but it even has less use than fat booth which is already limited. Aging Booth can really help against people you don't like though.
Both apps will bring a smile to your face a couple times, but it's up to you if it's worth actually paying for a couple smiles and not a whole bunch of smiles like other apps. The more photos you're willing to do this with the more enjoyable it can be especially if you have the person right there to laugh at it, and they're a willing participant.
The best aspect is that these morphs look pretty realistic, and the mechanism works quite well. I would have to say that changing a picture to be fat, and then using the fat picture in aging booth to make you look fat and old is the best. Fat and old of the same pic makes it look the most authentic of time passing.
The Bad
Both apps suffer from the same fate which is that they're overly simplistic. Once you morph a couple pictures you get the gist of the app, and really get bored with it. You tell right away it just stretches the image so no matter which person it is they end up looking the same whether you make them fat or old. When you have a picture of someone, and they're by any kind of lines like door frames and such you can see how the image is stretched. It really looks poor when you see the lines behind a person suddenly curved around their head in the before and after shot. Another problem is that you need a front facing shot without too much smile or hair in the eyes or otherwise it will look blocky in parts.
Aging Booth isn't nearly as fun as fat booth because it's not a traditional aging mechanic. You look absolutely horrible as though you're some heavy drug user, and it's simply not fun to share your own image, or morph someone else's. Aging Booth gets repetitive even quicker as every person looks just as terrible.
If you know fat and/or old people this app will not be funny at all to them so there is somewhat limited use. The sharing options are a little buggy with mail sometimes not working on iOS 4, and the keyboard doesn't appear when logging into Twitter unless you tap on password before username.
