Snap Spot: Create The Ultimate Vintage Photos With Vintique

In the last issue of Snap Spot we took a look at Photojojo’s Camalapse, and some time lapse photography apps to go along with it, and the week before that we featured the awesome iPhone Rangefinder case (stay tuned for an in-depth review, by the way. It’s coming soon!) So far, we’ve stuck to product information, so I wanted to do something a bit different today - take a look at an app. Today’s Snap Spot is all about Vintique, yet another photo filter app available in the App Store. There are hundreds of photo apps available, but can we ever really have enough fun filters and effects? I have three and a half folders full of photography apps on my phone, but there’s always room for one more. Vintique is a lot like photo apps that you’re already familiar with. It has some limited photo editing tools, allowing you to center, rotate and scale your photos, but there’s no dedicated crop functionality, which prevents the app from competing with more robust offerings like Snapseed (a must own favorite of mine). While it also has tools for the standard brightness/contrast, vibrance, temperature and tint, exposure, and more, these tools are, once again, not quite up to par with what other apps bring to the table. Snapseed and Photogene 2 are hard to compete with in that department, but it is nice to have the features at your fingertips if you need a quick adjustment and don’t want to switch apps. If you’re looking to buy this app just for those features, I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you’ve exhausted the filters in other apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic, Vintique is great because it has a slew of retro style filters that will delight your inner hipster. Vintique is not a subtle app. Filters are heavily skewed towards the yellow range, which will make your portraits glow and your landscapes dreamy. It’s also got several filters that will give your photos a strong vintage look. If you want your photos to look like you took them a hundred years ago, Vintique can do that. All of the 32 vintage filters have cutesy names, like pinky day, old times, heaven, and sweet dream. In that respect, and with the look of some of the filters, the app really reminded me of 100 Cameras in 1. The drawback, though, to these filters is that there are no adjustment sliders. Want a more subtle look? Want to crank up that effect opacity? Vintique says no. You must go full on vintage, no halfsies, no wimping out. You can, however, add on to your filters with vignetting (darkening of the edges of your photos) and frames. There are a lot of selections in these categories, and while some are fairly corny, you can get some nice effects using vignetting in the right way, or adding a tasteful, simple frame. Of course, you can also create the most overly dramatic hipster photo ever made, so use caution with Vintique’s photo filters and additional effects. Photos that you’ve finished can be directly imported into Instagram for sharing, or sent to Twitter, Facebook, and a few other compatible photo apps. On the negative side, this app exports at a low resolution, but on the plus side, it’s fine for Instagram. Vintique cropped my 2592x1936 iPhone image down to 1224x1224 when exporting in “high resolution” mode, so this is not the app to use if you want to print your iPhone photography masterpieces, but it’s okay for online use. So should you drop $0.99 on yet another photography app? Yes if you’re an avid Instagram user looking to add to your filter collection, but no if you’re looking for subtle effects to add to print quality photos. I’ve added Vintique to my arsenal of photography apps, and I will continue to use it on landscapes and pictures of people, which is what it’s really best for. Want even more retro photo apps? Check out our list. If you download Vintique, let me know your opinion. As always, if you have an idea for a product or an app for a future Snap Spot posting, make sure to get in touch! [gallery columns="2"]