Another Potential Tool For iPhone Photographer's Toolbox - picme
picme ($0.99) by iPhonig, LLC is a fun little app for adding filters and effects to your photos.
There's definitely no shortage of photography apps on the iPhone. But these can be some of the funnest apps to experiment with for that amazing looking photo from your otherwise plain looking pictures. picme is another option out there, but is it worth putting in your toolbox?
When the app is launched, it's a fairly simple and self-explanatory screen. The middle area is where your photo will go and the bottom is lined with 17 different effects to apply on your photo. You can either snap a new pic or import a photo from your device.
picme follows the ever-popular square format for your photos. So before you can start editing it, you'll have to crop it first. Once your photo is cropped in a square, you can simply tap on any of the effects along the bottom ribbon to apply it on your photo.
The effects consist of the basics like B&W and Sepia, some contrast filters, tinted filters, warm, cool, and even some frame-like filters. There's a good amount of choice to select from to add a bit of life to your photographs. The frame ones allow you to move the photo around to fit correctly into the border.
What good is a photo app if you can't directly upload it for everyone to see? When you are done applying the effect, you can save/copy the photo to your device Camera Roll or you can send it to a social site like Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. The photo can be emailed as well.
picme is a simple and straightforward app. It's easy to use, and takes no additional learning curve. But the app has its own flaws.
It is disappointing that there is no slider to adjust the strength of some of the effects. Currently you just select one and it's done - there's no customization involved. Effects can't be stacked on top of each other - if you want multiple effects on one photo, you'll have to save and reimport. The image is also not saved to your Camera Roll if you share it to a site, which can be annoying. There should be an autosave option like most other apps have.
The biggest disappointment is probably resolution size. I'm not sure what the actual resolution of saved images are, but from what I can tell, they appear to be very low-quality and definitely not full resolution. While this may be fine for the fun frame effects, I don't think it's fine for regular photos. On the plus side, this makes developing your photos very fast.
I hope that the developers can improve the app in those weak areas in future updates. There is potential, but more work needs to be done. It would also be nice to see more filters and effects. In the current state, even though the app is a dollar, I can't recommend picking it up, unless you really like those frame effects.
