Magic Hour Turns Ordinary Photos Into Magical Ones
Magic Hour - Camera & Unlimited Filter ($1.99) by Kiwiple is a quirky little photo app that packs a lot of punch for your iPhone.
There just no stopping the rapid influx of photo apps in the App Store. They all have the same goal in mind - turn your ordinary photos into fun and unique images. While that's all nice and dandy, I have stumbled upon a new one that is quite nice to have. In addition to having a bunch of preset filters, there is the ability to download more filters for free and even create your own! That's the fun of Magic Hour.
The app will start off with a nice little transition animation that will end up being the main screen. There will be options for taking a new photo with the camera or importing a photo from your Photo Library. Additionally, there will be a last tab at the top that allows for management of filters. Beneath that will be the gear button for Settings, and at the bottom is a bar for the Free Filter Market.
I would recommend that users take a look at the Filter Market first before starting to apply effects to photos. The Market will be split up in three tabs for viewing: Featured, Popular, and New. In each one, you will see a sample thumbnail of the filter in action, the name and description, the user that made it, and a button to download (it will say "Installed" if you already got it). You can also view how drastic the filter is by tapping on it to see the original photo and the filtered photo.
I found a lot of nice filters, and I downloaded a bunch of them. However, I had to download each one individually, since there isn't a "download all" option. You also have to download them each separately, since you are unable to do anything after hitting the "Download" button. So if you're going to look around, be prepared for a lot of tapping and waiting. The end result may be worth it though, because you'll have a lot of possibilities when you do get around to your photos.
Now, let's get back to the main reason you should get the app. It's not for the free filters (but that is a big part of it, I think), but rather what you can do to your photographs. Either snap a new photo or import one - then the magic begins.
If you do choose to snap photos with this app, you'll get a customized capture screen. The photo will be captured in the middle, with a top toolbar with the camera options you may be familiar with. The bottom has the capture button and Album button for accessing your photo library. The top toolbar allows you to turn the screen into the capture button, display a grid, use the front facing camera (on iPhone 4 of course), and flash on/off/auto (again, iPhone 4 only). The app supports tap-to-focus and even double-tap to set exposure.
The image will have to be cropped into the square format though (if you import from the Photo Library), so you've been warned. The filters will be split into four sections: Favorites, Preset, My Filters, and Download. Each filter will have a little preview thumbnail to the left that will give you an idea of how your photo will look with the filter applied. If you tap it, you'll get a larger preview.
In addition, you can "Make Your Own Filter" with the option at the bottom. This allows you to tweak all aspects of a filter, including Curves, Saturation/Brightness/Contrast, Vignette, Textures, and Frame styles. Doing this will allow an endless combination of possibilities, and you can save the filter for future use.
If you decide to use one of the preset filters or even some user-created ones you downloaded from the Filter Market, you can use those by themselves too. However, Magic Hour also allows you to customize the selected filter by "recreating" it. It's the same as creating your own filter, except you're starting off with some presets in place.
The Curves allow you to plot points on the line and adjust the curve, which will change how the picture looks. This can create some pretty drastic changes, so I'd use this effect sparingly, unless you are pretty confident in what you're doing. Curves can be adjusted for All colors, or individually (Red, Green, Blue). Adjust will allow users to customize the saturation of color, brightness of image, and overall contrast of the image. The sliders are pretty easy to use and accurate.
In Vignette, there is a choice of eight styles, each one of them unique in it's own way. In Textures, there will be 23 to choose from, with the option to adjust how strong the appearance is on the overall image. This is great, because I have seen some photo apps in the past where the texture effect can be added, but with no way to control how subtle or strong it is. Magic Hour got this one right.
The final element of a filter is the frame effect, which has 12 to choose from. Now, if you aren't a fan of any of these vignettes, textures, or frames, there is the option for None in all of these. That way, everyone is satisfied, right?
Once you're done tweaking a filter to your liking, you can view the original image that you started with by simply tapping and holding on the green Original button. It's crazy how different your images will look if you've adjusted a lot of the filter settings, so it's nice to go back and look at the original.
Now, what good is a photo app if you can't share directly from the app itself? Magic Hour provides a Share button that will give you plenty of options. It includes email, copy, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Flickr, and even Dropbox. That's a lot of options and for the most part, should satisfy everyone. There are two more, Cyworld and me2day, that can be toggled to show up in the Share menu from the Settings.
Not the type to share? That's okay, because there's a separate Save button. The image is saved, however it is not in full-resolution (remember we had to crop into the square format). I'm not sure what resolution it is, since the developer does not specify. However, the images seem to be good enough if you are just sharing them on the web with friends or something like that. But the developer definitely has to implement a way to choose output resolution and include full resolution.
The Settings allows you to toggle whether the app should start by taking a photo, save the original photo, and have location information. You can also input all of your login information for the networks that you want to send directly to with the app.
Magic Hour is a great photo app that will definitely be finding a permanent spot in my iPhone photography toolbox. However, I really would like to see output resolution and the ability to support full resolution in the future. Other than that, this app can easily replace several other photo apps on any device.
If you want the possibility of having unlimited options with your photographs, then Magic Hour is definitely worth the $2. Give it a try.
