FotoCookie Lets You Design Creative Photo Collages
FotoCookie ($0.99) by TABKO Inc. is an app for creating photo collages. The app is designed to feel like you’re taking a cookie cutter to your photos, with a variety of shapes you can “cut” your photos into. Put them together, along with text, for a personalized photo collage.
FotoCookie was featured by Apple in their “New and Noteworthy” section this week. But is it worth your dollar?
There is a lot to like in FotoCookie, but it’s far from the perfect app. Let’s start with the fun parts. You get a variety of “cookie cutters” in square, ellipse, heart, star, balloon, cloud shapes. There are dozens of shapes in all. Tap the gingerbread man to pick a shape, then take a photo (or choose one from your library) and insert it into the shape. Here in the gingerbread man menu you’ll also find Text — you can add text to your design; choose from a variety of fonts, font sizes, and colors for your message.
There are also dozens of patterns and backgrounds from which to choose; tap the FX button to select one for your project. By selecting the Adjust option within FX, you can flip your photo left/right, up/down, or adjust the size by pinching. Tap and hold on any picture element to bring up a menu: back, front, edit, or delete. In this way, you can create an interesting and personalized collage. Save or share your creations with Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Flickr.
So what’s the bad side? Other than the bare bones help screen that shows up upon opening the app for the first time, you’ll get NO instruction on how to use this app. Usually I can figure out an app pretty quickly without any help anyway, but this one has a lot of hidden features and menus. Parts of FotoCookie are intuitive, and parts are most definitely not. I have reviewed many, many apps, and never have I seen worse instruction on how to use the app! Even the developer’s website is totally useless. No help section, no contact information, nothing!
So, if you have a dollar to spend, and some time to figure out how to use it, you may enjoy creating something fun. FotoCookie IS really a cute, aesthetically pleasing app. But until they improve their support, I can’t wholeheartedly suggest that everyone buy FotoCookie.
