It's A Snap To Take Fun Photos On Your iPhone With Snaptime
Snaptime (Free) by Nuage touch is the followup to their original Playface photo booth app that came out last year.
We all love to make fun faces with or without our friends and family, and share them, right? Of course you do! And that’s exactly what Snaptime will help you accomplish.
When the app is first launched, there will be the option to create a Snaptime account. This is optional, though that means you won’t be able to share your silly photos on the Snaptime network. If you do choose to create an account, the process is simple enough.
Once you get past that, the snapping fun begins! The main screen will consist of several parts: the camera will take up the most screen real estate, with the effects and filters in separate sliders underneath, options off to the side of the sliders, and the capture button at the bottom. Aside from the capture button, you will have the Snaptime network, photo gallery, and the toggle for camera or video capture.
It’s especially great to see that the app supports both still images and video. Snaptime even allows you to use both the rear and front-facing cameras. There are more options that are accessed via the slide-out panel next to the effect sliders, though what’s available to you is dependent upon which camera is being used, and whether it’s in video mode or not. The additional options include LED flash, image quality (SD, HD, or HD Max), single or burst mode capture, and a countdown timer.
When it comes to possible combinations of effects and filters, the sky is the limit here. With 27 different effects and 38 filters to apply to the image, there’s certainly a lot of mixing up to do. The effects will have your standard ones like Fisheye, Escargot (twist with a fancy name), and Hulk (basically a bulge), but some new ones will be thrown in to the mix, such as KO, Sierpinksi, and Bokeh. The filters will have classics such as Bleach, Lomography, and Nostalgia, but spice things up with Obama, Bob Marley, Tutti Frutti, and more. There’s bound to be a new favorite in here.
You can view all of the different effects and filters by swiping on the row of variously colored icons. As you pass each one, it will show a live preview, so you will see exactly what the picture will look like.
I found that it’s surprisingly fast and easy to go through all of the effects with the swiping gesture. The camera view also displays the live preview rather quickly, so there is no delay as you look through them all for the ones you like the most (or are the funniest for the moment).
To capture the memory, just tap on the capture button. You can then see your image, and decide whether to keep it or not. If you do decide to stick with it, the app will give you some sharing options on the next screen: Snapti.me, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, or email. Just select which network you want and tap the “Share” button. You can skip this entirely with the “No” button in the bottom left.
By default, any image or video captured in Snaptime will go into your album. From here, you can view all of your captured images in a cool photo strip. You can even select a batch of photos to save to your Camera Roll or copy to the device clipboard. If you feel like sharing a bunch of photos that you’ve taken previously, you can send them out in an email.
The final part of Snaptime is the built-in micro social network, appropriately named Snapti.me. To access it, just tap on the "S" button on the bottom bar of the main screen. You'll be able to view New Photos from other users, your own Timeline, and even view and edit your own Snapti.me profile. On other photos, the option for commenting and liking is there, and even sharing with your friends.
While the app is designed mostly to serve as a photo-booth type app, it can be a great camera replacement too. It would be nice to have the ability to import photos into the app so you can share on Snapti.me, but it may defeat the purpose. One can dream though, right?
The app is beautiful, intuitive, and fun. I had no crashes or problems during my use with the app, so it’s extremely well crafted and polished. This will definitely be sticking around on my iPhone for a while.
If you're looking for a fun and refreshing photography app, then definitely give Snaptime a try. It's available in the App Store for free, so there's no reason to not try it out!
