Preview: Film Lab
This new offering from the developer of RetroCamera looks to offer over 70 preset looks based on characteristics of actual, well-known film stock. It's going up against the upcoming SwankoLab as a way for iPhone users to get stuck into the business of postprocessing photos as opposed to have automatically applied effects from camera simulators. The main difference is that this doesn't look built for customization. Most people are going to choose an effect and save the result. And what a drag that's going to be, because the user interface looks like one long, side-scrolling list of thumbnails. I expect that if I wanted film look #73, I'd have to scroll all the way to the right, each and every time. I left a regrettably tactless comment on the YouTube page to that effect, and hope to be proven wrong when the app is released.
The developer's track record is blemished too, from their handling of RetroCamera. That $1.99 app came with a boatload of very similar features, and the same interface, but only saved low-resolution photos after processing. Promises of full-resolution saving were made, but have not been realized to this day. Film Lab will debut with full-resolution saving, and if RetroCamera doesn't get updated, you'll know they're the sort of company to abandon older products and nudge customers into paying again for the solution.
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