Pocket Plastic

This $1.99 app from Korea got a major free update today, going from 1.3MB to 34.3MB in size, and proportionately increasing the number of possible effect combinations. Previously, PictureShow came loaded with a small set of preset effects and the ability to add text over a photo, as well as do some basic brightness/saturation editing. The filters, with names such as Lomography, Holgagraphy and MultiExposures, were high quality but rather distinctive, and consistently so – to the point where I used them only on rare occasions to avoid having too many photos look alike.

Version 2 more than doubles the number of filters, while adding 15 frames, 5 "light effects", and 8 noise/distortion overlays, which can be combined to create hundreds of different looks. Some of the new filters are styled along the lines of popular vintage and cross-processed effects found in other apps, but they come into their own when paired with light leaks, scratches, and emulsion-style borders. To make the process of discovery fun, there's a new Shuffle button which mixes things up to give possible starting points for further tweaking in the Color Edit mode. There's also a new quick list view of all the filters; an improvement on the "swipe left through all available options" design of the original version.

In addition to email and Google Blogger export, Flickr uploads are now supported, with Twitter and Facebook promised for the v2.1 update. As before, PictureShow exports photos up to full 3GS resolution of 2048px wide.

If I'd reviewed PictureShow before today, I would have given it 3/5 at the very most. It offered a very narrow set of possibilities, reasonably well executed. With the new (and very unexpected) update, and the promise of more frame styles and variations to come, it's now coming very close to a 5/5.

Price: $1.99
Verdict: Highly recommended
Similar to: Lo-Mob, Camerabag, SwankoLab

Buy PictureShow in the iTunes App Store.
Product website 

----

My first photo with the new PictureShow

As promised, it's early April and SwankoLab just hit the App Store about half an hour ago for US$1.99 [iTunes].

The app is slicker than a pimp's Jheri curl and surprisingly more flexible. Where Synthetic Corp's previous app, Hipstamatic, was limited by the combination of one lens + one film type + one flash, SwankoLab looks set to produce thousands of possible combinations from its eight basic operations (called "chemicals"). Add another $1.99, and the number of chemicals goes up to 17. Because the order in which these are applied has an impact on the final result, far more variation is possible.

We'll have a full review up in time, but this looks very promising right now and we have no problems recommending it at the low price.

Japanese camera blog Circle Rectangle has reported on a new USD$20 digital toy camera by a company called Green House. It may or may not be named "Mini Digi", as shown on the official website. It's pretty small, uses a single AAA battery and features a keychain ring, so I'm gonna put it at about the size of a Vistaquest VQ1005.

Still photo resolution is a basic 640x480 VGA, with video recorded at 320x240 QVGA. No word on the frame rate. Memory is fixed internal, and enough for approximately 160 shots. I assume they are transferred to a computer via a mini or micro-USB cable. The website states several versions of Windows as a system requirement – my guess is that it mounts as a mass storage device, which should make it Mac compatible as well, but don't take my word for it. Still, it's extremely cheap and might be worth ordering.