I love these Upper Eastside NYC skyscapes I took with my new Camera Awesome iPhone app.
Camera Awesome is totally fun. It’s also free, easy to use and a snap to install on your Iphone. Take pics using either Camera Awesome or your iPhone camera app, then transform (“awesomize”) them, either setting individual components yourself or by using the various presets as I did. Then you can share your pics using Facebook, Twitter, SmugMug, Flickr, email, Picasa and Photobucket. Unlike most Iphone camera apps, Camera Awesome takes video too. That’s pretty awesome.
What’s not so awesome ….
- Awesomized pictures saved to the iPhone camera roll interfered with iPhoto sync with my Macbook Pro. I had to delete the pics to sync. From what I can tell, you’ll need to email pics you love to yourself if you want to save them to your laptop. Then iPhoto crashed after I imported an awesomized pic. Hmm…. that’s a big limitation for those of us who store our pics locally rather than on photo servers like SmugMug.
- Bait and Switch. While they tell you on the website that the app is free, once you’ve downloaded it, they continually tempt you with great options for awesomizing your pics only to tell you they are premium options costing $0.99 for every 9 presets. I counted 25 sets of 9, making the cost of the entire app close to $25 if you buy them all. Starts to feel like I am being nickel and dimed, baited and switched with the “free” app. I’d be willing to pay $4.99 for it, but not $25.
- Awesomizing = annoying. The whole”awesomizing” dialogue that occurs while your photo is processing is overly cute and gets increasingly annoying over time.
- Can’t Undo? I couldn’t figure out how to “un-awesomize” a pic once it was done. (No “Revert to Original” option that I so love in iPhoto)
- No support. The support link on Itunes just takes you to the app home page. I could not find support anywhere.
Bottom Line
Camera Awesome is a fun and pretty amazing little Photo app, but ala’ carte pricing makes the full package one of the most expensive Photo apps out there, and it doesn’t play well with iPhoto. Since I really don’t need the app, I won’t be purchasing any of the premium options. But if it were $4.99 for the whole package, I might consider it. (hint, hint…)
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More Camera Awesome Reviews
- The Wall Street Journal calls it “an ideal mix of beauty and brains”
- AppAdvice loves the camera, but not the pricing model.
- Time Techland hails it as one of the top 50 iPhone apps
- Iphonography likes it a lot.
