Pictures lab

Pictures lab Review

by on January 17, 2011

We were already fans of Pictures Lab to start with, simply because it made our snaps into something we’d actually like to use and share with others.

What’s impressive about Pictures Lab is the speed at which it can process a number of effects – from the simple Sepia to the much more resource-taxing lomography; it can manage it all easily – and now that time is down from around five seconds to roughly 2 or 3, which is decent.

Of course, the effects are only on the surface of the picture – there’s no deep-rooted cleaning and sprucing here, but given we’re likely to only ever view the snaps on a mobile phone, that’s no bad thing.

The volume of effect options is impressive, and things like being able to represent a 1980s photo or blur out the background are cracking little extras –plus each mode can be tweaked for things like sharpness or effect size.

The modes available have been included to offer over 20 different options, and all of them come with a range of tweakery.

Swiping the photo will also unleash a new effect, so you won’t need to go in and out of the effect menu to see all your options, and now double tapping will allow you to see the original, with another double tap back to the effects again.

After that, cropping is as simple as a multi-touch drag-fest, meaning you can really zoom in on the things that you really care about in the shot.

The settings you can customise with the photos are impressive too, right down to being able to edit the artist name in the EXIF data.

Sharing the photo can be done though Plixi.com, which offers a portal to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and more, with the option for geotagging for Twitter too.

Basically – we promised this would be a five star application if the tweaks came, and we’re good to our word: Pictures Lab is an indispensable application if you want to edit some cool snaps.