iPhone App Review - Spica
I only recently discovered Spica Super Monochrome and so far I'm loving it. Yes, it does only one thing, but it does it well. It turns your images into very high contrast black & white photographs. That's it. Yes, it's a one-trick-pony, but lately I very much favor apps that do one thing very well over those that try to cram a lot of functions into it and end up doing a mediocre job of all.
Spica is so simple to use that there's not much to say about it. Just launch the app and either take a photo or pick one from your library and Spica will turn it into a high contrast black & white and save the new version back to your library at full resolution (at least on my iPhone 3GS). You won't get a prompt though, it'll automatically save the processed image.
The results are usually really good, but of course it depends largely on the original image. Night shots and wet floors look particularly cool, while skin tones tend to look a bit on the darker side and don't seem natural. It's a matter of playing with it to see what works best. Spica also seems to add grain to the photograph, which I tend to like in black & white images.
I have to give kudos to the developers of Spica Super Monochrome, as it does the 2 things every photography iPhone app should do:
- Saves at full resolution.
- Allows you to apply the effect to an existing image.
As of today (13 Sep 09), the app is US$0.99 and at that price totally worth it.
A few examples below, and more can be found in the developer's site here.
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Reader Comments (1)
Wow ! i really like this app as with this app we can feel the period of our parents as they really like black and white photographs. And i will give them, this app as a gift to recall their golden memories. I have also a good news for app lovers as appsummary.com has a huge collection of wonderful apps which are very interesting and time consuming.