[PinkWorld]

App/Game: VSCO Cam® v78
Developer: VSCO
Category: Photography
Price: N/A
IAP: $0.99 - $6.99

For all those interested in accessing an online community of passionate amateur and professional photographers, VSCO Cam is your starting point. This app is not only a powerful and useful tool to snap pictures, equipped with unique editing features, but is also rich with niche social media capabilities. In the integrated VSCO Grid, you can access and enjoy a great number of unique and stunning photographs published by the community all over the world. With the seamlessly embedded concept of entering the Digital Creative Age, the Grid puts the foremost value on artistic creativity; capturing the beauty that lies everywhere around us. Thus, unlike other social media methods, numbers do not count; quality and creativity is the primary aspect that matters most. The photograph collections are just amazing and will have you browse for hours, even losing sense of time.

Upon glance of the main menu, you can immediately notice the main submenus; your personal Grid (named after your account name), Explore (community Grid), Journal, Library, Shop, Camera (left bottom) and Settings (right bottom). VSCO offers a wide range of preset filters that are absolutely stunning and give life to your photos, but also allows the possibility to select the filter gradient (0 to 12 scale gradient). Each filter is unique in its own way; resulting in a total transformation of your photos by bringing into focus different aspects captured in a single shoot. The app has a side-by-side comparison bar of different presets across the bottom of the screen where it is possible to see the effect of different filters prior to applying them.

The app offers the possibility to sync the images from all your devices so that you can edit them from whichever device you choose, without the need to previously transfer images on that certain device. There are two ways of uploading the images into the app; you can either snap a photo or sync the previously snapped pictures that are stored on the devices. Once an image is uploaded, the photo manipulation process can start. VSCO offers typical basic adjustment tools like Exposure, Temperature, Contrast, Crop (Cropping dimensions are preset, therefore you have no possibility to crop your image as you see fit), Straighten, Fade, Vignette, Saturation, Sharpen, Tint to Highlight and Shadow save, Skin Tone adjustments; Shadow and Highlight Tints are adjustable over a 0 to 12 scale gradient. Moreover, the toolkit and presets order can be customized and changed to fit your needs. You can order them to your preference by dragging them until you've reached the order in which you like them to be displayed in your menu. It is also possible to hide the lesser used kits and presets so that the app won't look cluttered; making it easier for you to navigate the editing panel.

Options like copy/paste and Single Step undo can make your editing experience much easier, along with the option to compare the before & after effects where you can preview the original image with the edited one by simply holding down on the image in edit view. The copy/paste option allows you to apply the same sets of edits to multiple photos while you can reverse all edits with Single Step Undo. The developers take pride in having a slick and intuitive UI, but I did not find it very user-friendly at the beginning. It takes some time to get used to the variety of options, where to find them and what those options actually do. Sometimes you have to click on certain options just to be able to know what they actually do. This leads to your intuition, trial and error and a good memory for efficient image processing. The same applies to presets as they lack description and are only named by letters and numbers (A1, B6, X1 etc.). Once you’re content with the editing results, you can either save the photo to your gallery or share it through social media via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other popular methods.

Without trying to fade the amazingly well created presets and advanced filters, the app developers are more focused on making the Grid the next Instagram, but for professional and inspiring photographers; thus, I find the app not to be as well rounded as other photo editing applications like Afterlight or Aviary. The Grid is curated by VSCO Cam, meaning that not every photo you decide to share can make it to the public Grid as it undergoes a mediated selection process. Meanwhile, you can still share the photos on your personal Grid with other friends by simply sharing your VSCO URL. As VSCO Cam is available as a free download that includes limited filter packages, you may purchase additional filter packages through IAP via the Store submenu. The complete experience that VSCO Cam has to offer will end up costing a calculated sum of $25.90 total, which is marginally less than the price of the iOS version. Overall, VSCO offers a powerful set of editing tools and professional preset filters that can help "the ordinary come alive... [as] the extraordinary will take care of itself".

Pros:

• Overall lower IAP costs than the iOS version.
• A wide array of filters and graphic editing functions.
• Beautifully designed filters intended for professional results.
• Offers a free download that features a basic starter filter package.

Cons:

• Fails to save photos in their original size/resolution.
• Android version lacks some features that are available within the iOS version.
• Simple layout lacking filter descriptions that make it very confusing at times.

Reviewer rating:
Device/OS used: Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge / Lollipop 5.1.1

Purchase at Google Play
Mobilism: VSCO Cam v78 [Unlocked]