iPhone App Review: Polarock
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 7:54PM | Glyn Evans I recently tried out Polarock whilst writing my article on producing Polaroid effect images from the iPhone, and today the developer released an update fixing some bugs and adding extra effects.
Priced at 59p, Polarock (App Store link) has a very simple interface, and applying the Polaroid effects, and adding marker pen style text is very quick and easy.
As much as I want to like this app, this release does little to improve on its previous release. The 3 extra styles Sad, Warm and Cold, are far from being Polaroid effects, and the only thing worth noting with this update is they have fixed the displayed app name on the iPhone, now showing Polarock instead of Chicken!
The problem with this app, is it is up against ProjectPolaroid (App Store link), which I think achieves slightly better looking results for absolutely nothing, as the photo below shows.
UPDATE
One of the things I forgot to mention when writing this review, is that you can mix any of the styles together to create your own effect. As suggested in the comments to this post, I merged Sad and Warm together, and got the following effect.
This effect definately produces a better looking Polaroid effect, but which do you prefer, Polarock or ProjectPolaroid?
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Reader Comments (8)
polarock actually let's you combine effects
spidrman, you are correct you can apply more than one style to an image for conversion, however have you tried it? If you apply all or any combination (with the exception of B&W), then you just end up with an even worst looking image. Grunge is OK if you want a dirty looking Polaroid, and B&W if you want black and white, but the other effects are just pointless (just my opinion).
try to combine sad + warm
spidrman, thanks for the suggestion. I have created the same image using the Sad & Warm effect, and posted an update to this post, and whilst this is better, for me it is too green. If the effects can be tweaked to give a better Polaroid effect, then I think this app could be a winner, as this is the only app that allows you to reproduce that written on by a marker pen effect, something I really do like.
porjectpolaroid is free & good. however with polarock, I like the way you can write on it & mix effects.
macfan, you are right, ProjectPolaroid is very good for a free app, but if Polarock can get things right, then this has the potential to be a great app.
hmm. The projectpolaroid app is not available in the US? bummer
Greg, this app has been renamed to Polarize