Thursday
Aug202009
New iPhone Photo App: Spica - Super Monochrome
Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:30AM | Glyn Evans Description from the AppStore: Spica is the camera application that lets you take super high contrast black and white photo.
AppStore Link: Spica - Super Monochrome - Price £0.59/$.99
Editors comment: This looks like an interesting app, especially if you like B&W photography, and like me, you like hi-contrast images. I haven't bought this app yet, but I am tempted. If anyone does buy this app before me, then please post your feedback here.
Reader Comments (9)
Spica does very little, I am sorry to say. It let's you take a photo and converts it into b/w, automatically saving it to the Filmroll. You cannot edit Photos from the Filmroll or in any way influence the way the image is treated. The images are saved with full resolution, as far as I can tell, but feel noisy/grainy as the app seems to add a bit of Tri-X-Flair to the image. The effect per se is pretty well for a quick&dirty app, making it an alternative to HiCon, although HiCon has more options and works with Filmroll as well as the Cam. Spica would be better if it were faster and did not show you the color image, thus practically working like a Leica. It uses the autofocus options of the regular camera and the results look pretty neat, although I prefer to shoot with the regular cam and edit afterwards. But for a quick and dirty b/w-Photo or a bit of analogue fun, Spica is worth the 0,79 €.
PS
Spica seems to be stronger than Hicon, adding more blowup to the highlights, and also making dark areas very very very black, sometimes actually making the photo unusable. With luck you make oustanding photos, but it feels pretty much unpredictable and should only be used when there is PLENTY of light in the image. If you want the unpredictability of analogue film, this is the right app for you. If you want to control what your image looks like, not so much :°)
I picked this up this morning and It's not a bad app, but it really lacks a common feature found today in many photo apps, and that's the ability to apply the filter to pre-existing photos. I always shoot and post process to my desired look for the picture. This limits my ability to do that.
For the price, it's not a bad purchase, but it's very basic. I do have to give the developer credit however, they ensured the picture saved at max resolution for my 3GS. Which is better than 90% of the apps out there nowadays.
Played a bit around with it in the sunshine here - and it's well worth playing with, giving you a pretty unique high contrast look that is quite unpredictable, making a light photo dark and a dark photo light, with very harsh contrast and very nice grain. It is pretty quick and responsive and part of the fun is that you never know what the pix will look like. If an update would bring a) application of the effect to photos from the Filmroll and b) more control and fine-tuning of the effect, this would be one of the finest b/w-filters out there, despite being so much simpler than all the TiffenFX black-and-white-filters. The endresults are well worth th 0,79 €...
@HD Schellnack and @Abspara, thanks for your feedback. Based on your comments I have just bought this app and will review it soon.
No problem Glyn!
Your site has been a great source of information for me. The least I can do is give my few cents towards a new application.
I heard of an app called MonoPhix that should come out soon. The effects look pretty promising as I've already seen the same engine being used on PC. But it's still hard to tell how the effect will look on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
I'm keeping an eye out for the release.
@Ben - where might you have heard about MonoPhix ?
Any other info... Company, Developer, Links etc ?
Cheers
SCW - iPhone Beta Tester
@SCW : On the twitter of the developer http://twitter.com/phoenxsoftware
I also red that it is based on CIPU for windows with which a friend of mine once provided me a distro to convert to monochrome. I hope that the iPhone version is similar to the windows version. It has almost no grain issues and provides a decent depth and contrast. But we'll see...
Here's an image edited with the windows version : http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/9978/robotwatermono.png
I'm waiting to buy another B/W app until this one pops-out, since I already wasted a lot of 99 cents to B/W apps which only provided a dull gray effect.