Coming soon: SwankoLab, the darkroom of yesterday, today
Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 11:46PM | Glyn Evans 
From the developers of Hipstamatic comes SwankoLab, a brand new darkroom kit. It’s a loving recreation of the pre-digital era classic. Choose chemicals, process photos, and experiment!
It’s the darkroom, only less messy and less dark: Complete with smells of photo chemistry and sounds of mad science being made, your SwankoLab comes with everything you need to turn any image into a retro misprinted masterpiece.
Relive the nostalgia of processing by hand: Agitate your print as it develops, and watch it slowly fade in under the warm glow of the safe light. Hang your print to dry while you examine the results of your latest experiment. You can even jot down your favorite chemical formulas in the included formula notebook.
Fully stocked with chemicals and photo supplies: SwankoLab includes eight magical photo-altering chemicals, a formula book, an embossed development tray, and a super cool hand-engraved box to store your photo supplies and prints in.
Standard Supplies: SwankoLab comes with SwankoDev A19, SwankoDev H1N, Fantabra Magic Warm, Noir, Grizzle Fix, Flamoz Fixer, Zero, Vinny’s BLO4 and Vinny’s BL95 chemicals.
Be cool like Uncle Stu!: As an added bonus, Uncle Stu’s Photo Emporium has offered up access to his amazing supply catalog which give you nine additional darkroom chemicals for a one-time subscription fee of $1.99! Thanks Stu! In addition, Stu will add more stuff to the subscription with each update (included free for all subscribers).
Editors comments: This could be one of the most exciting apps to appear in the AppStore for some time, and could have a wider appeal than Hipstamatic.
SwankoLab in New iPhone Photo Apps
Reader Comments (23)
Agreed! I love this video. The animations look great! Here's hoping that the effects resemble Hipstamatic's.
=M=
This looks simply amazing...
crap...another thing to spend my money on...I am so excited to see this come out!! Hurry up April!
Oh hey. I would have preferred camera roll access in Hipstamatic. The one feature I wished they would have included in Hipstamatic they decided to turn in to another flashy program and charge me 1.99 and probably another .99 for each of the packs. I will not buy another Hipstamatic pack and I will probably delete Hipstamatic from my phone. Not out of spite or anything... Mostly because it looks like the darkroom thing will do what I wanted Hipstamatic to do all along.
I am having mixed feelings about this. Seems interesting. Sort of feel like I am being milked for money. All I really wanted was camera roll access in Hipstamatic. I got a whole extra flashy program and interface. We will see...
I know what you mean Robert, and I have to say, I agree. I love Hipstmatic, I use it all the time. I don't mind not being able to process older photos. But this app looks like it gives the same results from HM, just now letting us use older photos. Guess we just have to wait and see.
I need to take back one statement. I said they would charge me .99 for each additional pack. Well the 1.99 gets you a subscription to Uncle Stu’s Photo Emporium which will give you all further updates and extra features free. I sort of like that better then .99 for every little pack they release. So I would like to retract the statement about them charging us for each little update.
Looking forward to anything by Hipstamaitc. AS a wanna be photographer it has taught me a lot about composing photos and I love the oddball results. Can't wait to do it to some of my exisitng stuff. Get a life guys it's 99c. Something like this on the Mac would be $40 bucks. Oh and it's a $1.19 for 99c apps here in Australia.
I agree that it does look interesting, but isn't it just a gimmick? The animation etc is well done but seems time consuming when surely they could have made it so that simple sliders added a certain amount of effect, or even just presets like so many applications have.
It's probably more for people who like to play and experiment.
I'm still at a loss as to why people want to be processing images on the iphone itself instead of loading them onto a laptop and using Photoshop etc.
::appgasm::
To the skeptics: of course it's a gimmick. But it looks like so incredibly much fun. And unlike with Hipstamatic, the gimmickry doesn't seem like it will come at the expense of the functionality. This goes on my can't-wait app wishlist right next to Opera Mini.
Another overdone app from the guys at Hipstamatic?
When the "fun " effect is gone after a week, the steps will start to drive me nuts.
The app would (just like Hipstamatic) be a killer app, if they understood, it's not about the progress, but getting to the result as fast as possible.
@PCKid "Get a life guys it's 99c"
Some of us are on extreme budgets. They cut hours back at my job. I can no longer work 40 hours a week. Stuck working 24 hours a week. Aside from any freelance photo work I can drum up I am only making $1,100 a month. Hard to make it when you rent is $735. So yea... right now 99c is sort of a big deal for me.
Looks cool but I agree, after a week the toy fun ends and steps become annoying. Plus if the hipsta people make it, I'll bet u buy the app and each chemical is a buck and so is each update.
@new
they will only charge you the price of the app and a 1.99 "subscription" fee. The fee will get you any further updates and added content. I approve of that more then I do the Hipstapak method. I do have a feeling though they will release a flash, lens, film for the Hipstamatic for .99 and then a while later we will get an update to the darkroom program with a similar developer, fixer, and stop bath.
I do agree the animations and everything my get tedious when I just want to load in an effect. We will see perhaps they will make it so you don't have to use the GUI every time you want to process something.
Get a life? Good to know you respect others opinions. Ugh.
PCKid is a douche bag.
Hmmm... too many cg and sound effects. The app might be good, but the novelty would wear thin after a few tries. The cost is minimal, but these days real estate on my iphone is pricey. Any app that stays has to be efficient and practical, not showbiz and time wasting. I'll wait for the jury to come in, once the app is out. Happy trails
can't wait...and cant wait to have this in an iPad version...as i grew up with chemicals...is there a "smell app" ? ;-)
My problem with many of the creative destruction photomanipulation apps (think camerabag, lomob) is that they aren't flexible enough.
For example, I love the colorcross process in camerabag, but on darker photos, the picture just gets far too overwhelmed with dark bruises that destroy any clarity. Lo-mob has some great TTV effects, but they can be very heavy handed when it comes to detail preservation, making it an all-or-nothing proposition. Often I choose "nothing" which is a shame.
I think that this app is going to really appeal to the tinkerer. One of the draws on hipstamatic is learning how the different lenses, flashes and films interact. One quick example: If you want pictures to develop faster, use a frame-only film, leave the flash off, and stick with a lens. Helga Viking is the fastest one, btw.
Learning how to manipulate the ratios of different processing chemicals and playing with the parameters *IS* the reward for this app. The fact that you can do this with previous pictures means that this is something for people to do after the dust has settled so to speak. Tinkering and experimenting in a peaceful setting sounds like the perfect traits to take from a real darkroom to the digital world.
Anyway, I am excited for this app.
hey @robert I'm on the same page as you! They could've just added this to hipstamatic as an in-app purchase, but noooooo. lol. Even though I don't agree with their marketing perspective I'll probably be dropping the $$$ for this one, for the amount of time it takes hispstamatic to develop photos I might as well delete hipsta and make it all post-production (the way it should've always been).
This app explains why there is no camera roll access in Hipstamatic! I think the developers are great at marketing their products. As much as I hate the idea of spending yet more money on apps I know that I will end up buying it because it's been so attractively pre-launched and packaged.