App Review: SwankoLab, the darkroom of yesterday, today
Monday, April 12, 2010 at 11:00AM | Glyn Evans From Synthetic Infatuation the developers behind Hipstamatic, comes SwankoLab, an application billed as the handheld darkroom kit for your iPhone or iPod Touch. This visual feast of an application brings yesterdays darkroom to the small screen that is the iPhone, but what's it like to use and can it deliver the results?
The App
When you launch the app you are presented with a nice graphic of what many old school photographers will remember, a darkroom in a box.
Above: SwankoLab, the handheld darkroom in a box. The interface is easy to navigate, simply tap on the little pinned-up note that says "Tap to select an image", and load a photo from your camera roll. Once done you will see a series of old school darkroom chemicals across the top shelf of the box, which with the swipe of a finger can be scrolled along. When you see a chemical you like tap it and in an animated fashion (including a glug glug sound) the chemical will be added to the developing tray found at the bottom of the box. At this stage you can flick the switch found in the lower right hand side of the box to turn on the red light and drop the photo in to the developing tray to begin the developing process, or you can add more chemicals to the mix until the tray is full. Should you add the wrong chemical or change your mind about the selections, you can empty the chemicals from the tray by tapping on it and selecting "Empty Tray". Once you have selected the chemicals of your choice and dropped the photo in the tray, the development process begins, and you can either sit there and just watch and wait, or you can agitate the tray (although this has no effect on the development process, nor does it speed up the development time, but it does add to the visual effect and give you something to do for the minute or so it takes to develop the print). When the photo has finished developing it is then hung up to dry in the dryer, and it is from here that you can either delete the print or save or email it. At this same screen you can view the photo by tapping on it, or save and add the formula to your favorites list, and when done in the dryer tapping the little tray icon found in the bottom right hand corner of the screen will take you back to the darkroom, where you can start the process again and develop another photo.
When you first get started with SwankoLab you may be unsure just what chemical mixes to use; well the developers have thought of this and loaded the app with some of their own, and these can be found in the saved formulas.
Over animated
Having read the above app description you are probably thinking this all sounds very animated, and you would be right as my screen cast below shows.
Uncle Stu's Photo Emporium
SwankoLab is provided with 8 different chemicals to develop you your photos with, but for a one-time subscription fee of £1.19/$1.99, you can add Uncle Stu’s Photo Emporium, which gives you an extra 9 darkroom chemicals to have endless fun with.
So what do I think of SwankoLab?
Overall this is a nice app that is fun to use and with its almost endless mixes can produce some very interesting prints, although many will find the overuse of the animated interface detracts from the apps true capabilities, and this may even put potential buyers off. Despite this, the mixed feelings amongst the iPhoneography community and the occasional crash, this app gets my thumbs up, and 4 stars out of 5, although some may disagree.
AppStore Link: SwankoLab - Price £1.19/$1.99
SwankoLab in iPhone App Review
Reader Comments (9)
I have to admit, the negativity confuses me. Hipstamatic, *that* has frustrated me, because the wait time interferes with taking more pictures. With Swanko, you can take the pictures in advance. I enjoy the animation and I don't get the sense that it's slowing things down too much, but rather, just giving you some eye candy during an unfortunately slow process.
I love how it turns "formulas" into a whole new avenue for creativity. (I hope they add some social features so that people can share their formulas like you set up on the discussion board.) Frankly, the retro-filter photo app category has started to feel stale. Lots of new apps bring gorgeous new effects, but really seem like they might as well just be additions to a single app, e.g. Lo-Mob. It's exciting to see an app that strives for originality and excellence in its own design, not just its output.
Of course it has shortcomings. I'd like to see a choice of frames as well. And yes, I definitely think it could stand to be optimized and less crashy — just like Hipstamatic. But really, that's what confuses me. I feel like all the problems that bother me here are, if anything, more present in Hipstamatic, but it seems like the general consensus is the opposite of that.
Anyways, I <3 it.
Seems like the full res photo is processed every time you flick the light switch (hence the tedious animation sequences). Why not do a quick preview, and postpone the real, time consuming processing until you've decided that the selected filters are what you want to apply? Also, it's way too slow and awkward to reorder the filters ("chemicals"). Unless I'm missing something, you have to start from scratch every time. A solution similar to the one found in BestCamera would be much better. A fun program - I guess - but far from perfect.
I have still yet to get a thank you card from these guys since I told them to make a darkroom app months ago while testing Hipstamatic. :) I tell ya, some people. lol
I really dig this app. The animations don't bother me like some people. It gives you something to look at instead of a spinning wheel. One thing I would love is to be able to add formulas without having to add a picture and go through all the steps to drop the chemicals. Would be nice to have a copy/paste type of feature like LiveFX.
Well said, Jesse. The biggest flaw in Hipstamatic is that its reproduction of a film camera experience suffers because of the wait between shot to shot. A real toy camera would only be as slow as the user's ability to wind the next frame of film into place. That very same wait is a strength in SwankoLab's simulation of a darkroom.
As I noted in my preview and review of SwankoLab on PocketPlastic.com, this concept of development taking time, and photo editing occurring as an analog process, will be unique to photographers who grew up with digital technology. "It invites a generation of photographers accustomed to sliders and checkboxes to think of their craft as closer to alchemy than arithmetic."
Jarle: It's more than likely that the difficulty you face in reordering effects was intentional; a part of the app's design. Love it or hate it, the UI serves to distance us from the familiar (and convenient) editing metaphors we are accustomed to. In SwankoLab's world, instant gratification is the enemy.
In the same review, I looked at the newly-released Film Lab app from CLBITZ. They are on different ends of the scale. Film Lab offers analog film looks within a thoroughly modern interface where previews are immediately displayed. It's an interesting contrast.
Once again, if you'd like to read my review, it's over here: http://pocketplastic.com/app-review-swankolab-and-film-lab. I'd like to thank Glyn in advance for letting me comment and link to an external site freely.
I understand and appreciate the philosophy behind the design, but I'm still not crazy about it.
There's a middle way, where one could keep the vintage interface and animations, but let the user experiment with different filters (I've spent countless hours in real darkrooms, so I refuse to call it chemicals) and preview results without having to go through the entire process every time. It's fun for a while, but it soon starts to become annoying, in my opinion.
Obviuosly, there's no point discussing personal taste and preferences. Some people like it, some don't.
Finally, for those believing SwankoLab is just like using a real darkroom and real chemicals: it isn't. Not even close :-)
Jarle: I certainly appreciate your opinion, and mostly agree with you about the fine line between fun and annoyance. It is what it is, and all that's left is to say whether it's useful to us or not.
I wish you could have had a developer stop bath and fixer trays depending on how long you let it develop it would come out more light or dark an such. Perhaps some contrast filters and such. Now that would be cool. So that the animations you are staring at mean and affect the photo not just something shiny to stare at as the image processes.
I love this app! People complained about Hipstamatic, saying "how can i give my other 'normal library pictures' the hipstamatic effect?"
Here's the answer, a creative one.
Did you notice? different photo sets (say a cloudy sky or a flower) with the same effect will look different! And that's just amazing.
Plus, you can use the "handler" as a "bookmark" for your recepies, since is not really linked to the library pics.
The bad part is that (my opinion) i don't like any of the results i had from photo source made with hipstamatic.
What i need (and i can have, with some apps):
- different frames
- make the photo dirty during the developing process (for example, the effects applies 100% at the center, 50% on one side, 30% on the corner, and may be different as long as i move the pic inside the tray)
- more chemicals of course (but i'm sure they will come soon)
- TWITPIC support (any app should give the option to use twitpic)
I love this app as well as hipstamatic. my only beef is the amount of time it takes to "develop" a shot. It's crazy long.