New iPhone Photo App: TimeCamera for iPhone

Take photos with Time Camera and go back time!

Description from the AppStore: By using Time Camera, you can process your photos to like old snapshots.

It's easy to use! Just set the date on setting screen and take a picture with your iPhone, or you can choose an image from your Photo Library.

Features:

• The date will be shown in a tanned mode like the LED of the film camera.
• A handwriting-like date will appear when it is set before 1970.
• The photo fades and deteriorates along with the setting of the date.
• When the setting is before 1960, the photo will show in black and white.
• If you set the time to older date, it's going to be shown in sepia color.

iOS 4 ONLY

AppStore Link: TimeCamera for iPhone - Price: £0.59/$0.99/€0.79

Editors comments: This app offers a unique way to create those old and retro looking photos, but...

...please read on!!

The App

Launch the app and you have 3 obvious options to choose, load a photo from your photo album, take a photo, or save.  It is not obvious where or how you select your time-zone until you tap the i icon, and then you are presented with your date selector.

Having selected your date and loaded a photo your old/retro looking photo appears, however this is where the bugs begin to show.  If you load a portrait photo, for some reason it will load that photo in landscape, squishing the photo, and rendering it useless.  Also if you do not like the look of the selected date/effect, and decide to select a different date, you have to reload the photo!!

Having selected a date, loaded a photo and are happy with the effect, you simply save the photo, however there is no indication that the photo has saved!!

Next we have the saved file size.  Now remember this is an iOS 4 only app, so 2 to 5 megapixels.  Imagine my surprise when the saved photo was a useless 300 x 400 pixels!!

So what do I think of TimeCamera for iPhone?

I like the idea of using a date selection process, as this makes the app different from other apps in this category, the orientation bug is annoying, but I am sure will be easily fixed, however the low-res output for any iPhone app is appalling, and so this app only just gets a 1 star rating from me.

Note to the developer: If you resolve the above bugs and output size, then this app could easily become a 4 star app, but as it currently stands, I can not recommend this app to anyone.

Comments

[Rantz]

Thanks for your review and recommendation not to buy - what the app does is grand, but the limitations you note make it a *no*.

[Jarle Aasland]

Looks like a cool app, so I wanted to ask the developer about a full res version. But I can't. Not from the iPhone, anyway. Their site is Flash only. Kind of silly for an app developer, don't you think?

[RVL]

Seriously? It only saves to 300x400 pixels? That's just pathetic.

When I read about stuff like that my assumption is that the developer simply doesn't know what he is doing or is just being lazy and looking out for a quick buck.