App Update: Camera Genius
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 10:27PM | Glyn Evans 
The iPhone camera replacement category is heating up, as CodeGoo, the developer behind Camera Genius releases version 3.0 of their camera replacement app, and on paper it looks quite impressive, with a new icon and a complete UI redesign, however there is no mention about resolution!!
So what's new in Camera Genius version 3.0?
- New Edit Mode, with 23 One Step Filters: Enhance, Flash, Glow, Black & White, Grunge, Aged, 70's, Cross Process, Lomo, Psychedelic, Fantasy, Redscale, Cinema, Faded, Silver Oil, Dark Sepia, Pseudo HDR, Mini, Focal Point, Gold, Color Burst, Intense, Accent
- 20 Adjustment Filters: Brightness, Contrast, Grayscale, Hue, Red, Green, Blue, Glow, Sepia, Lighten, Grime, Light Leak, Lomography, Flash, Wild, Goth, Dream, Focus, Deepen
- Crop Interface
- 14 Border Styles
- New Sharing Mode: Facebook, Twitter, Email, Clipboard, Flickr, Picasa, Mobileme, Tumblr, YouTube
- Two User Interface Themes
- Geolocation Tags now recorded in Photos exif data
- Separate Focus & Exposure Controls (Optional)
- New review photos user interface with slider thumbnail controls. Now show from one to 5 thumbnails per row.
- New album view
- New peview mode with Slideshow
- Lots of minor bug fixes.
Despite this impressive list of updates, the apps editor is sadly let down by low-res output!! The camera replacement part of the app captures in full-res, however the editor saves at a lousy 1296 x 968 pixels!! What's this all about?
Based on initial tests, I would say "if you already own the app, then check out the update, however if you are looking for a camera replacement app, then check out one of the others, as they have much more to offer."
App Store Link: Camera Genius; Price: £0.59/$0.99/€0.79
Camera Genius in App Update
Reader Comments (17)
That icon is gorgeous, wow.
I have this app, just not installed on my phone -- time to give it a new chance :)
I had this app before and didn't care for it.
Just reinstalled it to check out the new improved features. But to my sadness there is no camera roll or possibility to look at the photos or edit the photo from in the app. Erasing it again. After rebooting my iPhone twice and reinstalling it three times somehow it should work. I'd tell no one to by it.
Not sure what Ami means, but there is a camera roll, and you can edit existing photos.
Not sure what Ami means either. If you don't know how to tinker around with a simple app, you shouldn't be bad mouthing a developers app just because you don't know how to use it.
Camera roll is there and you could also edit every single photos you have on your camera roll.
I faced the same problem as Ami... I cant find any photos in my Camera Genius's cameraroll.
I had restart the iphone, delete the apps and reinstall the apps, all these doesnt solved the problem.
Ami here again :)
Well sad to say I'm not the problem here. I've been in contact with the developer all day today and even they can't figure out this problem.
I've Rebooted my iPhone 3Gs on IOS4.2 three times, reinstalled the app the same amount and okayed that the app can use my position and put it in EXIF files.
And still can't get photos in to my camera roll or to get any pictures to show up in the in app camera roll.
@jusin Talking about me not being able to tinker a easy app as this is just badmouthing me and not reading what I really wrote. . It's just ridiculous and immature.
As I wrote again it doesn't show any camera roll and the photos don't even end up in the regular camera roll. If the app is that simple at least this should work if you push the shutter and take a photo. But no.
A plus to the developers for trying to help, but still a app that doesn't work is still not recommended by me.
Justin her again :/
I read exactly what you said and I still didn't face any problem with my iPhone ( I got the 3G ).
Every time I take a flick , it shows up to the left hand side of the shutter button. Also every time I take a flick it also ends up in my camera roll. If the app works great for others and not for you, don't just start ranting like a child and bad mouth the developers app out to public. That's ridiculous and immature on your part. Maybe the app is not meant for you. Instead of bad mothing, you should've have taken the time first and sent the developers a private email about your situation.
Besides all that, Camera Genius has a Rock solid little app going on. Feeling all the great features and digging the interface as well.
If not this one - and from the comments I'm guessing this is not it - what is the best all-in-one app for the iphone 4. I'm aware it depends on what one requires but in general what are some of the candidates? As a replacement for the built-in camera.
As for a great all-in-one, there is no perfect answer but, I've tried way sooooo many. Several top pics would include ProCamera, Camera+, and PictureShow. With this new update, Camera Genius has made it back to my home page. I've gotten some great results so far. More testing to do. The app PerfectlyClear gets an honorable mention for the enhancement to sharpness, brightness and contrast, but you can only take one pic at a time, there are limited adjustments, and it is way to slow in saving each pic.
Thanks very much for the review. We really appreciate you taking the time to review it. I wanted to acknowledge a few points brought up in the review and comments. For users having trouble with photos displaying in Album View. Select General > Location Services and make sure the "Genius" icon switch is turned on. There is an apple security restriction that prevents us from being able to access any photos after a user denies location services.
On saving at lower res when editing is applied. We worked a lot on this problem and we will still continue to work on it. Our filters are quite a bit more involved then most other apps. Each filter can have as many a 6 or 7 individual steps. Add to this the ability to apply multiple filters quickly without having to go through a save process at each step. When we were running these filters at full size particularly with older phones it just wasn't stable enough. We decided the least amount of compromise involved shrinking the pic in half when filters were applied. (Please be aware that your original photo is always preserved at full size.) Other apps with comparable filters make similar compromises. Hipstamatic by default saves pics at a reduced size. You can change this to full size but then you will start having memory problems (Crashing). Instagram another app with similar filters also saves photos at even lower res, I think about 600 or so pixels. There are apps like camera+ which saves in full size however the filters being applied are limited to one and generally much simpler than ones we are trying to add. After one effect is applied the photo is saved and you have to re-edit it again to apply your second effect. We didn't want to go that way since it ends up taking several minutes to edit a photo.
This problem mostly affects users wanting to print their images with effects. For displaying on the web photos are almost always downsized to the size we are saving or lower.
All that being said we will continue to work and see if we can limit our memory usage even more on the filters so we can get filters. We want to save edits in their original dimensions.
Jeff,
Thanks for a great app. I just bought this app -- based on this review and the one over at Life in Lofi.
However, I have a question regarding the down scaling of picture size. Do you think you might consider giving the user the option to set the scale factor (for example, 1/2, 3/4 and original size)?
In that way it's up to the user of having to save often (or risk an unstable app), while at the same time having a temporay solution until you figure out a way of fixing it.
I agree with Fredrik's suggestion on giving the user the option to save at higher resolutions, with the understanding that it would take longer and risk an occasional crash. Those filters are fantastic and it would be totallly worth it!!
@ the dev Please keep in mind that there is a sizable and growing community of iPhone photographers that gladly take the extra time for a finished piece at full res. if your filters are as good as you say they are, then that is all the more reason to make full resolution available. I would bet the resolution issue pops up more then you would like in iTunes reviews as well. If you are going to compete, and avoid iTunes store obscurity, I highly recommend you submit a fix for this asap.
Fredrik, Donkey Monkey, Robert,
We are currently working on making the filters full size at least as an option you would be able to check in settings. We will be doing a lot of work trying to optimize the filters further to see if we can decrease memory usage even further and make them more stable at the full res.
Thanks very much for everyone's support. Our goal is to make the best camera app in the store.
The App could not be used for more than half a year since iOS4.
I gave it a new try.
New UI is hiding the view at the shutter side. No exact composition possible!
Postprocessing reduces the resolution.
Zoom resolution is still horrible. Just cropping.
Now deleted forever. I dont think the will come close to ProCamera and Camera+ again.
Curious german translation on the app store says it all.
Its not worth of a professional business.
I recommend to save the money and buy ProCamera and/or Camera+
Hey guys, I just wanted to give you an update. We are making good progress on saving Full res on the photos for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3gs. We still have some troubles on the 3g but we will probably release an update giving 3gs and iphone 4 users the option.
@Tomba: The next build will also have professional translations for all languages. It took us a little longer than expected to get these completed but they are coming very soon.
On the UI if you go to the settings we have a different Theme you can choose from which is similar to the default camera app.
We are also working on zoom. We will try to get it in the next update.
Sorry we couldn't get this out sooner it was a long time between updates. But I hope most people can see we didn't abandon it, we were redoing it back to the level we wanted it to be. The updates we did took time.
Just to let everyone know we released an update today which allows full size saves of edited photos for 3gs and iPhone 4. You can turn it on in the options.