Give your photos a retro look, with Super Retro™

Above: Johnson, one of my favourite Super Retro™ filter effects.Super Retro™ is the new and long awaited app from partiql. Billed by the development team as an "incredibly easy and fun app", that gives "your photos a nice retro touch" by letting you "combine filters and effects to create beautiful, unique and stunning photos on your iPhone". But what is it really like?

The App
Super Retro™ lets you take or load photos directly from your camera roll/albums and apply that "retro touch".

Before you can edit/give your photos that retro touch, you have to load them to the apps light box. Having loaded/placed a photo on the light box, you can then tap the photo and edit to begin applying the various retro filter effects. These effects can be found in 4 groups, and selectable by touching one of the 4 icons found across the top of the photo editor screen. Opening each of the categories reveals a grid of thumbnails showing the various effects. Touching/selecting an effect you like, enlarges the photo, giving you the option to adjust the strength by use of a slider, enhance the photo, then crop or rotate, and then if desired save the look as a favourite preset, before saving the photo back to the light box, from where you then save it back to the camera roll.

Super Retro™ full list of features include:

• TAKING PICTURES: Fast loading Camera, do not miss your shot and Seperate Focus and Exposure for more control.
• ROTATE: Fix an almost straight horizon with our finetuned rotate tool, rotate by as little as 0.5° with ease, and Simple 90° rotation button for when the iPhone doesn't get the rotation right.
• CROP: Smooth freeform mode, let's you crop however you like, and Simple preset buttons for square, portrait, landscape and panorama ratio.
• EDIT: Get more details into the dark parts of your photo with the highlight/shadow feature. It's like magic! and Add multiple effects and filters on top of each other to get your unique look and feel.
• FILTER & EFFECTS: Our growing selection of presets allows for quick editing without much work, and Combining our filters & effects to get your unique look is really easy as well, and Add multiple filters on top of each other and create your own one-click-effects by adding them to your favourites.
• FAVOURITES: Save your own filter combinations and styles to the favourites tab.

So what do I think of Super Retro?
I was fortunate to be one of the beta testers for this app, and whilst it offers a nice list of features, I found the app a little clunky to use (having to load to the light box, edit, save back to the light box, then save back to the camera roll), and with the exception of 1 or 2, I was generally underwhelmed by many of the apps retro filter effects, and with price set at £1.49/$1.99/€1.59, I feel many will be left rather disappointed by what Super Retro™ currently has to offer.

App Store Link: Super Retro™; Price: £1.49/$1.99/€1.59

Comments

[Nox Dineen]

I bought it as soon as it was released and was immediately sorry. Super Retro crashed the very first time I opened it, and when I did get it open I was really surprised at how slow it was (on a 4S). The filters all strike me as effects I can get from the apps I already own.

The "Coming Soon" in-app store irritates me. Get the app working decently and improve the included filters an UX before trying to gouge more money from users. :(

[Armando A.]

I agree with Glyn in the fact that its nothing special and it does not offer anything that other apps don't already have. i was actually surprised given all hype surrounding this app.
nevertheless i went ahead and bought the app, even tough i did not receive any email telling me that the app had launch in the App Store. i like the fact you can send the photo straight to instagram. i think it needs way more filters, there a couple that are nice but that's it in my opinion. Taking a picture wasn't that quickly at all , compared to say camera plus. Also the app has crashed on me twice now while emailing a photo and applying a filter.
I will keep the app for the time being together with my arsenal of photo apps and wait for an update. C'mon developer release already version 2.0, with more filters, snappier photo taking.

[Khürt Williams]

I received a direct invitation to try this new app but resisted the temptation to purchase yet another app that appears to mimic Instagram. Instagram draws me in because of the social network.

[Espekayen]

The app market is saturated with photo editing apps and I see no point in releasing yet another one unless you're going to offer something new. The saving system seems like a step backward; saving to the light box, then camera roll seems unnecessary. Looks like I'll be giving this one a miss.

[Allan Mullan]

The way in which you have to add to lightbox and save then save to camera roll sounds identical to PhotoForge2 - that doesn't bother me because I know PF2 is an awesome app that provides enough functionality to make it worth extra couple of steps.

I may add this to my watch list and see if there are any updates that make it worth while.

@Nox - I completely agree, I find it appalling that developers are trying to steal from people by supplying a half-way-there product then you have to buy add-ins to make it actually useful. Wish there was a way to get a refund from some of the apps I brought.

[Mr Tmney]

Hmmm... This app leaves me with lots of opinions.
One.... Over hyped, over priced & a lackluster letdown!

With the amount of pre-development hype & teasing of the app taking longer than many a great app takes to develop, Super Retro comes off as developed by a few creativeless guys. It's a very copycat styled app, it rarely adds or gives anything new or inspiring to the consumer, it's like an alpha release that they forgot to include another 50 filters, effects, textures & borders to upon release.

The developers come off in person as arrogant assholes (MY OPINION) and that was even during beta testing. So if I thought the Hipsta devs were pricks, these guys are worse & they only lived off the year of hype off an icon & a few test shots. That is NOT the way to be & they rubbed me they wrong way with attitude beyond words... So was I bitter? yes! Did I over look it all for the sake of giving them an over priced fee of $1.99 upon release yes. And in doing so I was completely disappointed, unimpressed & couldn't believe how little was included in Super Retro to ever justify paying $1.99, never mind the fact that 1. they have the nerve to include an in-app store to purchase more for this app, that includes nothing to begin with... but 2. they were so stupid that they couldn't even have it up & running with in-app purchase add-ons to rape my pockets more after purchasing it.

As well as noted above it crashes 1-2 times every time I have used it.

Pro... I like 10% of the included filter effects, for what the borders offer though nothing unique or textured I do think they are nicely done. They ability like many other apps you can layer, stack & reprocess combinations of effects into one. Then save as your own preset for later use.

I was so frustrated with the purchase of Super Retro, that I literally forced myself to make an interesting & creative result.

So here is a before & after shot:

*Reflection border & text is NOT part of Super Retro
http://instagr.am/p/SkzOy/

*Text NOT part of Super Retro
http://instagr.am/p/SiN6s/

My honest final opinion is that for $1.99 Super Retro does not add or include anything new, that you might not already have with apps you already own. Never mind the fact they are have an in-app store inside they app to potentially & in the future expect to take more of your hard earned money for an app with very little inspiration!

[StormyGirl]

This time I "READ' the review & didn't get it because I thought it was cool; much to the rip off scam artist "Camera+ After Effects"!! As you can tell my a$$ is still chapped by that looser!!

As I said before Glyn I will read your blog "BEFORE HAND" so as to NOT TO GET BURNED AGAIN!!

I liked the look of the difference of this app but as I read it does as so many others but with "cooler names filters".

Thanks all ya'll for being more in tune & knowledgeable than I. And kept it goin for the 'newbies' like me even though I'm older than your averager user ;)

[Mar]

I like this app. Effects are really good. Enhancement produces HDR effect like DynamicLight does.

Cons:
Slightly more expensive than other, slightly better apps.
When controlling the intensity of the effects with the slider, it takes 2 seconds or more for the photo to update, which is a long time.
When saving to camera roll, it takes 1-2 minutes!!!