Black and White made simple, with Simply B&W
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 10:00AM | Glyn Evans 
"Simply B&W is a simple to use, yet very capable black and white app"
Developed by Brian Kennedy [A.K.A. Mr. B. Ware], and inspired by two of his favourite Black and White apps Vint B&W and Monophix, Simply B&W is described by Brian as "an easy and simple way to turn your great color shots into exciting black and white photos."
As Brian says, Simply B&W is an easy to use app, that lets you convert your existing photos to black and white ones, just like Monophix, or take black and white photos, similar to Vint B&W.
Simply B&W is more feature rich that Vint B&W, with the addition of tradition black and white filter effects [Red, Green, Blue, Yellow or Orange], but lacks the advanced features found in Monophix.
So what does Simply B&W offer? Well Simply B&W lets you..
- select from 6 different colored lens filters to enhance certain colors and shades in a photo.
- adjust the brightness and contrast of the image.
- choose from border options of none,white or black.
- outputs images at full-res
Importing and convert
Importing and converting your iPhone photos to Black and White is really easy and simple to do. From the apps home screen, simply tap the photo icon, select a photo from the Photo Album or Camera Roll, then select one of the 5 traditional black and white filter options, or no filter at all, and save. Despite being a simple app, if the filter effects are not quite to your liking, then you can easily and quickly adjust the brightness and/or contrast to get the look you want.
Capture Black & White Photo
If you're a fan of Vint B&W, then you'll like Simply B&W, as it offers the same tonal qualities as Vint B&W, but has the addition of being able to apply traditional looking black and white filter effects after you have taken the photo, but before you save it.
Settings, the little extra touches
Whilst Simply B&W is a fairly basic app, it does offer 3 border options, black, white, or no border at all, and when using the camera, you can choose to save the original colour shot, as well as the black and white one, which gives the best of both worlds.
Final thoughts
Simply B&W is definitely a simple to use app that is very capable of producing some really nice black and white images, either directly from the camera itself, or existing photos. Whilst it doesn't offer the features found in some of the more advanced black and white apps, what it does offer, it does well. Whilst there are some features I'd like to see in the next release, like a basic/simple crop option, and the addition of a grain overlay, this first release is a solid one, that is worth checking out if you're looking for a simple to use black and white app.
Reader Comments (6)
the filters option is brilliant, but it would be great if a more manual option like channel mixer type setting is also available!
Cant wait to see what future updates are gonna come to this app!
David, you can currently pinch and zoom but have to do it before you select the filter or film controls. Clicking in the photo region while the controls are active is what's used to hide the control panels. Hope that helps,
-Brian
That this App couples image quality with some really useful additional features, like working on images from Camera Roll, is very good, an actively involved developer is just money in the bank.
actually i use it more for postprocessing.
would like to mention that an added frame does not crop the photo. resulting size is 2720x2064. thats the way it should be in every app.
wishlist
- background saving when shooting with the app
- less steps between shots to get ready for the next shot.
I agree with Rajkumar that having the ability to do the channel mixing sort of thing would be cool, as far as excluding blue altogether, and adjusting the relative amount of red/yellow/green, etc... to give more control, but the app as-is works well.