Wondershare PowerCam I thought that the recent one-two punch of Adobe's Photoshop Touch and Apple's iPhoto would have knocked out most of the competition from other photo apps, but Wondershare’s PowerCam shows that the big-name boys don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. Wondershare PowerCam ios app screenshot Pick your effect At first glance, …
Specifically, as a post-process operation (rather than using the usually rather pricey lenses and doing it properly) it means only a small part of the photo is kept sharp, usually in a narrow horizontal band. The rest is progressively blurred off, simulating the controlled DOF effect of using a good wide aperture on a close-up object. Extra sharpening is sometimes applied to the focussed portion, and sometimes colour saturation is enhanced since this accentuates the "close-up" appearance (distant objects get affected by haze etc, and this reverses that).
I'd add that the reason it is often misunderstood, or has no beneficial visible effect, is because it's not a magic filter to make any arbitrary photograph look like a miniature. It's very context dependent, and works at its best when there are clearly objects at potentially different depths in the field, and especially when viewed from an elevated position.
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Has been hijacked from special tilting lenses arcitectural photographers use to keep a buildings verticals, vertical (not on a path to convergance) when shooting from a low angle.
You can also repurpose these lenses to get a very very shallow Depth Of Field across a narrow strip of the film plane, which gives you the illusion of miniaturisation thanks to the majority of the image being out of focus.
As above, context is key and a high vantage point almost a necessity. Added to a jub load of contrast and saturation to further fool the eye.
Digital attempts to copy the true lens based effect are bollocks, tho I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried once in post process. Much the same with HDR, once only WA enough.
To be fair, when it launched, it was £1.49 for a couple of days before becoming free, then about three weeks later it was £1.49 for two days before becoming free again on 2 January and remained so until yesterday.
In the iOS App Store prices can fluctuate an awful lot and some (e.g. EA Games) are regularly discounted. Personally, I think reviews need to take into account of this - the developers of this app weren’t likely going to do an Instagram, so the chances are that it wasn’t going to stay free, so what would a reviewer feel if it had been priced as previously?
Also, it would be nice to see some indication about how prices have changed – if something is heavily discounted now and then (e.g. saving nearly £20 on Animoog) it might be worth waiting. This information is a doddle to find out, but it would be nice have that little work already done!
According to iTunes, the price is free. That's the case today (17 April), when the review was queued up for publication (11 April) and when the review was written (10 April).
Sorry, but we can't check the price of every single app we review every morning on the off-chance the supplier has decided to charge for something.
As always, then, caveat emptor.
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