App Store Classics: Shake it Photo. Quality Polaroid Snaps.

Hi I’m Ian, new around here. I’m the type of person who enjoys trawling through the App Store on my iPhone looking for interesting apps. Sounds boring I know, But to me it’s like looking for treasure. Occasionally I find some, and when I do, I will share it with you.

When I first use an app, I expect it to be immediately obvious to me how it is supposed to
work. I also expect to be tickled by the UI, and the fidelity of the graphics. Lastly, I expect an app to be able to engage me for at least twenty minutes at a time before I get bored.

This is especially true for games. I expect all this for about a quid or less. Can my latest
app find meet all these criteria? Read on!

Sometimes, great though it is, you need something with a little more ‘funk’ than Apple’s iPhone camera app can provide. Hipstamatic and Plastic Bullet have for some time been my weapons of choice for still photos, but I was after something even simpler. I found it in the form of a great little app called ShakeItPhoto. The developer is called Nick Campbell, a motion designer, photographer, app developer and blogger, also responsible for the rather excellent Cross Process.

ShakeItPhoto turns your iPhone into a Polaroid camera. It couldn’t be simpler to use. You just point and shoot, hit the ‘use’ button (or ‘retake’ if you messed up), and a little milky looking Polaroid photo slides down the screen. The photo slowly develops just like an old Polaroid, but you can speed up the process by shaking your iPhone. Ah, the nostalgia.

The thing is, the photos look really great. I have taken lots with it and they all look good
despite my appalling lack of skill as a photographer. I also still get a little release of
endorphins as I watch the photos appear out of the misty murk.

The photos are saved to your photo library in their Polaroid form only, the image captured before processing is not kept. This for me is a good thing, since I hate going through my library deleting stuff manually, and Hipstamatic for instance saves stuff within the app as well, with no easy way to ‘delete all’ that I know of.

Having said all this, Hipstamatic is better for tweakability although as mentioned before it definitely has its flaws. For painterly results, try Plastic Bullet. But if you just want a fun, cheap, easy to use app which gives lovely looking results, treat yourself to ShakeItPhoto.