This article was published on October 17, 2011

This $.99 photo app might just become your favorite


This $.99 photo app might just become your favorite

When I bought my iPhone one of the first things that I was excited to do was to use the camera. Fortunately, as you are well aware, the camera is no slouch and it’s widely used in place of a pocket camera for many people.

There are loads of camera apps out there that serve to replace Apple’s stock system, and King Camera has dropped onto our radar by being the single most in-depth photo app we’ve seen yet. At $.99, it’s supremely affordable, offers a wealth of features and definitely belongs in your Photography folder.

But why? Well let’s talk about that. First off, as I said, it’s supremely feature-packed. Firing up King Camera you will see a typical photo screen, but you’ll have a wealth of options for how you want to take your photo:

Some of the features you’ll recognize right away (and never mind that I was holding the camera upside down). The green circle is your focus point, the sun is your white-balance setting. You have grids, timers, anti-shake and flash settings, as well as a few others. A selector switch flips between camera and camcorder mode, and then the link in the top left is your “Photo Desk”, where you can edit photos within the app before deciding to save them.

The edit functions (the shot above is from the “Pro-matik” mode) are massive. With options such as full brights, exposure and shadows settings, color saturation, and intensifier and a texturizer, there’s plenty to do with each photo, and that’s before you add frames to your creation.

If you’re looking for typical filters, they’re included as well, in the section called “Quick-Matik”. You have typical color filters, monochrome ones, some toy camera settings and themes, giving you a wide variety of options. In my use, however, I’ve found that creating my own “filter” type effects using the “Pro-Matik” settings to be much more enjoyable.

When we compare King Camera to the usual suspects (Camera+ being the most notable) there are up and down sides to each. Camera+ offers some great one-tap filter settings and the built-in sharing network is a big advantage. But when it comes to granular control over every aspect of your photo creation, there’s nothing on the App Store that can quite match what King Camera has to offer.

In the past few weeks of using King Camera, I’ve become quite attached to importing old photos, playing with them and then sending them out on Instagram. Since the tweak of the Instagram filters in the latest update, I’ve felt that some of the creativity of the app has been lost and King Camera allows me to create the images that I want to share.

In short, King Camera brings much more value than its $.99 price tag might lead you to think. It’s not the camera app that you’ll go to every time that you want to take a shot, but it’s almost certainly the one that you’ll prefer when you want to make that shot special. Give it a download and let us know your thoughts.

Think you’re ready for the big time? Here’s our guide to selling your photos online.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.