Adding filters and effects to your photos is a popular trend on the web right now, and Instagram is leading the charge. Path also lets you do similar things on its super small social networking app. But what about when you’re on your actual laptop or desktop computer?
There are a lot of desktop apps to edit photos, like Photoshop, but they’re more for professionals. That’s where Analog by Realmac Software steps in. It only works like Instagram, but isn’t currently sharing to Instagram.
The main features of the app are very specific, Filters and Borders. This is what I’d expect from an Instagram desktop app. The app is available on the Mac App Store for $7.99 (for a limited time), so if you’re an Instagram fan and a Mac user, this could be worth it for you.
The features of Analog are simple:
Crop and Rotate
Stunning Filters
Stylish Borders
Sharing
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I’m running Lion, and if you are too, the latest OSX Full Screen and Restore features are put to work here.
Using Analog is fairly simple, just drag any size photo into the app and then start changing the filters. You can toggle over to the borders and change them too, to find the right combination. Once you’re done, export it and share it if you like.
One of the limitations that jumped out immediately was that there is no share to Twitter functionality. Twitter has its own photo sharing and hosting now, so this is something I would expect from an app like Analog. You can currently share to the CloudApp, Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa. Also, it would make sense for the company to use Instagram’s API to upload directly to Instagram.
The other thing that we have to keep an eye on is whether the Analog developers will update the app with new Filters and Borders. That’s the real draw of apps like Instagram, the company listens to its community and add new things quickly.
Otherwise, if you’re looking to make the photos sitting on your desktop look cooler or retro, then Analog is a nice app to do so.
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