Turn Your Android Phone into a Professional Camera with Pixlr-O-Matic [FREE]

We all have heard of Instagram, the iOS great image sharing service. You take a picture, apply a filter, add a frame and a comment, and it will instantly post it to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Pixlr-o-matic tries to give Android users an Instagram equivalent. It lacks the social capabilities of Instagram and Flickr, but the sheer number of filters and effects to add to your photos are mind-boggling.

Download 

DOWNLOAD Pixlr-o-matic Here it is available on the Android Market as a FREE, ad-free app for devices that have Android 2.1 or above and Support all screen resolutions (GalaxyS, Galaxy SII, Sensation...etc) but It Require Adobe Air 3 to be Installed.

User Interface

The user interface is great. Its very neatly organized and it is really easy to use. When you launch the application you are given three options: select a photo from your gallery, take a fresh photo from your camera, or select one of their photos.

Once you have decided on what photo to use, you can start having fun, applying filters, lens effects and borders.

Filters

In the filters department the application is great. There are a huge amount of choices. The only downside is that they are referred to by people names (Sophia, Peter or Melissa) rather than their traditional names (sepia, black & white or cross-process). Other than this little inconvenience, everything works perfectly smooth. The preview updates almost instantly.

Lens Effects

Pixlr-o-matic also has a great amount of lens effects. This time the name actually describes (or tries to describe) the effect for example, Kryptonite adds a subtle green glow to the bottom of the photo.

Border Effects

You might have noticed a pattern emerging right now; there are many filters and many lens effects, so you might not be surprised to find out that there are also many borders. From a traditional black or white border to a modern floral border, you have a great variety to choose from.

I would like to note that there are 25 filters, 30 lens effects and 31 border styles. I concluded that the number of possible combinations of effects is around 25,000 !

The End Result

When you are done with choosing a filter, lens effect and border, you are taken to the final screen where you can choose where to export your picture. This is where the app stops seeming so great, but more on that later. For now let’s just say you can save your picture on your SD Card storage.

Social Skills

As I implied earlier, the app export features are poor. You will find that you cannot connect to Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other major social sites (Tumblr, WordPress, Flickr). Thats a huge bummer. I would have wanted to see at least Facebook or Twitter, but it does not have any social sharing whatsoever. It does allow the use of an image hosting site, but even that does not have the social capabilities that are practically expected these days.

There is, however, a loop-hole. When you are prompted to choose where to export, You are given three options:

• imm.io: this the their proprietary site. You can post it here, copy the link and then share it via your favorite social application. The downside is that the photo is deleted if it’s not viewed by anyone for 30 days.
• Save to SD card: this saves the picture to your SD card. Pretty self-explanatory.
• Export: here is where things get interesting. You can choose your favorite social client (TweetDeck, for example) and then upload the picture to yfrog, twitpic or any other image hosting sites through this app. This makes the need for social integration almost redundant.

So where I (at first) thought the application is not that good, it throws a curve ball. Why do you need social integration, when you can pop the image in your favorite social client? Problem solved.

Examples

Below you will find various photos showing different filters, lens and border effects.

Cross-Platform

I mentioned in the Availability section that this ap is also available as a web app, desktop app, and a Facebook app in other words, its cross-platform. You will be surprised to find out that the user experience is the same on every platform, as cross-platform developers tend to adapt their application to the platform, rather than adapting the platform to the application.

This is another great big plus for the app. Now I can add a personal touch to all my photos from my computer, my Facebook Albums, or my phone.