Excellent App, But Missing Something Crucial

I really want to give this app 5 Stars, but right now its missing one thing that is essential to any camera app, and thats the ability to save the images in high resolution. Its nearest competitor, KaleidaCam, capture images with 250% more image detail. Thats a crucial factor, because it means I can only use this app as a toy, and not a professional tool for serious photography.

As far as being fun to use, this app is superior to its competition, because it allows you to have a continually shifting visual field, which is reminiscent to spinning the wheel of an actual kaleidoscope, but without the tediousness of doing it manually.

It also has a very nice added touch, which is a small picture-in-picture view of the area being sampled. That way, you can compose your shot with much greater precision, because you can see the area being used, rather than simply guessing.

The images are not directly saved to the Camera Roll, but you must manually choose to either save each image or cancel. I havent decided yet whether or not I like this.

On the one hand, it has forced me to look at each shot and decide if its a keeper or not. But on the other hand, it interrupts your workflow tremendously. Imagine if a standard camera app forced you to choose "Save" or "Cancel" after every single time you clicked the shutter? Also, its better to make those decisions when you have more time to really examine each shot, rather than in the heat of the moment.

A nice option would be to allow "Save to Camera Roll automatically" as the default. (Which could be turned off later, for those who prefer the other method.) One thing you quickly discover about a kaleidoscope app is that EVERYTHING looks beautiful while youre shooting. Its only later that you can be a bit more critical, and decide that some of the images arent quite what you had in mind, after all.

Overall, this is an awesome app. But right now, its more of a toy than a serious photographic tool. Without high-resolution output, I have to choose KaleidaCam over this one... even though this app gives a much more fun user experience.

By the way, using this app in combination with the automatic painting app "Glaze" makes for some REALLY delightful effects.

Because kaleidoscope mages are so perfectly symmetrical, using an app which adds a bit of randomness to create realistic variations makes the final image look as if it were painted by an actual human being, and not computer generated. And pairing the two apps can give you 20 or 30 really cool "paintings" in literally less than 10 minutes. People will be blown Away by what you produce.

Having said all this, I know it falls on deaf ears. Because this app has gone for a YEAR AND A HALF without a single update, or even a bug fix! And since this is the only app this Developer makes, its safe to say that this is a Dead App. Whatever hopes you may have had for additional features arent even on the Developers radar. Because he gave up on it long, long ago... ah, well.

Pro App Reviews about Kaleidoscope Camera