iPhone App Review: VSCOcam Photo Editing App

So here's a secret confession -- most of the photos I have posted recently on instagram/Facebook have been processed before they were uploaded and liked many times over.

And the app I have been using is VSCOcam by the visual supply company, which sadly is only available on iOS for now. 

But I wanted to rave about this app anyhow, so android users, maybe you can go read about Snapseed instead - which is another great photo-editing app that I reviewed before. In fact, both apps are quite similar, so I don't know why I am using so much more of VSCO recently.

Anyway, here are 3 reasons why I love the VSCOcam app!

1. Granular control of the photos. You first select a filter (out of 10, 3 of which are b/w), which you can adjust the intensity of. Then you can go to the Tool icon and edit the brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, temperature, sharpness, add vignettes...

These are all the adjustments of VSCOcam.

2. Great results from the control. It's very obvious great thought has gone in to make sure the controls get the right variables tweaked. Look at the food photo! This honey chicken was taken at Nakhon Thai a few weeks ago.

My usual "combi" would be to select the vibrant filter, increase brightness/contrast and reduce temperature, and sharpen.

I find it gives it a very nice "pop" effect. 

This is from the manicure I did yesterday to celebrate National Day. Love it!

I'm also enjoying the new OPI liquid sand collection. It is a matte glittery texture that looks like wet sand! 

3. Clean and well-designed UI. Very important. With this it feels professional and high quality because of the minimal design. Like Apple.

And here are 3 things I thought could be improved:

1. You have to import a photo into the vsco library first before you can start editing. I won't know which to import sometimes because I can't view them in full before importing, so I had to go to my photo library and make mental notes. I suppose having a vsco library is good for bulk actions like saving a batch of photos but it's tedious. 

2. Some of the controls' functions are not very clear because the icons are too minimal. But this is ok after using cos you start to remember.

3. No before and after. In Snapseed you can hold on to a button and compare the effect of before and after you did something. Not much of a big deal but I wish vsco could have that too!

So that's my review! If you have an iPhone and love taking pics, this is a must-download, especially since it is free!