I’ve heard many protests about the Facebook-Instagram purchase: “I was going to try it, but then Facebook bought it!” Illogical. First of all, Facebook didn’t buy Instagram in order to keep it away from you, silly. Secondly, the photo app is no less cool for being more widely used. I guess if you are committed to being a hipster, you could try Hipstamatic ($2), which features a deliberately clunky and slow-witted interface intended to slow your photo-filtering process and make you feel better than everyone. However, I would question the integrity of a product that claims to transform you into an hipster instantly, and then provides an anti-intuitive and time-consuming interface that delays your new “instant” hip-ness into an uncertain future. Still, it’s your life.

My only complaint about Instagram (FREE) is that all the filters are presets. Presets are a plus for convenience, but since I gravitate to a handful of those, there’s not as much variation in the look of each photo as I would like. Still, INSTAGRAM: great for quick, awesome, on-the-go photos that are easy to share. Here are some of my favourites:

If you want more control, Snapseed ($5) has more room to play. You can add filters (much like Instagram), but also define areas affected by certain effects, and add other effects like grunge and drama. Effects like centre focus have a greater variety of presets as well, which adds a whole alternative collection of filter-like options. For all these choices, Snapseed is also user-friendly with an intuitive tap/slide/pinch interface. Here is a photo I took to test the system, heavily filtered:

SNAPSEED: turns a casual work-a-day photo into a heartfelt photo-commentary on daily life. Worth $5, and the effort.

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