Flash bang wallop, what a picture.

A few weeks back something arrived in my twitter feed which really caught my attention. Someone posted a picture they had taken of a train station. Ordinarily it would’ve been the sort of thing I would’ve quickly closed and not thought of again, but this had something different.

It had obviously been photoshopped to give it a particular style; kind of Polaroid like, a greenish colour cast, distressed markings. It had an overall feeling of ‘faded glamour’ that really appealed to me. As it turned out it wasn’t photoshopped but had actually been taken using an iPhone app called ‘Hipstamatic’. Intrigued, I downloaded it to take a look.




What is it?

Hipstamatic is essentially a camera app which applies a set filter effect to each picture you take to give it the aforementioned style (I can hear the tuts and curses of a thousand designers already). But hold on a minute. Let’s have a think about this…

Is it cheating?

Well, yes and no. And honestly, more yes than no. But that doesn’t mean to say it isn’t worthy of attention. The app allows you to mix and match between an array of different lens types, flashes and films, so there’s still a certain level of creativity there. Plus you still need to choose and frame a shot, which is surely still the biggest creative variable? Is it really any different from using a Photoshop filter or brush? Or a Javascript plug-in?

Don’t get me wrong, part of me feels that as a graphic designer I should be the one manipulating my photographs, experimenting and exploring with visual effects of my own, and to be honest, I still do. If anything, Hipstamatic has been somewhat of an inspiration for me to do more of that, which can only be a good thing.

Hipstamatic for the people

What’s really nice here is that people who aren’t skilled in the dark arts of Photoshop are being given the means to play around with visual effects they would otherwise have no idea how to achieve, and they’re producing some really interesting results. And I think the key word there is ‘play’. It’s a fun tool, not a serious piece of software, so let’s play with it.




Not just a pretty face…

Finally, there’s more here to appreciate than just the output. The application interface itself is beautifully designed to look like an old school SLR, there’s obviously been a lot of care and attention gone into it.




Will it get tired quickly? Maybe. Is it impressive in the short term? Definitely.

Check out more about the app here:

http://www.hipstamaticapp.com

And to take a look at some of the results, check out this Flickr set:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/hipstamatic/pool/