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Plastic Bullet Review – Olde Timey Effects

5 August 2010 Author: ChantelleJoy View Comments & Reactions

I received a suggestion from a reader ‘Cheryl S.’ about this App. I’m going to be honest with you – this is the first App I purchased for my new iPhone 4. With the launch and purchase of this new device I have now made my regular digital camera obsolete (as it was a mere 4.1 Mega Pixels, non-HD video recording camera). Not to mention that it doesn’t have Apps, and I think it’s pretty clear at this point that I love Photo Editing Apps.

Basically what Plastic Bullet is, is a filter/effects App which doesn’t do fancy avante-garde art style or funny borders/stamps – it mimics the effects of a Toy Camera or old-style photography. It uses light-leaks, over-exposures, colour tints and lots more to create unique, and beautiful photo edits, randomly.

I’m going to highlight the Random aspect of this, because it’s very important. Most photo editing Apps let you control the effects you’re putting on your photos – not Plastic Bullet. It develops your pics randomly, showing you four options at once, you can click on each to see them full-size and then select the Heart Icon to save them locally. If you’re looking for an App that makes these sorts of images completely custom to your settings, this App is not for you. I, however, am super-lazy and just want to say “yes” or “no” and be left with a whack of cool looking photos.

To get a great overview of how the App works, have a look at the video that the developers created:

(FLASH VIDEO, sorry iOS readers)


Here are a few pics that I edited with Plastic Bullet.

This is the original (taken on a BB Bold, my iPhone 4 was MIA, sorry for the quality ;) ):


My Roommate and her Boyfriend at the Pirate Festival last weekend.

And some Edits:





And, while I forgot to save the originals (which is an option to turn on/off in the App Settings, which I completely forgot about), here are a few of me and my cat.




Cheebs:


So, it’s pretty obvious that this App takes boring photos and turns them into awesome looking, vintage even, ‘Photography’. A few downfalls, aside from the lack of customization, that I will note. 1) No matter the original size of the photo, the saved edits will always be 800×600. This is an issue that Red Giant has stated they plan to fix in an upcoming update (However the App itself hasn’t been updated once since its launch in Mid-May). Second, on iOS4 (or possibly just iPhone 4), the orientation is wacky, sometimes. Doesn’t effect picture output, but sometimes makes it difficult to scroll through the edit options. I’m hoping this will also be fixed an a not-too-far-away update.

[UPDATE]
Less than 24hrs after posting this, Red Giant went ahead and did the update that I was waiting for, hooray! The app now fixes all orientation issues, and will save at higher resolutions [exact resolutions based on your iPhone model]. They also added Facebook and Flickr uploading ability – and Multitasking for iOS4.
[/UPDATE]

This App is well worth the $1.99 you’ll shell out for it. I did, and couldn’t be happier.

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