#FF00AA

If you’ve read this blog at all in the past few months, you’ve seen how interested I’ve been in the kind of iPhone apps that take your iPhone’s crappy photos and turn them into something… else. Something more interesting and worthy of posting to Flickr, I’d say.

So it should come as no surprise that the first application I chose to submit to the App Store was one of those filter apps — because there’s nothing I like better than wasting my time rewriting what already exists, only a little better and with less commercial success.

Anyway… it’s three in the morning and I didn’t write my announcement in advance so as not to jinx it, so it’s going to be a mess. The application is called Snap Filters, and the main reason I made it is that I can’t get CameraBag to save a single image without crashing; so Snap Filters is supposed to crash less (it will still quit on you once in a while, because every photo app does on the iPhone, but I’ve found it much more usable in the real world), and it’s designed to give you more flexibility on the filters you’re applying to your pictures, with a fast enough interface that you shouldn’t resent playing with it.

Snap Filters lets you quickly page through three color effects (from least saturated to most contrasty) in nine tint variants each, and two black and white effects (regular or contrasty) with simulated color filters (it doesn’t look like much, but lets you choose the black-and-white effect that makes your details pop most). Plus several levels and styles of vignetting, and the choice of cropping the picture to a square or not. All the while being pretty responsive (until you save the final picture, which obviously needs to take a few seconds).

Most of the photos I’ve posted here in the last couple of weeks have been made with Snap Filters, and I’ve set up a Flickr page where all of my example photos will be. You can also check out the information page for more details but, more importantly:

You should download it right now (iTunes link), because it’s free for a while it’s discounted until I have enough reviews to go to $1.99.