Mon, 18 Mar 2013 Wood Camera for iPhone, iPad review - chart topping photo app

Bright Mango's Wood Camera - Vintage Photo Editor has been of late the #1 paid iPhone app in the US iTunes App Store, that's, impressively, overall and not just in the Photo & Video category. The developers believe this is the first photo app to hold top spot, helped no doubt by a recent 50 per cent price cut and significant 2.0 update. Conceived by pro photographers John Barnett and Zach Garrett, Wood Camera offers a useful mix of photo tweaks and enhancements capable of turning the most casual of shots into eye candy worthy of the best of Instagram. 

Users can shoot directly from within the app with live lenses - rather filters - and edit them either on the fly or at a later date. Currently, Wood Camera offers 32 lenses: "precisely crafted to emphasise a different part of each photo's dynamic range," which aren't all as successful as the developers might hope. A minority add little or actually make things look decidedly worst, producing a muddy or colour heavy look. You need to select 'Done' to save photos to the app and frustratingly this occasionally crashes, losing any recent photos you might have taken after your last save. The solution, for now at least, appears to be to select 'Done' regularly or simply close other apps, which appears to fix the issue. 

Along with 32 lenses, Wood Camera offers 28 textures to add drama, contrast and grunge to your images, along with 16 varied frames. As Bright Mango points out, this offers thousands of possible combinations to hopefully ensure not all your photos appear samey or generic. Like the lenses, the textures and frames are a mixed bag with the odd dud but there's enough good options and combinations to produce attractive, stylish results. 

Wood Camera includes some essential tools to crop, straighten and sharpen images, along with the ability to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and hue. These are all useful but not all are clearly on display and it took us a little while to discover them all. All editing is non-destructive so you can go back and create variations of the same image should you wish. Wood Camera also offers the chance to import photos from your camera roll and library to add that extra something to images you have already taken. If you’re not sure of the results, then users can simply tap and hold to quickly compare edited images with the original. 

For those looking to share images beyond Instagram full resolution is supported, both for photos saved to your camera roll and those imported from your photo library for editing. Typical of quality photo apps, Wood Camera includes a wealth of options for backing up and sharing your images, including support for email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox and others.