my heart like a kickdrum...: VSCO

Pretty, Pretty Breakfast

By Em O 7:59 AM breakfast, food, foodie, photography, photos, summer, summertime, VSCO, VSCO CAM

App Review: VSCO CAM App (the NEW one)//UPDATED!!

By Em O 7:47 AM app, iphone, photography, review, VSCO, VSCO CAM

The new VSCO CAM app launched the other day. I am a huge fan of VSCO. I believe they do an excellent job marketing- and they back that up with simple and beautiful products. I have used the original VSCO CAM app since it launched, and recently, I made the jump to Lightroom 4, largely, to use the VSCO Film presets.

I was super stoked to hear about the new app- and I downloaded it immediately. I also purchased the preset package, which is kind of crazy, because I rarely make in app purchases. Here's my review so far, the good, and, unfortunately, the bad....

The Good

Design. It is simple, beautiful, and, even as you are editing, your photos take center stage.
The presets are gorgeous. Some are light and simplistic, but they range to instant film and cross-processed. (but they don't seem to fall into that fake, insta app look) Currently you can purchase 48 (I think?) presets for $5.99- whoa! Do it now!
You can change the size of your photo gallery, small, medium and large format for viewing photos. Love this.
Overall, the app is fairly easy to navigate and figure out on first try.
The camera includes separate focus and exposure rings, which allows for more precise photo snapping... this may lead me to actually USE the camera function of the app. (in the past, I always would use the default iphone camera app and import to VSCO CAM since the older app's camera was clunky and slow.)

Playing around with it these past few days, I am fairly happy and excited to use it. I wish I could go a bit more in depth with my likes, but unfortunately....

The Bad

I managed to download the app, purchase the presets, and snap a few photos when... the app consistently started crashing. No rhyme or reason. It would crash in the photo library or crash while editing a photo if I was lucky enough to get that far. At the end of the day, I finally sent an e-mail to VSCO support. I had attempted resetting my phone, had plenty of memory, no other apps running, etc... I was pleased that they got back to me fairly promptly, but unfortunately, they advised me to try all the things I had already attempted. I finally deleted the app and reinstalled it, downloading my presets again (time consuming) and this seem to do the trick. (they also issued an update yesterday evening that was supposed to assist with the bugs that caused it to crash.)

Another issue that is ongoing is the fact that exporting photos to my photo library or e-mail leads to them saving WAY faded. (not the way I edited them) A lot of people are having this issue- and VSCO assures us that there is an update in the works that will take care of this... but I'm bummed that this is something we're waiting for. It makes using/sharing the edited photos fairly impossible, unless you send straight to instagram. :/ ....which only publishes in square format.
Related, ever since I received the first update, my toolkit it GONE. I'm able to re-arrange it, and the icon is there... but it will not come up. Which makes cropping photos to a square format the way I WOULD choose (instead of letting Instagram automatically do it) impossible. So- basically, I'm at an impasse currently, with no way to fully edit my photos or share them. Which has me B U M M E D.

I know that they will try to resolve these issues as soon as possible. I understand that it is a new app and there are bound to be hiccups. But, these are pretty large hiccups. (more like belches, yeah?) The app is free, but I've invested $6 and quite of bit of time. (both with fiddling and tech support) Here's hoping the new update will take care of the issues in a timely manner.

Looking forward to loving the app once it is functioning properly.
(FYI, I'm running the app on my iphone 4, with all current software updates and over 4 gigs of free space.)

EDITED 7/19/13
Everything is up and running and beautiful! The app is now running smoothly, kinks and hiccups worked out. The presets are lovely and true. I really am a fan of the in-app camera (separate focus and exposure rings!) and am working on curating my VSCO Grid.