I don’t need to be the one to tell you that the photo editing and effects corner of the App Store is crowded. You already knew that. Fact is, you’ve probably already got more than a couple photo editing apps on your iPhone right now. You may even have a happy little routine all sorted out, something like: iPhone camera to VSCO Cam or Mextures possibly to Over and then to Instagram.
Sp do you have room for one more iPhone camera app in your life? Do you really need a new one? If you’re anything like me, that comes down to features and then ease of use.
Not long ago I ran into an app called Faded ($.99 + in-app purchases). It bills itself as the premier all-in-one photo editing app for the iPhone. Big talk, for sure, so of course I had to check it out.
What I found was a powerhouse photo editing app that is capable of producing beautiful results but that takes a bit of getting used to and tries to bilk me out of my hard-earned money too often.
In terms of design, I like the look of Faded. It’s got a chic-hipster feel to it that seems to put you in a creative mood. The app’s user-interface ranges from pretty-good to really great. It’s at it’s best when using the editing tools, but I’m not a fan of the way the app pulls photos in from various libraries on your iPhone. I expect the camera roll to be the first option—it’s very unlikely I’m going to want to re-edit an image I already edited in Faded, so I wish they’d move the Faded library down a few notches on the import screen.
In terms of features, I’ll start off by mentioning the first menu item you see once you open a photo in Faded: actions. Actions let you save a group of edits in order to make them easily repeatable. Love it.
Faded does have some compelling filter and effect options. Choose from categories such as clean, film, instant, portraits, hazy, moody, black and white and retro.
There are 34 free filters and 36 premium filters. One of my pet peeves is an app that you must purchase and then purchase again and again to get the full experience. It’s my number one gripe with Faded.
For instance: when you click on the clean filter set you get four free filters and four premium filters that you must purchase to use for an additional $.99—each. For the filters alone, there’s an additional $8.99 worth of upgrades to get the full offering! And that’s not even counting the cost of extra effects which tops out at an additional $4.95. So if you wanted to get the full experience from Faded, it’s not going to cost you the admission price of $.99. It’s really going to cost you in the neighborhood of $15!
A few of the “free” add-ons will actually cost you a social share.
Here’s what really bugs me about this approach: most of the best filters and effects appear to be premium.
Now let’s get back to what is actually good about Faded. I like the fact that you can separately control exposure and focus when taking a picture. It’s a nice touch that will let control freaks get that perfect shot.
For me one of the areas where Faded shines is the editing tools. You can easily adjust things like contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, temperature, etc. You can also crop a bunch of ways. Thankfully these features are included in the purchase price.
I like that you can mashup two images within Faded without having to open another app for the effect. The controls for this are intuitive and it works well.
There are some frame options included in the app that I never use. With the exception of the circle frame, I’m not really a big frame person. But that is personal preference. Some people might enjoy the framing options—no additional purchases necessary.
To summarize, I think Faded is a powerful photo editing app that can help you do a lot with your iPhone images. But I resent the fact that it costs more than many Mac apps to get the full experience. To me, Faded isn’t a must-have app. Instead I view it as a nice-to-have app. I can get by without it using apps that are much, much cheaper with relatively similar functionality.
The strength of the app is that unifies various features you used to have to get by using multiple apps into one handy app. The downside is that it will cost you to make the most of it.
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