Camera Zoom FX | Life of Android

The Story

In the grand tradition of Android camera apps, Camera Zoom FX allows you to snap pics direct from the app and add effects after the fact, or import images from your gallery to tinker with as you see fit.

The Experience

The first thing you notice about Camera Zoom FX is the glorious user interface. Where previous high scorers like Little Photo make the user search through a vast swathe of unintelligible menus to reach effects, Camera Zoom FX puts them in neat sub-menus at your fingertips, allowing you to add neat flourishes to images at the brush of your touchscreen.

Within each effect category, there’s a random function that allows you to quickly add a range of effects with little or no creative thought. We like that.

The built-in camera functionality rivals the best software out there, allowing you to add effects to the shot as you shoot it (certain effects are unavailable) and shoot with a variety of functions like autofocus, negative/sepia/aqua/posterize/mono filters, white balance, nighshot and much more. In many respects it’s vastly superior to the standard Android camera app.

Effects-wise, there’s an embarrassment to choose from, including vignettee, composite, framing options, lomography, cinematic, vintage, distort, mirror… The list goes on and on. Thankfully, with so many options to choose from, it’s relatively simple to then remove effects with the ‘reset’ button on each menu bar. There are even a host of extras you can download from Android Market absolutely free, including ‘Buddys’ that allow you to place your subject next to a variety of celebrities and a number of ‘props packs’ that give you the ability to drop various items into your shot.

Once you’ve completed your masterwork, you can save it direct to your gallery or share it with the world on email, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network you happen to have installed on your phone.

Camera Zoom FX is huge fun and is rapidly becoming our photography effects app of choice. Given the vast range of apps out there in direct competition with it, that’s high praise indeed.