Photo editing apps today are a dime a dozen, each offering users a myriad of filters that drive us to be more inventive and creative with our photo shoots. XnView’s Blackcam – B&W Photography camera app is one such app for Android that lets you capture black and white pictures with live filters enabled. We take the app for a spin to check out its features.
Capturing Beautiful Black and White Photos with BlackCam
BlackCam has a pretty straightforward interface with a top bar displaying the menu and buttons for the various filter effects. The center of the app displays a grid view of the focus area with a slider on the right side to adjust the display and zoom. At the bottom of the app is another slider with more options such as brightness and contrast.
Below the slider is a thumbnail preview of the various photo filters in the app. At the bottom of the screen is a big Green Camera button flanked by the Gallery buttons on either side.The button at the top far right gives you access to the developers other apps, rating area, sharing and other contact options. If you wish to take selfies there’s a back to front camera button conveniently placed at the top of the screen.
Capturing Photos
To capture a shot with live filters, just select a camera effect from the thumbnail preview. You can see a live preview of the image and if the effect does not appeal to you, you can scroll through the thumbnails to choose any of the 30 or so effects that are available. When you are ready to take a picture, just tap the Green button to capture the image. Some of the interesting effects you can include range from black vignetting to adding simulated film grains.
The output is stored in the form of high quality images in JPEG format. If you wish to add the app’s black and white filters to existing images, you can do so too. Just tap on the Gallery button at the bottom left of the screen, select the image you want to apply the filter to, and voila its done.
Customizing BlackCam
BlackCam is highly customizable to suit your needs. You can remove the grids, improve the lighting or increase the size of the photo capture area, by tapping on the menu button and selecting from the displayed options. If you head over to the Settings area, you can make use of further options such as selecting the desired resolution, setting the timer, using auto focus, using the volume key to take photos, retaining the original photos, geo tagging, folder location and so on.
Typical to all photo editing apps, you can share your image captures via the various apps available on your Phone’s Share screen or email, Intsagram, Tweet the image from the app's sharing screen.
The Nice and Not-So-Nice Aspects of BlackCam
Nice Features!
App UI is well designed and easy to use
Nice collection of filters including colored lens filters, black vignetting, simulated film grain
Live preview of filters lets you preview and try out a number of filters before you take a shot.
Has options to export photos to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Email.
Outputs images in full resolution in JPEG format.
Lets you add black and white filters to existing images.
Could do Better!
Couldn't find a convenient way to delete the images from the app interface.
The colored lens filters did not work for me.
Final Thoughts
The free version of BlackCam is pretty great, but there are definitely some nice filters in the Pro version that might tempt you to go for it. If you are a photography buff, BlackCam is definitely a wonderful app to add to your photo apps collection. The app is free to download and use anyway, so be sure to check it out and tell us what you think of it.
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