iPhone Apps: WordFoto Review

User Reviews

WordFoto
Developer: bitCycle AB 
Price: $1.99 Download on the App Store

If you like fun photo apps, then you might want to check out WordFoto by bitCycle. This app expands on the tired adage “a picture’s worth a thousand words” and lets users take any picture and use any word to create a one-of-a-kind fun piece of photographic art. With a built in algorithm that fills spaces in with letters, WordFoto gives a fun new meaning to the concept of captioning photos. The best part about WordFoto is you don’t have to be even a novice photographer to use it – simply take a picture, create a word or set of words (or use one of the default word sets), and play around with different styles, fonts, and color saturation until you make something cool.

WordFoto is simple to use with image capturing available from within the app. Choose an existing picture from the photo library or take a new one to start. Tap on the text icon to add a word or word set and then tap the style icon to choose a preset style or create a custom one. Custom styles let you play with brightness, contrast and saturation, as well as select different fonts. A fine-tune option is also available that lets you control the parameters of the letters within the image. It takes a bit of patience and a willingness to explore the effects, but it isn’t rocket science and the preset styles are always available for quick renderings.

There are eight preset styles available ranging from classic color to black and white and there’s even a comic book style that’s fun for certain images. To get the most out of WordFoto it’s best to read the FAQ list on the web, available by tapping the information icon at the top right of the screen. One tip offered is to try working with close up images that don’t have a great deal of contrast. It seems the more contrast and edges the program finds, the more distorted the original image becomes. They also suggest using short word sets with only two or three words for better results.

A bit of WordFoto experimentation and tweaking can really turn out some fun photos. Images rendered to your satisfaction can be saved to the photo library, emailed or posted on Facebook. If you like words as much (or even more) than photography, but enjoy using unique pictures in email, as wallpaper, or just for fun, then WordFoto is a pretty neat app to have. It’s not fancy, and though it sometimes gets slow, it functions more than adequately and is simple and fun to use.