If I told you that this is a review for an app that lets you apply filters to your photos, you’d probably roll your eyes and move on right? There are a million of these and they’re all the same: the interfaces are cute but hard to navigate, the free filters are limited and they always try to convince you to pay extra for better ones.
Well hold on, because Magic Hour is a game changer. This app not only lets you apply a number of great preset filters, it lets you build and save your own using an awesome tool set. Even better, there’s a theme marketplace full of user-submitted free downloads to add to your collection! Intrigued yet? You should be.
Meet Magic Hour
When you open up Magic Hour for the first time, you immediately get a feel for the folded paper, handmade theme that the app’s UI uses. I like this theme for several reasons.
First of all, it looks great. The graphics are fun and unique rather than simply borrowing from everyone else. Also, the app isn’t made to look like a vintage camera with tiny viewports and buttons that you can’t figure out, a greatly overused idea in this genre! Instead, everything is straightforward and super easy to use. The app even guides you through each screen so you can quickly get the hang of how it works.
Magic Hour
As you can see in the image above, Magic Hour takes a page out of the Camera+ book and allows you to independently set points for your exposure and focus.
The system is super simple: tap once anywhere to set the focus, tap twice anywhere to set the exposure. This is great because sometimes you want to focus on a point that really screws with the brightness of the photo. Being able to redirect the auto exposure point is a lifesaver in these tricky situations.
While you’re taking a picture, there are the typical options, like turning off the flash and switching cameras, and some added features, like toggling the grid overlay and turning the entire screen into a “tap to shoot” button.
The tools for taking a picture
I really like tapping anywhere to shoot as opposed to hitting the little button at the bottom, but I’d also like to see a stabilizer option thrown in here as well. A few competing apps have one and once you’ve tried it, it’s hard to go without it.
Applying Filters
Once you’ve taken your photo, the fun starts. You start off in a multi-tabbed list view of filters to try out on your photo. You can choose from a list of your favorites, the default filters that came with the app, those that you’ve created and those that you’ve downloaded.
Choosing a filter
Due to the small thumbnail size, choosing a filter from the list view isn’t ideal, this is more for choosing the list of presets you want to try out. Once you tap on a filter in the list, you see a much larger preview and can easily go back and forth through the filters using the arrow buttons.
Previewing a filter
The default filters are quite good and tons of fun to play with. This is where the functionality in most photo apps ends: you apply the filter and then you’re done. With Magic Hour, you’ve only just gotten started.
Each of the built-in filters was created using a set of tools that is completely available to you. This means you can build your own filters completely from scratch or edit the settings of one that you like but want to tweak.
The functionality here blew me away. You can make curves adjustments targeting by channel (Photoshop fans rejoice), adjust the saturation, brightness and contrast, and choose from a number of vignettes, textures and frames.
Building a custom filter
The Filter Market
The features above will make you like this app, perhaps more than most of the others like it that you’ve tried. The feature that will make you love this app is the filter market. This is where users upload the filters that they create.
The Filter Market
All of the filters here can be downloaded completely free, giving you a potentially unlimited number of awesome filters to apply! There are currently almost 4,000 uploads to choose from, 27 of which popped up as I was writing this article. Needless to say, it’s a fast-growing library.
In my experience, the filters download as fast as you can press the button so you don’t have to worry about this being time-intensive task. They also go right to your “Download” folder under the filters menu so they’re easy to find.
Sharing & Saving
Once you’re done editing your photo, you can either save it to your camera roll or share it using a number of different services.
Sharing
I particularly appreciated the Dropbox option, which throws a copy of the edited folder right into your Dropbox for easy access from any computer.
Worth $1.99?
As soon as I saw what this app could do, I gladly shelled out the two bucks for a download, and it was worth every penny. Developers have been trying to figure out the best photo filter system for quite a while and I think Magic Hour is the solution we’ve all been waiting for.
The value here is simply unbeatable. I love being able to browse and download free filters and then edit them to my liking. Instagram is amazing because it added a social component that leans heavily towards the finished product. This app takes a different approach and turns filter creation and sharing into a social experience.
The one downfall, and the only thing keeping this app from a perfect 10 in my book, is that the output is a fairly low resolution image. This is definitely a pain but the developers have already announced that high-resolution output will be in the next update so it’s a short-lived problem that shouldn’t keep you from downloading the app.
Conclusion
To sum up, Magic Hour is anything but another lame photo effect app. It offers a robust and flexible set of photo editing tools that allow you to create and share your own filters. The amazing Filter Market is hands down one of my favorite features of any photography app.
If you’re at all interested in the retro photography craze, Magic Hour is a must have. If you’re on the fence as to whether or not it’s worth the $1.99, just consider that most apps give you less than ten filters to play with, this one gives you thousands!