There are a lot of camera apps in the App Store, but if you want to add some text or a caption to an image, there’s not a lot on tap. Sure, there are some LOLCat and meme apps to try, but if you don’t want super cutesy text all over your carefully shot and edited photo, there hasn’t been a lot to choose from.
Tiny Post is filling that gap, with photo captioning that’s for more than just tapping out “i can haz” on all your pictures. But is it really good enough to claim real estate next to our other photo apps, or will it turn out to be just another meme generator?
Capturing Your Captions
When you open the app for the first time, you’re immediately asked to sign in via Facebook, Twitter, or email. During the signup process you’ll be prompted to add any friends who are already using Tiny Post or to add popular users. Against my better judgement, I signed up via Facebook, but I was rewarded when Tiny Post connected me with all of my Facebook friends, which definitely makes the experience more fun.
To get started creating Tiny Post images, tap the red camera icon in the bottom left corner. You can either snap a new photo or choose an image from your iPhone. There’s no photo editing features, so if you’re really particular about how your shots look, you might want to edit in a separate app first and then import into Tiny Post.
Find just the right picture and an appropriate caption.
Once you’ve got the perfect image, Tiny Post takes you to the captioning screen. You’re allowed three lines of text and no more; if your caption is too long, it just gets cut off. You don’t have to use all three lines though, and you can choose only the first and third, middle, or any combination. There are really no options for styling your text here; you can capitalize, and that’s it. However, with judicious use of spaces you can align your text however you’d like. There’s no font choice though, and you’re stuck with the default font, a heavy condensed sans serif. Luckily, it’s pretty good looking.
Posting a Tiny Post
When you’ve got the caption you want and where you want it on your photo, move on to the next screen. Here’s where you choose the options for your picture. Add a comment and choose where you want to post it: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest or send it via email. You can also choose to make it private by tapping the lock icon.
Sharing a photo, and the finished product in the Tiny Post stream.
Tiny Post gives you some suggested tags, most of which are self-referential or incredibly vague, like #dog. Tiny Post allows you to tag your friends, just as if you were in the Facebook app, but you can’t mention your Twitter friends — even if you’re logged in via your Twitter account — something I really wanted to do.
The Tiny Post Social Network
Once you’ve grown tired of making your own captions, you can browse through those created by other people. The Following tab will let you see all of your friends photos in one place. Tapping the heart under a photo will “like” it. You can comment with the speech bubble or use the share button to save the photo, share on social media or email it. You can also flag a photo if you see someone doing something they shouldn’t.
The Popular and Hall of Tiny Fame streams
The Popular tab brings up the recently captioned photos with the most likes, and the Hall of Tiny Fame lets you look at the images with the most likes overall. I noticed a lot of names repeating, dominating these two tabs, and while the photos were great, I hope as more people adopt the app we’ll get to see lots of different users included in the Popular and Tiny Fame tabs.
You can also view all photos by hashtag, and if you want to see only design photos or cat photos, this can be the way to go. Since the tags are applied by users though, they’re not always accurate and you may not get what you’re looking for. I’d stay out of the #tinypun hashtag, too — that way madness lies.
Settings and Connecting
You’ll adjust your default sharing options in your Settings. You can manage Tiny Post’s connection to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, but I’m not sure why Pinterest isn’t included here. You can share to Pinterest when you’re posting your image, but it was left out of the app sharing settings. Whatever decisions you make here can always be undone when you’re about to share the image though, so nothing is set in stone.
Your settings screen is also where you can logout or give feedback to Tiny Post. If you choose to give feedback, a blank email window will launch in the app, addressed to Tiny Post. When I signed up, I also got an email from one of the developers, so they do seem very keen to hear from you if you have something you want to get off your chest.
Wrapping Up
As a social network-type app for sharing photos, Tiny Post has a ways to go. Right now there just aren’t enough people using the app. There’s a really small pool of people creating content right now, and I saw the same names repeated over and over again. When more people have adopted the app and are sharing their captioned photos, I’ll have more reason to spend some time looking around.
Still, Tiny Post is a great app for slapping good looking captions on your photos. If you’ve been looking for an app that would let you get a few words out on your images before sharing them on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or elsewhere, this is a great one to give a look. There’s not really any choice in how your captions appear, but it saves me the time of sorting through a lot of options and gives me something that looks great on the first try. The other stuff could use some work, but what Tiny Post does well, it’s doing really well.