With social media and keen special effects, new app Camerarrific aims for dominance.
Smartphone users are so addicted to snapping photos and video and sharing them online that Roberts thinks they are hungering for a smartphone camera app that far surpasses its competitors.
“It’s hard to come across an app you can take good quality pictures with,” Roberts said.
Roberts claims that Camerarrific is one of the only camera apps around that features photos at full resolution lossless compression -- with so much color and detail that Roberts could recently pick out tiny dirt patches when he shot the grass in his lawn.
Roberts says the app has 10 times as many photo filters as its nearest competitor, Instagram, and the effects can be previewed live. There’s even the ability to do so-called “green screen” special effects with video. Starting in early 2014, users will be able to tag music to a picture, with the tag automatically linking to songs on iTunes.
The revenue model is to provide Camerarrific as a “freemium,” with money made off purchases of extra features such as additional filters. Enigmatic Flare is sticking to iPhone only at this stage, with Android coming after launch.
There are plenty of photo-sharing smartphone camera apps out there, including established players such as Instagram, Path and SocialCam.
With giants like these, it perhaps goes without saying that Camerarrific had better be groundbreaking, even downright revolutionary, if it is to compete.
Roberts is confident that Camerarrific will make the cut: “There’s enough features for people to enjoy. ...If you make a product that good, it will sell itself.”
Camerarrific recently debuted on the App Store by November. At launch, it will share on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Path, Instagram and more. Camerarrific’s own social network is coming in the first quarter of 2014, and will be hosted in Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Strengths: Roberts, who developed a noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) game for the Commodore 64 system when he was 10, is counting on his programming chops to carry him through with a smartphone camera app that is so amazing that millions of people will clamor for the free downloads.
Camerarrific has the term behind it that this is a better mobile camera app. It's hard to go through the play store and look at all the camera apps...but you may want to look at this one more throughly. There are enough features for anyone to enjoy. You even have the "green screen" effect while using the video control. And in early 2014 you will be able to tag music to your photos.