Flare: Photographic Effects App

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I am not a huge fan of the Instagram or Hipstamatic apps, although I see that a number of other photographers use them frequently when using their iPhones et al. If Asim Rafiqui, the quintessential Leica user, uses Instagram photos to illustrate his phenomenal The Idea of India project, there might be something to it.

Through a tweet on my Twitter page, I came to know Flare which describes itself as "a fast, easy, and beautiful darkroom for your desktop". So I decided to try it out and see what all the fuss was in these apps. I don't own an iPhone (I'm a BlackBerry kind of guy), so this seemed to be an alternative.

Downloading Flare (there's a 15 days trial period) I applied photographic effects to a couple of my photographs, as can be seen above in my Lou Reed Graffiti shot. It comes with more than 20 presets, which can also be edited by users. Flare also allows users to come up with their own presets. For those like me who are not joined at the hip to their Photoshop or Lightroom, Flare is a matter of drag and drop...mere seconds to get the preset look you like.

Ingenious, huh? And fun. The photograph above was originally shot using a M9.

And for more fun...how about this one of the porters at the Old Delhi spice alley? The Flare preset is called "Molga". Click on it for a larger size.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved