AfterFocus – a photography app to create DSLR-like focus effects, background blur & Bokeh with your photos!
by Toni McQuilken
Oct 8, 2012 12:48 PM –
Install
AfterFocus brings more life to your camera phone photos as the app allows you to have engaging blurred backgrounds like in professional DSLR photos. AfterFocus allows you to pull of some cool effects like smart focus, background blur, and even Bokeh effects. Choose from various effects to bring your pictures to life!
Price: Free, $1.99
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy S3
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- The selective focus allows you to highlight the parts of a photo you really want to share!
Cons
- There is another feature, double photo, that is new in the paid pro version that I was unable to try for the purposes of this review, which focuses only on the free version.
Features:
AfterFocus is a camera app that will allow you to either take a picture inside it, or use one from your gallery, to do selective focusing. Once a picture has been taken, you use its “smart” filters to draw lines and areas designating the parts of a picture you want to be in focus, and the background sections you want to blur out a bit. The effect is a subtle one, but it really does highlight the parts of the photo you care about, while softening the rest, to make your focused area stand out.
The first time you use the app, it will walk you through how to select your foreground and background areas, which in turn is what will be in focus, and what will be blurred. It is incredibly simple to use, and it really does a great job of anticipating from a crude line where your focus areas should be. You can then go in and tweak them a bit if there’s a section that got missed, until you have an exact area selected. The same goes for the background area selection – it is as simple as drawing a line on the screen, and it does the rest.
The app has a few other functions, allowing you to do things like selective coloring, motion blur and offers some artistic options, but to me, those were almost an afterthought. The real strength of this app is the smart sensor and the various focus effects you can achieve with it. The app promotes that this gives you more DSLR features, but while it does allow you to play with selective focus like you can do with a DSLR, it’s not going to make you a better photographer. It will just give you the ability to get some of those effects, but it still relies on you taking a great photo to start with.
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AfterFocus Filters
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AfterFocus Filters 2
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AfterFocus Area Select
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AfterFocus Background Blurred
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AfterFocus Main
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AfterFocus Settings
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AfterFocus Paid Feature
Usefulness:
Like all camera filters, I don’t know if I’d call them useful, as much as they are just fun to play around with. They do, however, make for interesting photos when shared on social networks.
Ease of Use:
The smart filters that allow you to just draw lines on the screen is very easy to use, and I have to say probably the most innovative way of doing it I’ve seen in an app. I was pretty impressed with the ease of use.
Frequently Used:
If you take a lot of pictures and like to play with filters to spice up your photos, you’ll use this often. If you’re just taking straight pictures, you’ll use this less often, but it’s a nice option to have.
Interface:
The interface is very easy to use in the picture menu, with everything well marked. I’d wish the main page didn’t make the logo so huge, and the actual buttons so small, but that’s a minor gripe.
Tags:
AfterFocus,
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Photography,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Bokeh,
Camera Phone Photography,
DSLR,
Filters,
Photo Filters,
Photo Taking,
photography
Categorised in: Photography
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