HeyCheck for Facebook – social Photo Personalization app

by Toni McQuilken May 15, 2012 10:49 AM – Leave your thoughts

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HeyCheck for Facebook is an app to personalize & share photos similar to Instagram. In fact, you can share the pictures you apply those fancy effects to the billion dollar baby camera photography social network or on Facebook. We found a few quirks, however, let’s get into the full review for the pros and cons!

Price: Free

Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Content Rating: Low Maturity

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

A lot of custom options for personalizing your photos!
You can take new pictures, use shots already in your gallery, or access shots already in your Facebook or Instagram account!

Cons

Once you save a picture, you can’t go back and edit it.
You can’t move a photo around in the frame at all.
Even with permissions limited, preventing it from posting to my Facebook Wall automatically, it still posted photos as if the permission had been granted.

Features:

HeyCheck is a photo personalization app, similar to Instagram in that it allows you to apply various effects to your photo. This one adds the ability to add captions, frames, and even change the texture of the photo in a variety of ways to create unique works of art.

I like the variety of options, which makes for a truly wide range of possibilities as to what you could do to your photo. I also like that I could pull from shots already in my various galleries, instead of being required to take new ones - although that is certainly an option, and is probably the way most people will use it.

In addition to posting it on Facebook, the photo will also post in the HeyCheck database, showing up in their app as well, and available for others using the platform to view and comment on. I didn’t see a way to make a photo private (if I missed a setting, please let me know in the comments!) so you’ll have to keep that in mind when snapping shots.

I’m not sure, to be honest, why you would want to link your Instagram account to this one, since, while you can add borders and effects, you also get the same types of camera effects you get in Instagram. I can’t see someone using both apps, so if you’re looking for an app like Instagram, but don’t want to use that one, this might be an option.

Now on to the things I didn’t like. The first, and biggest, was that I’m careful about what permissions I give apps when it comes to Facebook. I don’t like allowing access to my personal information, nor do I allow most of them to post automatically, without my permission every time. So I unchecked those settings when I was configuring the account, but then, after my test photo was done, it immediately showed up on Facebook in my feed. I was a bit disconcerted by that, so keep it in mind if you decide to install the app.

Another thing I didn’t like is that, once you mark a photo as “done” you can’t go back and edit it. I didn’t realize that the caption would show up on the photo, showing only the middle part. If you write more than will appear in the space provided, the rest gets cut off. It will show up in Facebook along with the link, but in the HeyCheck app, you’re stuck with a caption that only shows a few words, and no way to edit it. You also can’t adjust the photo within the frame. Especially for larger pictures, I wanted the ability to zoom in or out, and then to move the photo within the frame to get the right crop. But you can only use it the way it’s first displayed, so if you want it cropped, you’ll have to use another program to do that before pulling it into HeyCheck.

: HeyCheck Popular Photos

: HeyCheck Photo Choices

: HeyCheck Photo Effects

: HeyCheck Frame Design

: HeyCheck Photo Texture

: HeyCheck Photo Comment

: HeyCheck Capture Options

: HeyCheck Facebook Gallery

: HeyCheck Settings

Usefulness:

If you already use Instagram and like it, then this won’t be a very useful app for you. But if you’re looking for a way to add effects to your photos before you post to Facebook, then this might be a good app for you.

Ease of Use:

The app was easy to use, barring the couple of issues I had, detailed above. When it came to actually playing around with a photo, I didn’t have any problems at all.

Frequently Used:

If you’re a frequent photo-taker and poster, then this is an app you’ll use pretty often.

Interface:

I thought the interface, overall, was pretty easy to use. You get a slider to flick through the various choices for personalization, and everything was very well marked and easy to find.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

(3.5 out of 5)

Should you Download HeyCheck for Facebook? Overall, the app is interesting, and has some really fun elements. I was concerned with the fact that it posted to Facebook automatically, even though I had specifically unchecked that permission, and I wish there was more options for editing your photo – from the zoom and position in the frame, to going back after you finish and fixing something without having to delete it and start over completely. It may serve its uses for some; such as creating photo effects before uploading to either Facebook or adding even more drastic effects to Instagram pics, but in my opinion, maybe not for all until some features are corrected.

Developer: Andrea Veneto Ltd.

Tags: Android App, Android Apps, AndroidTapp.com App Review, Facebook Photos, Heycheck, Heycheck for Facebook, Instagram, Upload Mobile Photos

Categorised in: Communication, Photography, Social