Available In: App Store | Price: $2.99 |
Chimera is a photo application that allows you to add filters to either previously existing photos in your Camera Roll or take a fresh photo and apply these filters right away. In all there are about 11 different filters (12 if you count the “NONE” filter as an option). These filters include; Quantize, Airbrush, Edges, Inverse, Saturate, Cartoon, Trace, Grayscale, Sepia, Night Vision, and Predator. One nice thing about this app is that once you save an image you can change the filter and save another version of the same image.
There are a bunch of various settings in Chimera… there are 3 different modes; delay settings, image stabilization, and facial recognition. The modes change how Chimera takes the pictures… it will either show you a preview, save the image instantly, or do a continuous burst mode where it will just take picture after picture until you tell it to stop. The other settings are pretty self explanatory. I’m not sure exactly what benefit the facial recognition feature does… it might be some type of auto focus function but really the depth of field on the iPhone camera is pretty great as it is. There are also a few automatic color functions such as auto white balance and a high contrast setting.
Overall, Chimera is a pretty cool app and I could see a practicality for several of the filters however, I don’t see the purpose of the night vision or the predator filters. One thing I don’t really like is the filter preview which is turn on and off by the magnifying glass next to the settings button in the bottom right. This function shows you what the image will look like with the selected filter but it makes it hard to see the full image that you are taking so I prefer to leave it off.
Can Chimera be used with other photo applications or is it just an app for i phone only?
Thanks