I have quite a few photo apps on my iPhone, but most of the time I forget to use them and only rely on the native camera app. But new app Grid Lens, for iPhone and iPod Touch, is making me sit up and take notice — I don’t think I’ll be forgetting I have this app.
Grid Lens will automatically create a photo grid, taking multiple photos at once, or allowing you to manually fill in each frame as you like. What I found most striking in Grid Lens is its interface. The look of the app is slick, and its functionality is extremely user-friendly. There aren’t many words in this app to tell you what buttons use, but after a few minutes of playing, the app will be clear. If automatic shooting is on, Grid Lens will cycle through the frames and take photos automatically. Slide the button to manual, and you can tap an individual frame to get exactly the angle and feature you want. You can customize the app by creating your own grid layouts, choosing the color of the borders, or determining the line thickness.
Grid Lens supports flash and both cameras on the iPhone 4. You cannot, however, use the zoom. Two lens options are available, though: a single-view lens that divides one image into multiple frames, or multi-lens, which will repeat a particular part of the image throughout each frame.
Your photo collages will be stored in the app, and you’ll need to save them to your photo library if you want to access the images from there. Grid Lens offers plenty of sharing options, including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Six effects, such as black and white or sepia, are also available.
The biggest downside to Grid Lens is that you can’t import existing photos from the library. This means you’ll have to remember to use the app live to reap its benefits, so I hope library support is coming to the app soon. Because the interface of Grid Lens is so pleasant to use, I could see myself relying on the product much more often if I didn’t always have to use its features live.
Grid Lens is currently on sale for half-price, and I think I’ll be getting much more than a dollar’s worth of use.
