Windows Phone App Review: Phototastic

Phototastic is a nice little photography app for your Windows Phone that lets you create photo collages or apply a series of borders and effects to your photos. You can create collages from twenty four templates and apply such effects as a photo booth film strip or Polaroid border to your pictures.

You can apply Phototastic's effects to newly captured images or choose a photo already in your Pictures Hub to customize. Phototastic supports sharing your creations through Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Photobucket.  Overall, Phototastic isn't a shabby little photography app and can give your pictures a little pop.

The main page for Phototastic has options to go into the Classic (collages) or Film (effects, borders, etc.) editing rooms. Along the bottom of the main page are button controls to view other apps from the developer, rate the app in the Marketplace, send the developer feedback and view the About screen.

You're first step in building a collage (the Classic option) is to choose your template. Once that's done all you need to do is tap the photo box on the template to import a photo from your Pictures Hub or capture a new image with your Windows Phone camera.

With the Film option, you have four effects options; Polaroid, Photobooth, Grunge, and Film. Within each category you have a few styles to choose from. As with the collages, once you choose your style you can add images from your Pictures Hub or capture a new image with your camera.

Each effects style allows you to position/resize the photo within the template/border by touch as well as a series of effects you can apply to your photo (available through the button controls). Once you're done editing your photos, tap save and you will be sent to the Publish To page. From here you can save the image to your Pictures Hub or publish to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or Photobucket. Depending on your choice of publishing, you'll be walked through any required log-in steps.

I would have liked to have seen an email option in the publishing page but you can always save the image to your Pictures Hub and email from there. Regardless, I liked Phototastic. The interface was simple, the effects nice and it has just enough bells/whistle to add a little zip to your photos.

There are two versions of Phototastic available. A free, ad supported version that will allow you to save images to your Pictures Hub but lacks that support for Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or Photobucket. The full version will run you $1.99 (free trial available).

You can find Phototastic Free here and Phototastic paid  at the Windows Phone Marketplace.