Gorgeous Panoramic Photos Are Child’s Play With This Clever Camera App [Review]

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Outside my local Apple Store in Bath

DerManDar is a cute three-dollar panoramic photography app for iPhone, and it produces some lovely pictures.

It works like this: you hold the phone vertically, and turn slowly on the spot. The app takes snaps for you (you don’t need to hit the shutter button for each one) then stitches them together into an elongated panoramic view.

If you sign up with dermandar.com you can upload your panoramas there, so that friends can look at them in a Flash viewer; or you can simply share the jpg image file that gets automatically saved to your device’s Camera Roll.

Despite its odd name, this is a really nice app. Although it shares some features with stitching apps like AutoStitch (which has long been, and remains, one of my favourite photo apps), the two are very different in use.

Bath's Royal Crescent

The Royal Crescent in Bath, much loved by visiting tourists.

DerManDar comes with a built-in sharing network, from which you can explore images made by other users. It is designed to capture a level circle of images – what you’d see if you could spin on the spot. It dynamically takes the photos for you, so in some respects it’s not as flexible as AutoStitch. But don’t think less of it for that – the images it creates are a lot of fun to make, share and explore.

If you enjoy experimenting with photography on your iPhone, this is an app well worth trying.

[xrr rating=80%]

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