Etchings Is This Month’s Best iPhone Photography App So Far

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wpid-Photo-31082012-0004.jpg
My scary pixel avatar, etched.

 

 

Etchings is an iPhone photography app which takes your pictures and turns them into very realistic etchings. Or fake etchings, I guess. Whatever you call them, if you pick the right source pic then you’ll end up with something that looks as if you lacquered your own metal plate, etched it, dropped it into an acid bath, washed and dried it, inked it up and ran it through a printing press.

Only instead of taking a whole morning, it takes just seconds.

 

The app seems to add some annoying captions to its exports.

Etchings is a great example of an excellent single-serve app. It costs just a dollar, and creates some stunning results. Back when I was a graphic designer I used a Photoshop plugin called Cutline to get these effects, and although it was more powerful, it costs $90. Etchings can give you great etched and woodcut effects for almost nothing.

You can process new photos or pictures from your camera roll, and pick from several filter styles, from the basic up to the weird (put your picture on a fake dollar bill, for example, or turn it onto a postage stamp.

From here, you can further tweak the filters by choosing various thicknesses of etch line. You’ll soon get a good idea of which works best with a certain image.

The results are amazing. Pick a clear, graphic source picture and the result looks as if it really were scratched into a sheet of zinc. And when you’re done, you can either save the picture or send it to other apps. Instagram is on the list, and some of the pictures benefit from application of Instagram’s own filters.

My advice: Buy this app. It would be worth at least $5.

Source: Etchings

 

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