These four images were taken with a Canon G9 and processed with the Picplz app. I was curious about the Instagram app that recently became available for Andriod phones but being forced to crop my images into a square format (and not that I have anything against a square format as long as that is what I want), I was immediately turned off. So I set out in search of an alternative. That led me to Picplz which works in much the same way as Instagram without having to crop the photos but also lets you add the filters in a web browser, something you can’t do with Instagram.

All of these apps claim to make photos look professional with their filters. I find the vast majority of the filters cheesy and no amount of filters that you can apply to a bad photograph is going to make it look “professional.” “Instagram, making bad photography look worse since 2010.”

Back to Picplz. While there are some really good photographers that post there, they are few and far between, most of the photos posted there are of bad self portraits of people looking for attention. LOOK AT ME, I’M A TOUGH GUY! LOOK AT ME, I’M PRETTY AND SLEAZY! Oh, and sunsets and flowers and cats…….Gah.

The one filter that I liked from Picplz was the Russian Toy Camera, I like the blur effect it applies to photos and these are a few of the images I liked from the app. I do have a few more images of an old typewriter that I shot with my phone and will post those at some point.  

One more thing, Picplz is what led me to Tumblr so that is another plus about the app.

(Processed with picplz.)