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Software

Review: VSCO Cam (Android)

Chris Gampat
No Comments
12/30/2013
3 Mins read

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Though VSCO Cam has been out for iOS devices, it only recently came to the Android platform. The very popular camera and photo app is an alternative to Instagram and can seriously make mobile photography fun for many folks.

Pros and Cons

Pros

– Beats Hipstamatic on filters

– Lots of customization over your photo with an editor that does absolutely unbelievable things to mobile images

– Sharing is very simple

– You won’t regret your filter purchases

Cons

– VSCO Grid isn’t a full mobile community yet

– Can take a while to load up even on a new phone like the Nexus 5.

Gear Used

We tested VSCO Cam on the Google Nexus 5 and HTC One S.

Interface

Screenshot_2013-12-28-12-28-28

VSCO Cam’s interface is fairly straight forward, but one needs to keep in mind that there is quite a bit that you can do with the app. For starters, you can choose to use your phone’s camera, browse your VSCO library, shop in their store, change settings, take a look at updates from the company’s journal, or explore your own VSCO Grid. Whatever section you’re in, you can press the three lines button to get back to the navigation menu.

VSCO’s approach to this is much different from Instagram’s top nav bar and Hipstamatic’s swipes.

Screenshot_2013-12-28-12-28-20

Chances are that you’ll probably spend most of your time here: the library. This is where the app curates images you’ve taken with the app or images that you’ve imported into it.

Screenshot_2013-12-20-12-48-32

Then there is the editing interface. Once and image is selected, you’ll spend some time massaging it to make it look the exact way that you’d prefer.

Screenshot_2013-12-28-12-28-36

Alternatively, you might spend some time here: your grid. This is kind of like your online portfolio where you show off only your best VSCO shots to the world.

Ease of Use

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 12.21.58 PM

For the most part, VSCO isn’t as straight forward as Instagram or Hipstamatic, and we feel that it isn’t really supposed to be. The user has the choice of importing images (as long as their under 1.4MB) or shooting one with your phone’s camera. Then the image pops up in your library. After selecting the image, the user then has the option of editing it.

While editing, you can scroll through loads and loads of presets. Once you’ve selected the one that you want, you can fine tune the image even more. Fine tuning including changing the exposure, temperature, adjusting the shadows/highlights, and lots more. Earlier on, we wrote an entire tutorial on how to edit an image in VSCO.

When you’re done, you can share your image to your VSCO Grid, Instagram, Facebook, and other places. In fact, we highly encourage the use of VSCO via Tumblr. Indeed, an entire blog can be run and updated through the use of Tumblr, VSCO, and effective keywording/tagging on the popular blogging platform. More than anything else, this blows our mind–and the image quality that you can create is just so damned good that you might even consider leaving your dedicated camera at home. Otherwise, we strongly recommend that you consider a camera with WiFi functionality built in like Sony’s A7, NEX 6, Canon’s 6D, Samsung NX300, Olympus’s OMD EM1, or Fujifilm’s XM-1.

Conclusions

The-Phoblographer-Editor's-Choice-Award-Logo

For the most part, we don’t have much of a complaint about VSCO Cam. All that we hope though is that it doesn’t become the flock of madness and insanity that Instagram is. VSCO is for sure a true artist’s app. And because of its promise of a more integrated community that will be coming soon, we’re awarding it an editor’s choice–as we also believe that it far surpasses Snapseed in editing and looks.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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