Cover for the new issue of TIME shot with an iPhone and Hipstamatic

Ben Lowy got the cover of TIME Magazine this week with an iPhone and the photo-filtering app Hipstamatic. Not even for, say, a special tech issue or anything like that! Can't say I'm surprised—I use Hipstamatic with my iPhone5 and love the results. [Edit: wow, I missed the news that Hipstamatic recently laid off most/all of their dev team.] (via Doctor Popular)

• [jandrese]

  What does Hipstamatic do?  Make the photo look all grainy?

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    nope. basically changes the way mobile phone cameras process digital noise, and does so in interesting and artful ways. not just “my sepia-toned sandwich.”

• [signsofrain]

  Why don’t people want to take unmodified full resolution pictures anymore? Why the hell are automatic cropping and crappy filters popular? I really don’t get it. Why not take real photos, then ruin them later in photoshop? At least then your ruined photos would look unique, instead of just like every other sepia-toned “plate of sushi with iPad visible in the corner”. What crap.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    I suspect you haven’t actually used this app or seen it used well. It’s not the same as, for instance, Instagram. At all.

    • [signsofrain]

      Right, not the same, except that in both apps you take a photo and the app crops and modifies it for you.
      I refer you to these three images, taken with the same hipstamatic filter.

      https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRw7iniobLEn4Og4gYKxqvLR_87u7RDc52a8f4560vl0qIhy1Zdlg

      https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTnAGVgV2SsZDp1J0Cz6MwvVSg1xMdd1Is2NMN69tDTieTWusNq

      https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ48yUwc8PmBi3PUqcM5tYjD9g8i6OipA–QCpJoVddxWMuDh_32A

      Arty right? Except they all look the same. The same colours, the same “looking through a pinhole” black border, the same washed out look. Take 3 different photos and just same’em up.

      Cell phones take decent, but not great photos. Take a cell phone pic and apply a bunch of automatic filtering/cropping to it and you get something that – sorry – just isn’t that great. In 10 years, when the novelty fades, you’ll wonder what you thought was so cool about these apps.

    • [Andy Reilly]

      I have used both, and Instagram actually has more control over the picture than Hipstamatic. Hipstamatic is applying a bunch of mods that someone else has chosen. At least Instagram lets you choose things like selective focus and how much/where it gets applied. All of these programs are dwarfed by Camera Awesome!, as it saves an original photo, then applies filters and effects. Hipstamatic has a couple of filters that are either “film”, “flash” or “lenses”. The options are very limited unless you want to buy them. If people are going to whine and cry about “sepia photos of your sandwich”, it’s pretty silly to say that HIpstamatic is any different, that it is somehow cool but Instagram is bad. What I don’t get is why people care. Bad pictures will always be bad pictures, and good ones will be good ones. As a former professional photographer, I don’t understand why people think photos HAVE to be the highest resolution, most perfect reproductions of reality technologically possible. That would be like saying all music has to be played on certain perfectly tuned instruments and must always follow a certain musical scale, etc. All of these photo programs are similar to the lo-fi music movement. Some pictures are breathtaking in their detail and reproduction. But some pictures are modified by people to imbue them with certain moods or emotions. A picture is worth a thousand words, but only if you allow people to choose what ever words they want to use. And a picture of your sandwich will be a picture of your sandwich, sepia filter, or blurry, lens-flared, pinhole filer not withstanding. 

• [Michael Langford]

  Hipstamatic dumped all their iOS team. Wouldn’t look to them to keep up a great product.

  http://gigaom.com/2012/08/16/hipstamatic-confronts-layoffs-on-a-big-day-for-photo-apps/

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    No way! I love this app so much. That bums me out.

    • [Susan Carley Oliver]

       Maybe with the publicity they’ll be able to hire some back!

    • [DocPop]

       If you have time, there’s a great three part series on FastCo about Hipstamatic’s layoffs. Hint: it wasn’t because they weren’t making money.
      http://www.fastcompany.com/3002034/no-filter-how-instagram-caused-hipstamatic-lose-focus-and-gamble-social

• [Drew from Zhrodague]

  Layoffs are common in dotcoms. Usually, a new team of executives shows up, calls everyone “Chief”, and then the layoffs start. There’s a round of funding involved somewhere, but the people that built the product, and made the product great, are dumped with the trash. I have yet to figure out how to benefit from this, but I can see it coming a mile away.

  I hope those laid-off had time to prepare, and take advantage of whatever unemployment benefits available.