Magic Hour - Camera & Unlimited Filter Review

The Magic, or Golden, Hour is the hour at the start of the day and the end of the day in which photos are frequently softer and warmer with longer shadows. It's a great moment for the photographer, ensuring that images are often just right, before any filtering or editing process is required. Clearly Magic Hour - Camera & Unlimited Filter would dearly love to be as vital to photographers as this hour is. Unfortunately it's not quite, and on an app store, full of competition, users might want to go elsewhere.

Magic Hour certainly wins points for usability. The visual style is reminiscient of Playstation 3 game LittleBigPlanet and it's immediately clear what options need to be selected in order to achieve the desired result. Previews of the 40 different filters are easily accessed and viewed too with a wide range of different looks. The problem lies in the fact that every filter looks a little fuzzy. The iPhone 4 in particular takes some pretty sharp photos but Magic Hour appears to underdo this in the filtering process, leaving images looking flat. It's unfortunate as, with the wealth of filters available if each filter was so well implemented, Magic Hour could have been great. The app even facilitates creativity by offering a Filter Market so that users can upload and share their filter creations, potentially allowing for unlimited amounts of filters.

Editing doesn't just end at filters either with the ability to adjust saturation, brightness, contrast and all manners of textures and curves. It's simple to do and effective enough. Sharing options are also predictable but useful with the ability to share on Facebook, Twitter or via email forever present. Added sharing options come via Foursquare, Flickr, Tumblr and Dropbox which is rather useful.

Magic Hour certainly has the functionality there but while the filters frequently provide uninteresting results, that are either fuzzy oruninspiring, it's hard to recommend Magic Hour above the likes of other, more established photo editing apps. For now, it's best left as one to watch to see how development takes it in the future.