Mirrorgram Review

While it's true that photo apps are a dime a dozen these days, it's tough trying to find one that offers something truly unique and that works well. As more and more flood the market, is Mirrorgram novel enough to be worth downloading?

Put simply, Mirrorgram is a photo app that gives the iPhone a kaleidoscope-like quality by adding a mirror image to subjects in the camera lens. Simply by gesturing on the screen or tapping the large "M" at the top, users can adjust the mirror to any angle they like, even removing it completely, and seeing the results in real-time.

Once the user likes what they see on screen, they can add a variety of filters (including 2 blurring effects) that can change the image dramatically. There's the usual batch of filters to choose from, ranging from high-contrast filters to over saturating filters to black & white and "grungy" filters. But then there are 2 more filters -- a pixilating "8-bit" filter and a cartoony filter that makes images look like cartoons, or comic book drawings. These 2 extra filters each cost 99 cents to unlock.

After manipulating an image, it's time to share it with the world! Users can select to export the image to Instagram for more manipulation and sharing on the Instagram network. Additionally, users can add captions to their images and share them on Twitter, Facebook and StageBloc or save them locally. It's dead simple to do.

Some nice features that I liked about Mirrorgram are that users can adjust the mirror angle and focal point even after snapping the photo, allowing for some fine-tune adjustments even after the subject is no longer in field of view. Also, users can dig through and manipulate existing images in their camera roll, making Mirrorgram useful beyond the pictures a user can take with it.

What I didn't like about Mirrorgram is that -- and I stress, this only happened once -- I was exporting an image to Instagram that came out looking nothing like the image I created. For whatever reason, after doing some fine adjustments to make the image look exactly the way I wanted, that final image was lost. The mirror angle was completely wrong and, because I didn't save, there was no way to go back and try again; I simply had to reshoot the picture and start from scratch. But, again, this only happened one time, and I made sure to save locally on the next attempt.

I feel like Mirrorgram doesn't quite do enough to make it really stand out, but the one thing it does, it does very well. It adds a whole new level of manipulation to make photos much more interesting. Also, considering that Mirrorgram is only 99 cents, it's not a huge investment to unlock some extra potential for cool images that people are going to love on Instagram.