Photo Effects by LoonaPix

Summary

In your day dreams people are waving banners bearing your face, large billboards of you are on every street corner and a muscular six pack dons the tattoo version of your likeness.

Well, until the day comes that you have reached this level of popularity and adoration applications such as Photo Effects by LoonaPix are there to help you live out your phantasies, virtually at least.

LoonaPix is a fun little app that provides users with over 200 frames and effects into which they may insert their portraits.
Read on after the jump to find out how the app performed in our test runs.

Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tablet

Photo Effects by LoonaPix is not an image editing app, but rather a plethora of impressive frames within which users may place their own pictures.

I use the term “frames” loosely as really just about every type of photo effect is featured within the 200 strong pool of available effects. Pick one and see what your photo looks like in lots of different settings.
From the front page of a newspaper, via a double reflection in J-Lo's shades all the way to a nebulous image in a cloud formation—LoonaPix leaves very little out. In fact, the only effect I could think of that is missing from the list of 219 is a classic baroque picture frame, but then again the app's developers have announced that they will automatically be updating new effects every week, so let's wait and see what LoonaPix has in store for us.

The app is relatively quick to load and when you access it for the first time I suggest you scroll down through the image view list of available effects. Once you find one you like, tap on it to insert a photo from your photo galleries or take a new picture using the stock camera app or other installed camera apps. Please note that every attempt at using the latter function caused a force close during our test runs; more infos regarding this in the Speed & Stability category.

Uploading an image into the app to be integrated/transformed into the effect doesn't take long. Some quick cropping action and Bob's your uncle. If you're satisfied with the outcome you can save it to your gallery or share it via:

• Allshare
• Bluetooth
• Facebook
• Google Mail
• Messaging
• Picasa
• WhatsApp

Add the effects you like best to your favourites list for quick and easy access.

The photos you upload to the app are stored in a neat overview, meaning you can re-access them anytime and don't have to do multiple uploads. This makes for a hassle free and immediate user-experience.

Settings are limited to language selection.

Bottom line:

If you enjoy novelty pictures and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour (think: Lady Gaga holding your portrait and shedding a mascara-tinted tear), Photo Effects by LoonaPix is a fun application to download and try out, as the app's tag line suggests.

Its functionality is somewhat limited in the sense that it “only” provides a number of options to help add more dimension to your pictures. However, if you enjoy this type of photo embellishment and are looking for an app that has a lot of effects to choose from, is easy to use and lets you share your creations via a number of channels, Photo Effects by LoonaPix is the one you want.

As mentioned, Photo Effects by LoonaPix is very easy to use. There are no hidden menus and everything is self-explanatory, seeing as the app comes with only one main function.

The interface isn't fancy, but it feels tidy and responsive.

Photo Effects by LoonaPix's loading times are fine (less than five seconds to load the app per se as well as load pictures from the gallery).

We encountered some instability when trying to use the integrated camera option for uploading pics. When asked to select a picture users have two options: to either select a photo from the gallery or else take a new shot using the stock camera or another camera app (Pudding Camera in my case). While shooting a picture always worked, we encountered force closes every time we tried uploading. The good news is that the shots were successfully saved to the gallery every time, but we were irritated by the app's instability nonetheless.

Photo Effects by LoonaPix is free and available for download from Google Play. A small ad banner is displayed; this proved to be completely unobtrusive on the Galaxy Tab.