Saturday, March 17, 2012

Creative Studio for Nokia Lumia phones

Nokia recently released Creative Studio, a simple yet very useful image capturing and editing tool for the Lumia Windows Phones. And it's free! Here is a quick look into it.


The app features a basic set of effects and editing capabilities, both for new pictures or pictures from your image albums. To me, however, the most precious feature is the panorama shooting mode that enables you easily to stitch four photos into a single panorama image. It's really fast and easy to use plus it's quite accurate (assuming the gyroscope sensor in your phone is ok).

Another cool feature of Creative Studio is the possibility to preview "face warp" and "live styles" effects on your phone's screen while pointing the camera on your desired target. Then, if you like what you see, just tap on the screen or the press the camera button to capture an image.


Taking photos is basically lag-free, even when taking the panorama shots. After you've taken a photo, in either regular mode, panorama mode or some of the live styles, you can choose to further edit the picture and repeat editing as many times as you see fit. You can also compare "before and after" before applying the effects. Only after you're done editing and hit Save, the effects are applied to full size images and it takes a few seconds.

Here's a few sample photos taken and edited with Creative Studio:



If you have a Nokia Lumia phone, you can (and should!) download Creative Studio from the Windows Phone Marketplace. It sort of combines different apps you might be using at the moment (image editing apps / panorama apps) and it definitely will be my #1 photo shooting app for the time being.

End note: One thing I've been dreaming about since I got my Lumia 800 is a panorama feature built-in with the actual camera app of the phone (like it was featured in HTC Radar). Now I've got a good panorama mode but in separate app. Luckily, the camera wizard at Nokia, Damian Dinning, has confirmed that a panorama feature is coming as a built-in feature in the near future so I really look forward to that too!

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