Apply vintage viewfinder effects with Viewmatic

The makers of the popular Wood Camera app are out with a new iPhone camera app called Viewmatic. It lets you apply vintage viewfinder overlays to your photos, among various filters and effects.

The app costs 99 cents, which provides 10 viewfinder overlays and 10 filters, which Viewmatic calls lenses. You can double down on the number of viewfinders and lenses at your disposal via in-app purchases.

Oddly, for an app that mimics viewfinders, Viewmatic does not let you snap a shot. Instead, you can add photos from your Camera Roll or paste one that you may have copied to your clipboard. You can import multiple photos to the app, the thumbnails of which are displayed on Viewmatic's lightbox screen. A single tap on a thumbnail expands it; a double tap opens it directly in edit mode.

In edit mode, you are given five buttons to tweak the look of your photo. From left, they are: rotate and straighten, crop, viewfinders, lenses, and frames. The meat of the app is in the viewfinder and lenses buttons.

The viewfinder overlays are fun to play around with, but you might find that they interfere with the composition of your shot. Thankfully, there is a slider to adjust the intensity of the viewfinder overlay. The lenses button lets you apply a filter effect to your shot, and there is a slider for that, too. After adjusting the slider for lens intensity, tap the arrow on the right to find sliders for brightness, contrast, sharpen, saturation, and hue.

At any time in the editing process, you can tap the toggle switch at the top to see a preview of your photo. When are you done, exit edit mode by tapping the Done button in the upper-right corner. Your work is saved within the app; you'll see your edited photo on Viewmatic's lightbox. Open a photo and tap the share button to save the image to your Camera Roll or share via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or Instagram.