App Review: Miniaturizer for iPhone

About a week ago, I reviewed a photography application called TouchART that took your photos and turned them into magnificent works of art. Today, I have a newly released application called Miniaturizer from the same developer that brought you TouchART, EMH Soft.

Miniaturizer by EMH Soft

Miniaturizer is a photography tool that allows you to convert your photos into a miniaturized look and feel. In order to get that miniature effect in most cases, you require an expense camera lens, but with Miniaturizer, you can get that effect right on your iPhone for a fraction of the cost.

I was very impressed by the results of the Miniaturizer app. After you convert your photo, the best viewing results are achieved when you view the original photo and the miniaturized photo side by side. The end result is truly amazing. The best results come from landscape photos, such as photos outside, and photos taken from a bird’s eye view (when possible).

See below for examples of what Miniaturizer can accomplish (original photo is on the left, miniaturized photo is on the right):

The top set of photos are from the developer and are clearly far more epic than mine along the bottom, but you get the idea. As you can see, you can achieve some neat results.

The user interface for the application is very clean. The buttons you need are neatly lined along the bottom of the app (see image above) and the app makes it very easy to produce a miniature effect photo. Below I will list the brief steps required to get your photo from the start to the amazing end:

  1. Load an image from your iPhone Photo Album
  2. User your finger to select the main focus area that you want (pinch to zoom in/out)
  3. Press the Process button and you will get a new photo with the miniature effect (you can use the Contrast Enhancement for better results)
  4. Save the new photo to your Photo Album by tapping on the Save button

After a few days of use, there are only two negative aspects about the app. First, the “processing” time to get the photo to convert takes a little while. I was using the app on the iPhone 3GS and my processing time was about 1 minute – 1.5 minutes. I can imagine if you are on an iPhone 3G, this could be even longer. Second, once a photo has been converted, the photo seems unnaturally bright. While this is not the case in every photo, it does happen more often than not.

Overall, I have never seen this type of app before for the iPhone and once I saw the results side by side, I was quite amazed. Miniaturizer works exactly as advertised, comes with a clean interface, and impressed everyone that I showed. Miniaturizer gets a well deserved 5 out of 5.

If Miniaturizer has intrigued you as it has me, you check out Miniaturizer in the iTunes App Store for only $0.99!

Also, here is a tip for the app from the developer to get even better photo results:

  • Go up to a higher location and take a bird’s eye view photo. Then use Miniaturizer!
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