Review: CameraBag 2 (beta)

[Doug Pardee]

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my "photographs" that I forget about snapshots. Snapshots can capture real life. Snapshots can record our memories. Snapshots can be moving, and snapshots can be fun.

Nevercenter's CameraBag 2 (CB2) is a photo editor for dressing up snapshots where the final image will probably be posted on the Web, sent via email, or printed at 4x6. For me, CB2 is a lot of creative fun. It seems to make it pretty easy to take an ordinary snapshot and make it more eye-grabbing... even if the result might be considered a bit "trashy" by the purist. Although casual snapshots are CB2's natural input material, I've found that even my serious photos often can turn out to be fun snapshots if I let myself go.

The heart of CameraBag 2 is applying "looks" that are inspired by vintage film photos and snapshots, especially looks that are noted for their relatively low fidelity. Lomography is the obvious (and most extreme) example, but lomo is just one part of CB2's "vintage" repertoire. It also includes historical looks like cyanotype and autochrome, the nostalgic looks of the Polaroid and Instamatic eras, and some vintage "pro" looks inspired by newspaper and magazine photos. Of the latter, my personal favorite is probably "1962": a high-contrast B&W look that reminds me of Weegee's work.

CB2 also offers some ability to fix up problems in a snapshot, but that's not really its strong point. So I was surprised to find that some of my old and seriously-faded color images from 1960 perked right up with the simple application of CB2's "Lolo" style, which is their homage to the Lomo cross-processing. I had fought to resurrect the colors in those images using more serious applications, but with CB2 I just needed to click that one style button. This is probably a case of "even a blind cat occasionally catches a mouse," but I couldn't help being impressed.

Another way that CB2 isn't particularly oriented toward serious fix-ups is that the adjustments all have to be done by eye. There is no histogram, no eye-dropper, no way to determine the numerical values of the pixels. There's also no zoom-in or zoom-out; you're always seeing the entire image at a "fit to screen" size. A lesser consideration is that the Remix values for the various "styles" aren't documented — all you can do is to play around and see if you can find a setting that you like for the picture you're working on.

One thing I really enjoy about CB2 is using it as a photo browser. I'll set up a particular look and flip through a folder of my pictures, and I'm just fascinated by the images. Many of the photos I'd considered to be "blah" turn out to be quite interesting when viewed as snapshots. No, I don't know why. But it sure is fun.

I was a bit surprised that CB2 is strictly an editor. All you can do with your edited images is to save them as JPEGs, and you don't even get a choice of compression level (the level is roughly similar to Photoshop level 9). There is no way to print from CB2, and there's no way to upload to photo sharing sites. You'll need to do those things with some other program.

When you save a photo, you save only the final image. If you want to save the editing context, you need to do that separately with a "Save Filter" operation. Then if you want to re-edit, you'll need to load the original image file and do a "Load Filter" operation to recover the previous editing context. This is not as convenient as I'd like, and it's somewhat contrary to Nevercenter's claim that CB2 is a non-destructive editor (it's non-destructive in the sense that during an editing session, you can change earlier parts of the editing sequence).

I was also a bit surprised that not a single one of CB2's borders (frames) fit any standard photo print size. I guess the borders are mainly intended for online/email usage.

CameraBag 2 is currently available as a free "beta". During the beta period, if you pay $19 for the original CameraBag Desktop software you'll get a free upgrade license when CameraBag 2 is formally released. The current beta version, 105d, seems to have stabilized nicely, so I expect that CB2 won't stay in beta for much longer. If you're at all interested, I recommend that you download the beta and play with it right away. And, if you're interested, buy the "original now with free upgrade" before the beta period ends and that offer expires.

Here's one of my efforts, a lorikeet with an attitude:



If you do try CameraBag 2, I suggest that when you apply a color Style you start by reducing its Amount value to 50; in my opinion, the color styles generally give garish results when applied full-strength. Also, take a minute to explore the (fairly small) menus and jot down the keyboard shortcuts. Some of them, like "/" to turn the look on and off and Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down to scroll the Remix in steps of 10, are very handy indeed.

[Doug Pardee]

What do you do with a photo that's old and damaged, likeable but not really worth serious restoration?

Make it worse! Turn its liabilities into assets. And CameraBag 2 provides some great tools for that.

Here's a snapshot my father took back in 1961. It's a Persian Air Services DC-7C sitting on the ramp at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport (THR). That's a fairly unusual subject; this particular aircraft was only operated under PAS colors for eight months in 1961 — a photo of this plane at the Heathrow end of its route can be found here — but my father's snapshot will never win any awards no matter what.

The photo was funky to begin with, since the lens wasn't particularly sharp. Over the next 50 years, the colors faded and various spots and dirt accumulated. With enough effort this photo could probably be restored to its original fuzzy glory. But even if the sharpness could be improved, it'd pretty much be just another airliner snapshot, and airliners.net is chock full of those.

So let's make it some beat-up fun: