Camera360

CNET Editors' review

by: Jaymar Cabebe on June 01, 2011

As its name suggests, Camera360 is an all-around, effects-heavy camera app for your Android mobile device. Depending on how complicated you want to get, it could serve as a power-packed replacement for your device's stock camera app.

Camera360 rolls the functionality of several different camera apps into one. It lets you wrap frames or scenery around your photos, or add whimsical effects like Ghost, Infrared Thermal, or a Warhol-like Four-Color Poster. And, of course, there's also a long menu of filters to choose from, including two different HDR filters, Black & White, Retro, and Lomo styles among many others. Some of the more unique features include tap-to-focus, and the tilt-shift and color-shift tools, which let you tinker with depth of field and colors. Also, if you're interested in digital zooming (for the most part, we aren't) there's a convenient zoom slider at the bottom of the screen.

Each time you snap a pic, you get the choice to save, share, or delete. Since we did a lot of experimenting with the different filters and effects, this was huge, as we did not have to go to the gallery and delete all of our test photos later. Also, it was great to be able to toggle between the original (effect-free) photo and the stylized version with a simple tap and release. That helped us familiarize ourselves with the nuances of each effect.

Now here's the catch: Camera360 takes quite a bit of effort to learn. It's not an app that you can just jump into and navigate through easily. Once you dive in and choose an effect to apply, there are often minor adjustments that need to be made via deeper menus, so be prepared to do a lot of experimenting. And for some odd reason, the menus only displayed in landscape mode--interesting.

Overall, we think Camera360 is indeed a powerhouse camera app that could serve as a feature-rich replacement for your phone's stock shooter. However, if you don't need all of the heat that Camera360 packs, it may end up being more cumbersome than convenient.