Decorate and caption your photos with InstaText

InstaText is an iOS app from App Channel, also known as iLegendSoft and Top Rank Apps. It's available now as a free download from the App Store, and there's also a paid "Pro" version available for $0.99. App Channel's product is not the first app to be called "InstaText," and like the others it is an app designed primarily for Instagram and other social media users to add text to their photographs, then share them online. Using InstaText is straightforward and intuitive. The app's main menu invites users to start either from a new photo or from an image saved in their device's photo library. From here, the user is invited to crop it to square proportions, apply an Instagram-style color filter and apply other effects such as blur, frame and text. The blur effect is quite flexible, and allows users to blur the whole image or use rectangular, circular or elliptical areas to focus on for "tilt-shift"-like effects. The strength of the blur may also be adjusted to make the effect more or less subtle as desired. The frames option is divided into two categories: frames that simply surround the image, and frames that leave room for a dedicated text area, usually at the bottom of the image. Finally, the text option allows the user to add captions to the image, position them where they please on the image as a whole, change their color, change their font, rotate them and choose whether or not they have a drop shadow. Once an image has been completed, it can then be shared via email, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Twitter support uses iOS 5+'s native social functions, while both Facebook and Instagram require their respective external apps to be installed. All social shares carry the same grammatically-incorrect "send from InstaText" message with no apparent link to download the app. Users may also choose to simply save their image to their device's camera roll if desired. The app monetizes through a combination of ads and encouraging users to upgrade to the $0.99 "Pro" version. It's not immediately apparent from the App Store descriptions or the pop-up messages what the benefits of upgrading to the paid version are -- it's only by digging into the app's menus that the fact the paid version includes more filters, fonts and options as well as removing ads is revealed. At present, the free version probably offers enough functionality for most users, particularly as the ads are largely rather unobtrusive. There are now a lot of apps out there that allow simple photo manipulation and the adding of text, but InstaText is among the better offerings out there. A simple, intuitive interface belies a surprising amount of flexibility and power, and the app produces some good-looking digital images. App Store reviewers have responded fairly positively to it, too, which is usually a good sign. As a solution for quickly and easily decorating and captioning a photo, it's a worthwhile download -- though that said, the sheer number of apps like this on the market will probably mean InstaText is forgotten in a week or two. You can follow InstaText's progress with AppData, our tracking service for mobile and social apps and developers.

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Decorate and caption your photos with InstaText

Pete Davison

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Pete Davison