Saturday

KitCam, PhotoForge2, who is next?


A little over one week ago, Yahoo acquired KitCam and PhotoForge2 from Ghostbird Software in order to strengthen Yahoo’s Flickr image sharing social division against rival Google, who purchased SnapSeed from Nik Software back in September of last year.


After hearing the news I was ready to voice my anger at loosing a portion of my workflow, but having been taught to retrain myself and to reflect on both sides of the story, I have given pause and did just that. Even after one week I still come to the same conclusion.


While I support healthy competition, I am deeply disappointed by Yahoo having pulled these two applications from iTunes. By no longer making either programs available through iTunes, many iPhoneographers are being denied from fulfilling their creative vision.


Because of Yahoo’s actions, I can only surmise that another version of either redesigned program will be imbedded with Flickr, denying non-Flickr users access to KitCam or PhotoForge2 post production features. Naturally I am only speculating, believing that a stripped down versions of either program is going to be build within the mainframe of Flickr itself, rather than a ‘stand-alone’ application.



Some of my secondary camera and 'go to' post production applications


For now, those of us lucky enough to have a copy residing on our iOS devices, will nevertheless lose the programs functions, once Apple updates the iOS system, rendering our current versions obsolete, since KitCam and PhotoForge2 are no longer being support as they were removed from iTunes.


When Mark Yawnick from Life in LoFo, he said it best when he wrote “This will eventually be very good for Flickr, but bad for the thousand of iPhoneographers who depend on KitCam and PhotoForge2 as a key part of their workflow.” 


I can only hope that Yahoo will have the clarity of sight to re-release either program or as a combination of the two as a stand-alone application at iTunes, besides having it be part of the Flickr structure, as Google did with SnapSeed for iOS, though they did pull it for the desktop version.


Not having either program in an improved version made available deprives iPhoneographers and the mobile community and does a dis-service to an art form still defining itself. While I remain hopeful, each passing day only makes me more skeptical as the outcome.


As competition becomes more competitive among social sharing sites, I fear we have only seen the beginning of post production applications being gobbled up in a race to be first and bigger and that these applications end up being simplified for the general public, leaving the pro-iPhoneographers hands bound in their creativity stifled and unable to reach their full potential.


The simplification or dumbing down of any application in order to make it easier to use and to make it appealing to the average user hurts everyone. For in the end, everyones picture will begin to look everyone else’s when choices are no longer part of the creative equation.



Shot with KitCam using Dreamer lens and Deadwood film



All photographs taken with an iPhone 4S by
©2014 Egmont van Dyck - All Rights Reserved








1 comment:

Rachel said...

As an aspiring iPhoneographer, I have to agree with what you said. I'm very disappointed to learn that both apps were pulled off the app store and will be obsolete in future versions of iOS. I have both apps and will continue using them until then, but I'm truly dismayed by this turn of events.

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