Toaast’s Gifture is a new free app
that makes it easy to create animated GIFs: It lets you take a series
of photos, stich them together, and create a brief animation out of
them. You can also apply Instagram-style filters to your masterpiece. We
got a chance to speak with its developer and take the app for a spin;
read on to get our first impressions.
When you first launch Gifture, you can choose to create a dedicated
account or sign in using your Twitter or Facebook credentials. Once
logged in, you’ll be presented with a toolbar along the bottom of the
screen broken out into a set of sections familiar to anyone who’s used a
social network. Feed, as you might expect, shows all the latest GIFs from people you follow. Popular shows the most favorited images from across all users. Activity details all your recent followers, comments, and likes. Finally, Account lets you change your settings and find friends that are also using the app.
The actual process of creating a GIF is easy; adding and removing
images manually is a breeze, and an automatic mode makes the process
even simpler. You can tweak the end result by applying a filter: The
selection of filters isn’t very broad, but here’s hoping for more
choices in a future update. Once you make a GIF, you can share it on
Twitter and Facebook, and an upcoming release will bring tighter
integration with Tumblr.
Check out this example animation, featuring a website you know and love.
TechHive spoke with James McDonald, the Glasgow-based designer behind
Gifture, and asked him why Toaast decided to make this its debut app.
McDonald explained that the inspiration struck when he stumbled
across Cinemagraphs.com, a site that showcases a selection of subtle GIF
animations. McDonald found himself “in awe” at just “how beautiful
animated gifs could be,” so made an iPhone app based around their
creation.
Although Gifture isn’t the first GIF maker app on iOS—GIF Shop,
Giffer, and Cinemagram all do similar things—McDonald feels confident
that, despite the competition, his company could “definitely improve the
overall user experience” of GIF-making apps.
Although the graphical touches found within Gifture are clearly a
labor of love, the actual user interface feels strikingly familiar: If
you’ve used Instagram, you’ll immediately feel comfortable using
Gifture, since the two apps have a similar layout and work much the
same.
When we asked McDonald about this clear likeness, he alluded that the
similarity was no accident—the idea being that Instagram users would
feel right at home with Gifture: “Being hardcore Instagram users, we
thought it would be a great idea to execute the app in a way that the
user experience was similar,” so that users could avoid “having to learn
how to use another app.”
In practice, this design decision definitely works, as switching from
Instagram to Gifture is an easy process with a minimal learning curve.
It’s just a shame that Gifture seems to lack its own distinct identity
as a result.
The Feed tab currently seems to display updates in a random order,
not in a chronological timeline view as one might expect. Beyond this,
though, Gifture is a solid option for creating GIFs. The app is
responsive and easy to use, and has a growing community quickly amassing
behind it. If you’re looking to create quirky GIFs on your iPhone,
Gifture is a standout option.
http://www.techhive.com/article/2000077/gifture-lets-you-make-animated-gifs-on-the-fly-party-like-its-1999.html
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