VSCO

Description:

Founded in 2011, the Visual Supply Company is now 10 years old and its first offering came a year later when they brought out their app VSCO Cam in 2012. What made this app particularly special was the choice of filters built in that managed to mimic the look and feel of analog film. While analog photography had seen a slow and steady decline in popularity over the years, thanks to the coding wizardry of the folks over at VSCO, many users were able to apply those looks to their digital photographs.

As with any successful app, VSCO Camera has gone through a number of iterations over the years with additional functionality and features built into it. Nowadays, the visual style is reminiscent of a number of other similar applications, like Instagram. When you first open the app, you’re greeted with your home page, discover section, studio (where the image processing happens), your personal profile page, and finally the VSCO subscription screen which shows the latest offering of presets and features. 

When you take a photograph or import it from your album, you first encounter the visual presets, 22 free varieties that we’ve counted with the current version, and a seemingly endless number of other presets that are available to purchase at an extra cost.

With a paid subscription model, at $19.99 (same in £) you have access to:

• over 200 presets 
• montage and video editing features 
• weekly photo challenges
• exclusive education content

There is also a free 7-day trial that can be canceled anytime, a useful thing for those that might feel apprehensive about getting a yearly subscription. 

Additional manipulation tools, including cropping adjustments, exposure, contrast, sharpen, clarity, saturation, tone, white balance, skin tone, vignette, grain, fade and split tone. 

Much like some of its biggest rivals, VSCO also offers a community where you can post your images. Upon finishing your edit you’re given the option to save the new image to your camera roll (default) or post to VSCO, should you so desire. 

Overall, for the budding photographer, VSCO offers plenty of tools to make your photographs truly pop. The available free filters should be enough to satisfy most tastes, but there are simply so many more that are only available through a paid subscription. The simple, minimalistic design also adds to the ease of use, but we are a little disappointed that there is currently no desktop version that users could access.