Instagram is pretty cool. I play with it on my iPad from time because I like the filters and the quick & easy sharing. It makes things a little more interesting than the standard point-and-click shots folks are uploading all the time.
Unfortunately it’s made for iOS only. I finally found a solution for my Android phone, though: Lightbox.
Lenore, with a Lightbox filter applied
Lightbox doesn’t have the variety of filters Instagram has, but it has quite a few. I do like its sharing aspect better, however. With just a few clicks I can turn social sharing on or off and add or remove the location information. It uploads in the background, and it drops the pics in a separate folder on my phone. If I decide I don’t like the Lightbox camera (zoom functionality is gone, focus seems slow), I can tell it to use the phone manufacturer’s camera software instead.
It will also grab thumbnails from your Twitter, Facebook, etc., feeds, as well as other Lightroom users, but I haven’t played with it much at this point. For the moment I just wanted the filter flexibility and the ability to share to multiple sites in one shot.
In short, I dig it. If you’ve got an Android phone, it’s worth your time to check out.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. He is currently hard at work on the werewolf noir series The Pack for Evileye Books.
