QUICK LOOK

• Add retro-cool filters to your photos
• Tag, caption and share photos easily
• Application for Android and iPhone

Android users – on the whole – are probably more down to earth and pragmatic people than iPhone users (ooh, yes, I went there). But sometimes we also want to indulge our inner hipster and share filter-effect photos of our cats that look like they were taken in the 70s. The nifty photo sharing app, PicPlz, makes that possible.

The app is incredibly simple and satisfying to use. You take a photo (or select one from your gallery), choose a filter to make it look more interesting, add a caption and/or tag friends or your location, then you upload it. Your photos upload automatically to a special PicPlz account, but you can link your social media accounts to that so that you can post to everything at the click of a button.

The app supports Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous and Foursquare, and you’re unlikely to need more than those unless you’re just showing off. Best of all, you can also link a Dropbox account to back up and easily access all your photos from there.

Some reviewers have complained of the number of filters, but there are plenty there for most users. The effects you can choose from include:

• Russian Toy Camera
• The 70s
• Little Plastic Lens
• Cross Process
• High Contrast Monochrome
• Red, green or cyan wash
• Enhanced Definition

All of these filters work very well and produce a great image you’ll want to share, even if your own photography skills leave something to be desired.

One of the unique things about PicPlz is that the effects are non-destructive – your original high-res photo is preserved and backed up to PicPlz’s server and your filter-applied image is saved separately. That means that you can go back to your account at any time and retroactively change or remove the filter. A very good thing should the old-style photo craze ever end and you want your real photos back.

The app does work as a self-contained image-sharing social network, although I’m not sure how compelling a feature this really is – I never used it. You can follow friends who are using the service (the app can search your phone and social media contacts for you) and see a stream of friends’ photos within the app. There’s also a feature that allows you to browse through interesting photos of the entire PicPlz community (if their images are public, of course).

The app interface is clean and easy to use. You are even able to log into your account from the web and make changes from there, if you don’t feel like typing out your different social media login details on your phone’s keyboard. Setup is slightly more tedious than you’d like, since you have to create a PicPlz account and then manually link all your social networks to it, but once the app is running it becomes very quick and intuitive to use. You can even set it so that it starts automatically when you use your phone camera.

Overall, it’s a very useful, simple app that can help you to share your life in a fresh new way. And best of all, it’s completely free.

Turn ons

• Great filters
• Easy to use
• Dropbox integration is a big win

Turn offs

• Setup is a little tedious
• Uploading images to PicPlz can be quite slow

Price: Absolutely free – including all the filters