A couple of months ago I wrote about how photos taken with the iPhone 3G can be much improved with camera applications such as CameraBag and ShakeItPhoto. These apps can add much character to an otherwise washed out and often bland offering.

Several weeks ago, the developer behind CameraBag for iPhone announced CameraBag Desktop, for Mac OS X. At the time of the release, there was no trial before buying which was a little disappointing, but because I had enjoyed the speedy way to enhance a photo on the iPhone I decided to jump right on in and plump up the $19 asking price. This was done mostly with the intention of checking it out so I could write an honest review here and let you, my dear readers, know whether it was worth parting with your money.

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The application is extremely easy to use. Drag a photo onto the app window and you have all of your filters along the bottom as you can see. There’s plenty to choose from: Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema and Colorcross – a filter that is not yet in the iPhone app. Aside from applying one filter, you also have a multi-filter option.

Let’s have a look at some before and after photos. First up is a photo I took today of my Nintendo DS…

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And here is that same photo, with the Colorcross filter applied, along with a medium border…

Gamer Girl

In just one click, it has made a boring photo look really quite interesting. Here’s another of a sign post I took last year…

To Germany

And here with the Colorcross filter, once again…

germanysign.jpg

And finally this photo of the Millennium Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne…

bridgeorig.JPG

And now with the Instant filter applied…

bridgeinstant.jpg

CameraBag Desktop is a great way to make your photos look interesting in one click without spending time in your usual photo editor. I can’t say I will be using CameraBag Desktop as often as I will Pixelmator for photo editing, but when a photo calls for more than just a little contrast and vignette then it will be very useful.

I’m going to give CameraBag Desktop a rating of 3 stars. It would have received more had the 15-day trial been available when released, to avoid blindly buying.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

You can download a 15-day trial of CameraBag Desktop, here. Saving is disabled and images contain a watermark in the trial version.