Purikura apps for Android.
In Japan they have special photo booths called purikura, which stands for "print club", where you not only get your picture taken, but decorative elements can be added to the pictures as well and then you have your pictures printed out in the form of stickers. Although these kind of booths had come to the United States they never hit it as big as they did in Japan. But something somewhat similar exists for iPhone and other smartphone users where they can take pics and then decorate the pics with images of things like stars and hearts, cartoon funny eyeglasses or mustaches and more.
I recently saw someone posting some pics from
puricute.com on facebook, an online app that creates pics somewhat similar to purikura booths. So I went to the site and noticed they have an app for iPhone. But not for Android.
So I decided to head over to Google Play (formerly Android Market) and see what they might have that is similar.
(Note: A lot of these apps originally come from places such as Japan or Korea, so the English on the pages at Google Play or in the apps sometimes aren't always in correct English. And some have almost no English at all.)
I already had an app on my phone called
PhotoWonder. It's nice and cute...I hadn't used it in awhile though, so I actually just updated it to see what changes there were. It does seem better than when I first got it ages ago, but I think I like the effects and other features on another app that I tried better. This is not a camera app, you can choose which camera app you have on your phone to take pics with it, or choose pics from your phones picture gallery to edit.
PhotoWonder seems to frequently add new stickers/decorations that you can pick and download. So you aren't stuck with the same designs or ones you don't want. Trying to look through them all on your phone, since they aren't categorized, can take some time though. Another cool thing about this app is the collage feature, which I can see myself using a lot (I don't know if it was there before I updated it, but if it was I was strangely unaware of it). And I like their "Better Skin" filter (which basically makes the picture a lot brighter and a bit softer, washing the details out). And I think it is easy to use.
It had 74,627 user ratings and 4.4 stars when I looked at it.
(I believe Photo Wonder is also available as an app for iPhones)
Another app I saw (but did not try because it is not compatible with my phone) is
DecoPic which was described as a "Kawaii Photo Editing App." It had 18,205 people rating it and an average rating of 4.3 stars. So I guess this is a more established and well known app than the others I'll mention. The screenshots looked adorable (Dang, why is it not compatible with my phone?) so I wish I could have tried it. So I can't properly review this. But I think because of it's ratings it might be a good one...it is at least worth trying out.
Now one I did download was
SBY Camera. Not such a cute memorable name (it apparently stands for Super Brilliant Yabai and it explains that Yabai means "extremely cool in Japanese GAL language").
This is a camera app with features such as auto focus that you can turn on and off and a timer. You can also choose pics from the gallery to edit with this app.
It had only 1,037 ratings. It has an average of 4.0 stars. And I really likes this one. It seemed to run well (wasn't slow), was easy to use, I thought it was super cute in it's overall look and feel. I liked the stickers (sparkles, hearts and other decorations, oh my!), and thought it had a fairly large selection (but I don't think you can get more...unless maybe they add more with new app updates). I thought their "whitening" filter was similar to the "better skin" filter in the WonderPhoto app. There are only three fonts (two are childish and the other is plain sans serif) though (and in the menu for picking them it just shows Japanese characters, so you aren't really going to be able to see what they look like until you add them to the pic).
Despite some things I didn't care for, it was just actually my overall favorite.
These next two apps (Picute and Pixtylin) were made by the same company and had a lot of similarities. So I'll cover the similarities together first. These are camera apps (no separate camera app needed). Both took up more memory than the others by a lot (the Picute was 9.6 mb and the Pixtylin 11 mb),
but thankfully it can be installed to the SD card. But it did seem to
run a bit slower on my phone than the others I've reviewed too. I found the controls for the Picute and Pixtylin apps a bit more difficult than some of the other apps.
The filter effects and fonts are the same for both apps (I personally didn't care too much for the fonts as they were too child-like in my opinion). The main way in which they differ is the look and feel, and the stamps that are available.
Picute This app had 643 ratings and 4.0 stars.
When I first opened this app I saw a "Usage Data Collection Terms of Use" agreement...I chose to not agree with it and was able to use the app...so don't be intimidated by that and just choose to not agree to it collecting data if you don't want it to.
The Picute app did not have a lot of decorative stamps, but has a shop where you can get more. Many are free (yay). Some you have to purchase (prices are in Japanese yen...I didn't try to buy any, so I don't know how that works)...and some are only available to purchase in certain regions (sadly they have Sanrio/Hello Kitty stamps available, but apparently those in the United States cannot purchase them). There were some cherry blossom stamps for free that were very pretty.
Pixtylin is made by the same company as Picute (but did not come with the same "Usage Data Collection Terms of Use"). It looks a bit more sophisticated than some of the others (it is described as being perfect for ladies and GALS). Although it has some of the young and girly looking decorations too. I really liked the labels they had (many looked like strips of tape, some looked like metal plagues, etc.). It only had 90 ratings, but I think it's pretty new, and it had an average rating of 4.4.
Like Picute, it didn't have a lot of decorations. It does have a place that says, "Shop...coming soon." So I would guess they intend to have a shop similar to what they have for the Picute app for you to purchase more deco to use for your pics (some will probably be free, like they are in the Picute shop).
Although both apps are pretty much the same in many respects, I preferred the Pixtylin one. This is mainly because of the stamps available and the overall feel/style of the app. There were some stamps from the Picute app I wish I could use in Pixtylin though.
There are lots of other cute apps like these out there. Some are not so popular because they aren't very good. But it seems some may be good, but because they are not in English or are only partially English they aren't as usable/accessible to those who don't read whatever language the app is in (Japanese, Korean, Chinese usually)...it can be frustrating to try to just guess how to use it. Which is too bad, because some of them look really cute.
What cute/kawaii photo editing or camera apps have you used?
