[Android] Apply effects, filters, or frames to photos with Snapbucket, a Photobucket-powered alternative to Instagram

Snapbucket allows you to quickly take photos, apply a wide variety of different effects to them, and then go ahead and share them on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter or via email/SMS. Snapbucket is basically a Photobucket-powered alternative to Instagram.. minus the whole new-social-network aspect of Instagram.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

This app allows you to quickly take photos, edit them, and then share them with the world on your social networks.

The following is a short demo video showing the functionality of this app:

Pros

  • Has many different effects, filters, vignettes, and frames you can apply
  • Easy to use
  • Allows you to choose pictures from your gallery or snap new photos
  • Allows you to share your photos via email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, as well as upload to Photobucket

Cons

  • Not optimized for tablets
  • The app can be slow and laggy at times
  • When taking new pictures, you can’t see on-screen what you are taking… so, you’re blindly taking pictures (bug?)

Discussion

Snapbucket allows you to take pictures and add dozens of filters, effects, vignettes, and frames to them; if you don’t want to take new photos, you can import your existing pictures, too. The one thing I am happy to see is there is a fairly large selection of different effects, filters, frames, etc. that you can add to your pictures. The one thing I did notice however, is the app itself seems to really resemble Instagram, as do some of the effects–they just have different names. Overall, the effects, frames, etc. are nice and definitely do a good job.

Since this app is powered by Photobucket, when you first launch the app you are asked to either sign into your Photobucket account, or create a new one. This is an optional step, so it is up to you if you’d like to sign in or not, but if you don’t sign in, you won’t be able to access the profile tab, or the community.

The layout of this app makes sense. When I first opened the app I wasn’t immediately confused — everything is straightforward and self-explanatory, and from what I can see, it should make sense to most people. The app features a darker colored theme, which really suits it in my opinion. The only problem with the layout is this app was never optimized for the larger screen of a tablet, meaning certain things look blurry and all stretched out. This is a big problem for tablet owners out there that might want to try out this app. The app still works on a tablet, it’s just that it doesn’t look as good as it does on a smartphone.

One of the cooler aspects of Snapbucket is the ability to share photos — after you have modified them with Snapbucket — with your friends and family. Snapbucket allows you to share your photos via Facebook, Twitter, email, or SMS. You can also upload to your Photobucket account. It would be nice to see the app add support for other social networks, namely Pinterest, since people do tend to use more than just the two biggest social networks out there.

One issue I ran into while using Snapbucket is when I was taking pictures, it wouldn’t let me see what I was taking (no on-screen preview), so I was basically blindly taking pictures which is probably the biggest issue with this app. I would like to see this issue fixed in future apps, because this issue feels more like a bug than anything. Bug it may be, but it is one that is going to really affect how people use it. In fact, it may make people not want to use it. On the flip side, it is a bug that can be worked around — simply use your default camera app to snap new photos and then import the photos into Snapbucket.

Another issue I ran into is, Snapbucket can be laggy and unresponsive at times, which was quite annoying when I was using the app.

Conclusion and download link

Snapbucket does have a lot of potential, and for the most part, is a decent app. The biggest problem with this app is you can’t see the picture you’re taking until you’ve already taken the picture, which is a huge problem but can be worked around by simply using your default camera to snap new photos and then importing the photos into Snapbucket. There are also some stability and lags issues but those will hopefully be fixed in future updates, and could vary from device to device (i.e. Snapbucket probably isn’t optimized for all devices). Overall, I think once these issues are fixed, this will be a very good app and a great alternative to Instagram. However, for the time being you either have to put up with the lag or simply stick to the competition… like Instagram.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 2.1.1

Requires: 2.1 or higher

Download size: 5.9MB

Snapbucket on Play Store

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