Android Giveaway of the Day - 8Bit Photo Lab, Retro Effects

8Bit Photo Lab will convert any picture on your phone or straight from your camera to retro 8-bit pixel art!

~~~ Who really needs more than 16 colors?

To get started, choose a picture, scroll through a selection of pre-defined 8-bit filters and immediately review the vintage effect. Save or share the result in just one click!

★ make pixel art, create memes, design flashy posters, have fun!
★ choose from over 40 color palettes: GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, NES, TO7/70, Amstrad CPC 6128, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 16 & 64, VIC 20, CGA, EGA, SAM Coupé, VGA... Yes, actually there are a couple 256 color palettes!
★ 15 dithering types: error diffusion, noise, pattern, checkerboard...
★ huge finely selectable resolution range from 8 x 8 to 1024 x 1024
★ add retro 8-bit text and glitches
★ tastefully decorate with a selection of 8-bit stickers
★ flick right or left and immediately apply the filter to another picture from your collection!
★ high quality output, up to 4096 x 4096 in PNG

~~~ What has anti-aliasing ever done for us?

The app has two goals: be dead simple to use and powerful enough to produce good-looking and effective results.
The reality of old school graphic conversions is that it can be tricky to get good results in all conditions. Low contrast or greyish images tend to be rendered as a murky mess if a straightforward downsampling is applied. 8Bit Photo Lab has a number of parameters that are key to optimizing the final look of your images. Every pixel counts when dealing with low resolution images.

You can start off with one of the predefined looks (star icon) but you can mix and match colors, ditherings, resolutions and more until you get the effect you want.

Any time you change a parameter the result is immediately updated. Browse through multiple looks in the blink of an eye!

The three main parameters are resolution, palettes and dithering. Ditherings allow to simulate a larger range of colors than what the limited palette offers. Various options are offered here. Pattern dithering was often seen used in older paint software as well as the user interfaces for many operating systems. Checkerboard dithering was commonly employed in games. Error diffusion, gives the most faithful rendering but was computationally expensive.

Four parameters adjust color values for each pixel. You'll find familiar brightness, saturation and contrast settings as well as the very useful local contrast setting (also known as unsharp mask). Local contrast is very effective at bringing out detail and allowing to reduce resolution while retaining good subject definition. As an interesting side effect, reducing local contrast produces a soft focus effect which may take your art in another direction altogether. Giving saturation a boost can help make the most of some of the flashy color palettes such as EGA or TO7/70.

Cropping will allow you to select just the part of your pic that you like. Just a tiny part of an image can still have more than enough resolution to be turned to an 8-bit picture. Even if your subject is small and far in the distance, there is hope!

Old computers had few colors to play. They also crashed often in weird ways. Use the glitch menu (blender icon) to add mayhem to your pics. Screen melt, pixel scattering, pixel sorting, cellular automaton, block swapping, RGB offseting are on the menu.

Finally a good old text tool is always useful, whether you're looking to make memes, add a title or a text bubble, the creative possibilities are endless with a large selection of 8-bit fonts and borders to choose from!

* Install the app today to get the PRO version, FREE today! *