iPhone App Reviews

Puri! 2.0

Michael (Admin) | Aug 6, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)

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Is it wrong for a 30-something guy to be dressing up photos with a gaudy teen-centric photo stamp app? Yeah, it probably is but I’m doing it anyway so screw you!!

Photo booths in Asia have been laying flowery, ultra-cute designs over pics for years, and I’m guessing it’s probably catching on in the western world now but to be honest I have no idea. What I do know is that the iPhone is the perfect platform for apps like Puri! where you can take a photo (or select from the camera roll) and apply all kinds of frames and stamps and text, all in the name of making them sickenly cute.

I may not be an expert in this kind of app, but I feel pretty good about saying that Puri! gets the job done and offers a pretty big array of cartoony cuteness that’s just waiting to make it onto your photos.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Puri! when you launch it is that there’s an option to Open a file. Right away it’s telling you that photos you’ve dressed up and saved in the past are editable which is a pretty cool feature! Personally I don’t see myself re-dressing past Puri!-fied photos, but then again I didn’t see myself using this kind of app to begin with either.

Once you get a pic to play with, you can add frames, stamps, and text to it. The frames and stamps are divided into six categories each which are the same for either one: nature, stars, love, simple and cute, seasons and festivals, and artistic. It would stand to reason that if you choose a frame from “stars” that you’d want to apply “stars” stamps, but hey this is your joint and you can do whatever you want with it.

Within each category is a variety of stuff that fits the category name, and frames stay put but stamps can be positioned and resized with a two-finger motion. It’s really easy and if you somehow get confused or can’t make up your mind about where to put your heart or bunny face there are buttons for undo, redo, remove, and cancel. If you just did something brilliant, hit “Ok” and you can move on to adding your next piece of cuteness.

Another great feature is that Puri! reorients itself for landscape photos. In portrait mode the app’s toolbar appears at the bottom of the screen, and if you’re using a landscape photo the toolbar goes vertical on the side of the screen, plus all the menu icons get reoriented as well. If only all photo app developers would put this much thought into their work!

This is how I imagine hot girls lounge around in their free time

Text is the one area in Puri! that I think is kind of lacking… words are automatically put into a speech bubble with the speech arrow coming out of the bottom left corner of the text box, and that’s where it stays. This needs to be fixed! I learned a long time ago with iToony that speech bubbles need that arrow thing to every which way because… well, just because. People’s heads aren’t always in the same spot, so that speech arrow needs to be flexible.

Another thing I wish the text tool could do is allow me to edit the text after tapping the screen to signal that I’m done typing! It’s cool that the speech bubble can be moved and resized, and it even wraps text automatically, but DAMN… I really want to edit the text itself. Oh well, I guess it’s not that much work to remove the bubble and retype “omg lol”.

Think Bulbs Ltd. really did a nice job on Puri! and if you’re too cheap to spring $3 for this app, the lite version is also serviceable. It doesn’t offer quite the array of frames and stamps as the full version, but it’s a great demo of what the app is capable of.

iTunes Link – Puri! 2.0
Version 2.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.0

Tags: $2.99, good for kids, photo editing, photo sharing