Hong Kong-based SillyCube has launched a new photo-editing Facebook application called CutePhoto. Even though it’s in an older and crowded genre, it manages to stand out for its ease of use and color.
From slimmed down, Photoshop’esque tools, to any number of brilliantly saturated graphics, SillyCube provides its users with a wide assortment of tools to turn their photographs into something quirky, epic, bizarre, or cute.
To be fair, such applications – be they on Facebook or around the web – that allow users to spice up their photos in one way or another have existed for some time. Typically speaking, they are exceedingly simple renditions of the robust and more complex Adobe products, often ported-over versions of simple web-based photo editors. CutePhoto does a pretty good job at letting users get creative. Unfortunately, at the same time, it does still suffer from a handful of obnoxious usability issues.
When starting up the app, users can choose to upload a photo from their computer, use a URL from the web, take a Facebook photo from a friend, or just start with the set of four default images CutePhoto gives you. Upon entering the editor window, it is possible to zoom and move the selected image as you see fit, as well as adjust its brightness and sharpness. Oddly enough, there appears to be no rotate tool.
Anyways, once you have the image the size and orientation you want, you can begin doctoring it in any number of ways. The most basic of these are 18 or so frames that consist of environments ranging from snow to jungles and from wrapping paper to music notes. It’s all well and good, but that’s hardly the interesting part of the app.
There are actually six categories of random graphics that can be used to decorate an image. Selections include plants, animals, party items, environmental stuff, hats, and various symbols. Unfortunately, the graphics themselves cannot be altered (i.e. color), but they can still be scaled and rotated. They’ll even crop automatically if placed partially outside a frame. Moreover, there is a large enough selection that any modification beyond this is not really needed. Sadly, while this is all well and good, but the noted tools are the conduit for some major usability complaints.
As it stands, once a decoration is chosen, it sticks to your mouse pointer until you plant it down. Once you have put it down, while holding the left mouse button, you can rotate or scale the object (it is worth noting that rotation and scale are only done based on the center point of a graphic) by moving the mouse up and down or left and right respectively. It’s a little awkward, to say the least, but then again, that might be due to years of using Photoshop. That said, that’s not the big issue: The problem, is no matter where we look, we can’t seem to find a means to move, or re-alter a graphic that’s been added to the photo.
Currently, the only thing that is possible, is to click an eraser tool, delete the graphic, and try again until you get it the way you want. In many cases, this will not be an enormous issue for users, but when we tried to align our mighty sword with the paw of Polumbus, the Polar Bear King, it took a few, annoying, tries.
Beyond this issues, everything else seems to work out alright. Users can use a pen tool, with any number of simple brush sizes and an entire color wheel of hues to choose from, giving them unlimited potential. However, and most importantly, to anyone who has used an editor of any sort, CutePhoto retains the almighty undo button.
Once a photo has been completed, users then have the option of either saving it to their computer or uploading it to their gallery within the app. From here, they can save it to an album, set it as a profile picture, post on their own or a friend’s wall, or even put it up publicly within CutePhoto’s Photo Wall.
As a matter of fact, despite being new, the Photo Wall already has any number of very cute and many amusing altered images for people to look at. Moreover, anyone is able to take a peek and “Like” them. Granted, it’s just a default Facebook feature, but it is nice to see how many people like your creations.
Despite some usability issues, CutePhoto is still a pretty cool Facebook app. It has enough variety to allow for a good amount of creativity, and is simple enough to allow the majority of users to create decent quality stuff without drastically limiting the overall possibilities. With any luck, some of the issues of selecting placed graphics and the awkward rotation and scaling mechanics will get cleaned up, but all in all, CutePhoto is an application with few complaints.
