The Hipstamatic 300 Update
Tips on getting the most out of our latest upgrade
It’s been an amazing first week of Hipstamatic 300. We love the passion that our community has and have received lots of feedback (both positive and negative) on all the big changes we’ve made.
The version of Hipstamatic that we shipped is the product of a lot of iterations and feedback from some of the most passionate core members of the Hipstamatic community. There was a very long internal beta process and there are some key (somewhat hidden) features that were added as a result (more on that below). Our goal with Hipstamatic 300 was to add lots of value (with the all-new editing suite), but make sure that our core community, who have loved Hipstamatic 100 and 200 for the last five years, can still use the product they love the the way they want to use it.
Unfortunately some bugs slipped through on the initial 300 release. We corrected the major ones as quickly as we could (and issued the day two 301 update). For the next several weeks/months we plan to submit weekly bug fix updates to improve app stability as well as tweak the experience as we receive feedback.
Camera Gear Migration / “I lost all my paks!”
To support more flexibility in downloading gear, as well as new filters and effects in the future, we had to completely rebuild the gear management system in Hipstamatic 300. As a result of this rebuild, when you first launch the new app all of your old gear has to be “migrated” to this new format. This happens in the background, and most of you you won’t even notice it. However while it is happening your app may behave more sluggishly or even be a little unstable, especially if you have lots of gear. We are working on making this process more seamless.
Don’t worry, you won’t lose all your gear. The new Shop section of Hipstamatic contains a ‘My Gear’ tab that will show you everything you have ever gotten with Hipstamatic (even if it’s not currently installed). If you have issues or receive errors, check here first and try manually downloading the gear you want. Also feel free to contact our favorite Canadian and support guru, Allan, if you’re still missing gear after the migration process is complete.
New Integrated Photo Library / “Where are my all my Hipstamatic photos?”
Hipstamatic 300 uses new features in iOS that let it completely sync with the global iOS Photo Library (sometimes referred to as “camera roll” or the “Photos app”). This means that new photos you shoot are no longer duplicated as they were before — there is no more separate Hipstamatic Library with copies saved to your camera roll. This also makes it easy to edit any photo you want, and you can now order prints of any square photo in PrintLab.
You can still see your old Hipstamatic 200 Library by swiping to the left (in the 'All Photos’ view), and tapping 'Hipstamatic 200 Library’). New photos no longer go here, but there are functions here to copy over any images that you want (or remove images that are duplicates) to your iOS Photo Library. We are working on a batch-delete / batch-copy process to make this much easier for those of you that have hundreds or thousands of images in here.
Hipstamatic 300 also automatically creates an album in the iOS Photo Library to give you easy access to all the images you shoot or edit. These images are not copied and do not take up additional space on your device. Albums on iOS are simply an organizational tool (much like “Stacks” were in Hipstamatic 200, but even better because you can see them in the Photos app or any other app that utilizes the iOS Photo Library). Photos are only stored once, but can be associated with many albums.
Non-destructive editing and capturing the original / “None of my Hipstamatic images are syncing over to iPhoto — I’m just getting the raw originals!”
One of the big new features in Hipstamatic 300 is the ability to change the lens/flash/film or tweak the effect after you shoot. This works because new features in the iOS Photo Library let you save the original image “behind” the edited one. So when you open up the image to edit it you are actually editing the original again — not adding additional effects “on top of” the already filtered image.
This feature works great when you use the new iCloud Photo Library that Apple introduced last year. All the images you shoot with Hipstamatic (with originals saved) are automatically synced to your iPad and Mac, as well as their edited versions (with Hipstamatic effects). Unfortunately if you do not use this feature (and we understand that lots of you don’t — it does have a monthly fee attached to it if you want more than 5 GB of storage), syncing the images off of your iOS device and onto a desktop computer can be a challenge.
By default Apple assumes you want the original image so this is what they will sync over when a photo is discovered with “edits” on top of it. Unfortunately the official workaround from Apple for this is to “email the photo to yourself”, which can be a very tedious process when you shoot a lot of Hipstamatic images. There is currently no simple way to sync edited photos to your Mac / PC if you aren’t using iCloud Photo Library.
We discovered this issue during the beta process, and we have added a setting as a workaround for those of you who shoot a lot and don’t use iCloud Photo Library. If you open the Settings app, and go to Hipstamatic → Capture and choose “Edited Only”, this will cause the app to shoot images the same way it used to in Hipstamatic 200. The images will be saved as flattened files with their effect and no original is kept. If you change this setting, all the photos you shoot in the future will be easily synced via whatever method you used to use with Hipstamatic 200. Keep in mind that you’ll lose the non-destructive capture, and won’t be able to change the lens/flash/film after the shot (if you do edit the image, it will be applied “on top”, and will result in much more drastic effects as well as loss of image quality).
We continue to get more feedback on this particular issue, and we are working on better processes to make it less tedious for those of you that want to capture the original but don’t want to use iCloud Photo Library. Unfortunately there is only so much we can do, because the entire photo library sync process is handled by iOS, not Hipstamatic code. We are working to add a photo export process to easily ZIP up edited versions of your Hipstamatic photos and allow you to email them to yourself.
Always High-Res Editing / “What happened to the quality control slider?”
Hipstamatic 300 always shoots and edits images in High Quality mode (at whatever resolution they are shot or edited at). The quality control slider was added several years ago, when iOS hardware had a hard time handling high resolution shooting. Because it caused more confusion than help, we decided to remove it in Hipstamatic 300. Your images are always shot and edited at the highest quality in this update.
New StarterPak and Legacy RetroPak / “How do I get the collector’s case?!”
The default gear that ships with Hipstamatic 300 has changed from Hipstamatic 200. Gear that has been removed was added to a new Legacy RetroPak (everyone who purchased Hipstamatic prior to version 300 automatically gets this pak for free). We have also added a massive StarterPak, which is intended for people new to Hipsta, or people who haven’t purchased much gear from us before. To celebrate the 300 release we decided to also add an exclusive Collector’s Case to this StarterPak. We’ve quickly learned that many of you want this case but already have all the other gear in the StarterPak. We will be making the Collector’s Case available separately in an upcoming update.
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Thanks again to all of you for the passion you’ve shown for this product that we have been working on so hard for the last five years. This last update was a huge undertaking by our small team. We plan to remain focused on improving stability, squashing bugs, and making sure you can continue to enjoy the classic analog Hipstamatic experience that you love while adding in great new modern features and amazing new photo effects with the all-new infrastructure we’ve built. Keep shooting and keep making beautiful!
