VSCO to launch ‘Capture,’ a camera app with film-style filters

Visual Supply Co. is about to enter the increasingly competitive iPhone third-party camera app market. The company best known for VSCO: Photo Editor is launching a standalone camera app called Capture. Here’s what to expect.

With Capture, VSCO joins an increasingly crowded space of third-party camera apps trying to rethink the iPhone shooting experience.

Just last week, we covered Adobe’s release of Project Indigo, and how that added to great App Store options like Halide, all catering to users who feel Apple’s native Camera app and image pipeline are headed in the wrong direction.

Here’s Bloomberg‘s Chris Welch on his exclusive reporting about the new app:

Capture wants to skip post-processing entirely

Unlike VSCO’s main app, which focuses on post-processing and features a social aspect, Capture bakes your chosen aesthetic in at the point of shooting. This way, users have more control over how their photos will look before snapping the shot.

Here’s Eric Wittman, Visual Supply Co.’s CEO, in a statement to Bloomberg, about the company’s motivation to build the new app:

“Photographers increasingly are moving away from using overly complicated editing software and are using apps that make it easier to get that right moment with a desired aesthetic right at the point of capture.”

Capture offers 50 of VSCO’s most popular presets, letting users apply their favorite film-like looks before taking the shot. There’s both an auto mode for quick snaps, and a manual mode with advanced controls like shutter speed, exposure compensation, and lightning effects known as bloom, and halation.

Importantly, Capture won’t require a paid subscription to use, but you will need a VSCO account. From there, you can shoot, apply filters, and either export directly or send your photos to the main VSCO app for further tweaks.

While the App Store link isn’t live yet, Capture will roll out this week in a handful of test markets, including Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, ahead of a broader US release later this summer.

Do you use a third-party camera instead of the native iPhone app? What’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments.