Add Retro Film Effects to Photos With Lo-Fi

Sometimes, all you want to do is have a bit of fun with your photos. Lo-Fi ($29, seven-day free trial) is a very easy-to-use, uncomplicated program that gives your photos a different mood or color, or adds a neat frame, with the push of a button.

Lo-Fi has a cute interface, in the shape of the back of a camera. If you want, you can move through the program in three steps: (1) load your JPEG pictures, by clicking on the + button; (2) apply random photo effects; (3) save your JPEG picture or share it on flickr or Facebook.

Or, you can select areas of the image to customize the effects with one or more of Lo-Fi's three collections. The Film collection offers traditional film effects, such as Desaturate, Faded, Yellowed, Teal, Oldachrome, Faded, Ultra contrast, Overexposed, etc. "Mood" includes Fine grain, Gritty, Pushed, Glamour, Cheap lens, Light leak, etc. Similarly, "Frames" has styles such as Vignette, Viewfinder, Film code, Grunge, Negative, and so forth.

The quality is decent, suitable for a fun picture. When you save it, you have the option of keeping it at its original size, or Large (1600 pixels long), Medium (640 pixels long) or Small (320 pixels long). Uploads to flickr and Facebook work the way they are supposed to.

Don't expect any editing capabilities in Lo-Fi, though. You can't even crop a picture. That means if you want to do any actual photo editing, you'll need to use another program to work on the JPEG.

Lo-Fi is very limited but it does what it promises... provide fun, easy tools for playing with your pictures, targeted to consumers who don't want to spend much time editing photos.