Introducing Darkroom 2.7
Following through on our promise last month to pick up the pace of updates, we’re excited to share with you the biggest update since Darkroom 2 was launched. Darkroom 2.7 is here, and with it a bunch of new UI updates, and a brand new, marquee feature: Filter Backup & Restore.
Here’s Filter Backup & Restore Works
People repeatedly tell us in feedback how attached they become to their custom filters in Darkroom. Those filters, used time and again, have become an essential part of our customers’ online brands, and expression of their personality, and a core part of their photograhy life. That’s why we’re so excited to finally address one of the most requested features by our users with the launch of Filter Backup & Restore.
Like everything else in Darkroom, the beauty is in the simplicity of the feature. All you need to use the feature is an active iCloud account, and you’re all set up to use it! Simple go to Settings, then tap Backup Filters. Ta da! That’s all you need to do!
In the background, Darkroom uploads your user filters to Apple’s secure iCloud servers where only you have access to your private files.
Here’s the magic trick: Because you can log in to the same iCloud account on multiple devices, it means you can restore your backups on all your devices! Think of it as a manual syncing of your user-filters!
Other Big Little Changes
We’ve completely redesigned the Share experience, and we’ve renamed it to “Export”. Along the way, we’ve dropped sharing to explicit third party apps, and we’ve dropped the “Save as Square Photo” feature.
When we launched Darkroom 2, Instagram still had a square limitation. That meant anyone who wanted to own their composition was forced to use any number of apps and intermediate steps to add a white border to make a square photo contain a non-square photo with a white border. In our effort to streamline the mobile photographer’s workflow, we integrated that feature right into Darkroom, and we made it as easy as a single button.
Since then however, a couple of things have changed. Obviously, Instagram now allows you to share non-square photos, but also, sharing directly to third party apps has stopped being supported as well, meaning the custom metadata we were able to share was no longer allowed. Finally, our data indicated that the vast majority of users simply never used those features. So, as per our iterative product philosophy, we’re taking time to trim features and improve the performance of the app, rather than throw the kitchen sink at the problem.
We’re really proud of the community we’ve built around Darkroom and we love hearing from you about how you use Darkroom and what you’d love to see in it. Please don’t hestitate to share your thoughts with us at feedback@bergen.co
Full Release Notes
- Added Backup and Restore for your custom filters! Now simply go to Settings and manually Backup your custom filter creations, and easily Restore when either upgrading to a new or extra device. The only requirement is an active iCloud account!
- Renamed “Share” to “Export” for clarity. We also redesigned and simplified the export experience.
- Removed the Save as Square and third-party share shortcuts from Export. You will find the same options under “Other Services”
- Swapped out the custom font we used for Apple’s lovely system standard San Francisco font (https://developer.apple.com/fonts/).
- All our in app icons have been updated to be a touch friendlier (softer corners), to be simpler (fewer objects), and where tweaked where possible to better explain their function.
The Darkroom Team
