App Review: Glitché

Natasha Desai reviews an app that can truly distort your view.

There is a whole generation (and probably more) of people who have no idea about the fuzzy era. I’m talking about a time when televisions and even VHS cassette players had to be banged on the side just to get the picture clear. Reminiscent of a distorted, fuzzy picture period comes the app—Glitché.

‘Glitch’ing an images, makes it look just like moving pictures from a bygone era. GIF/Natasha Desai

As photographers we take distortions, aberrations, pixellations and other ‘tions’ as something to intensely avoid. But along comes a cellphone app that creates ‘digital art’ out of these very effects on your images.

With the Scene effect, here’s The Gateway of India looking a little trippy. Photograph/Akshay Samarth, Edit/Natasha Desai

At first I was a little confused about the app, but the results I got after playing with it for a while were just plain trippy and fun. Its a free app for iOS that contains most of the effects but the pro version lets you use multiple effects and make GIFs out of it.

Distorted Fun

Once you upload or shoot a picture in to the app, you have a bunch of options to alter your picture. One of my personal favourites is the datamosh which as the name suggests, mashes the data in the picture, you can mess with the pixels or the colours. The Scan option produces repetitions of whichever part of the photograph you choose.

The Datamosh effect GIF/Natasha Desai

My other favourites are the VHS and Glitch options which, as I mentioned before, remind me of the times when my favourite cartoon tape would go fuzzy because of the number of times I had played it, but suddenly come back on.

Trial and Error

This app is quite a lot of fun and produces very trippy results, but it takes a little getting used to. The Scan, Invert and Datamosh options require you to actually drag the parts around with your hand. The pixel and grid options are extra sensitive and even a slight touch the wrong way could twist and turn the image in the opposite direction of what you intend.

To get the desired effect, you have to be careful of how you drag or touch the screen. Image/Natasha Desai

I enjoyed the app but, I wish there was a tutorial, or some way of understanding the options better. On the flip side, I suppose it is a way to discover the various options as you end up tapping, aliding, touching all parts of the screen to understand what is going on.

The app is priced Rs. 190 for using multiple effects and to make GIFs and it well worth it. If you’re looking for a visual change, this app is a fun way to push boundaries and see what you can create.