[APP][3.1+] Friend Brush

hessan · Feb 19, 2014

Hi everyone,

I have recently published a new app called Friend Brush. Using this app you can create collages of smaller photos that look like a single photo when seen from distance (or zoomed out). You can pick your tiles from various sources, namely Facebook, Google+, or your device's gallery. For the big picture, you can either choose from your gallery or simply take a photo with the camera. Below is a sample of what can be done using this app:

MwQneaxR4Y1qj6zfrDhCyoVJd0scwwv5hwdoNbIJn24kzoHq-22B6gkHDJPlR2lMFms4=h900-rw

I would highly appreciate any feedback, especially on stability and user experience of the app.

Download from Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=annahid.apps.friendbrush

In case there are some issues in the public release, you can try bleeding-edge beta versions of the app using one of the following options:

OPTION 1:
Become a Google Play beta tester for the app. I have enabled beta testing for XDA Android App Testers Community.

OPTION 2:
Download the testing version from my official website. This version has all the basic features of the app, plus a report button you can use to contact me about a bug.

If you like the app, please make me extremely happy by tipping this to XDA Portal!

hessan · Feb 25, 2014

Friend Brush has just been updated. Now everyone can choose large tile photos. I also found some bugs in the previous versions and fixed them.

benkxda · Feb 28, 2014

hessan said:
Friend Brush has just been updated. Now everyone can choose large tile photos. I also found some bugs in the previous versions and fixed them.

Great, thanks for sharing your work. Really nice idea to honor your friends with being a part of a new picture.

hessan · Mar 1, 2014

I have uploaded a new version to beta channels. I have tried to fix previous bugs. All the new features of 1.2.x are still in beta and not open to public. So, you can have first-hand access to those features (and help me perfect them). Thanks!

bezrodnyigor · Mar 1, 2014

Nice idea and good work! Thanks

hessan · Mar 1, 2014

bezrodnyigor said:
Nice idea and good work! Thanks

Thanks! Please let me know if you find any problem.

hessan · Mar 3, 2014

I have just published a new APK to beta channels. Saving creations to storage is now available right from the beginning. Enjoy! And please let me know if you face any bugs.

benkxda · Mar 3, 2014

hessan said:
I have just published a new APK to beta channels. Saving creations to storage is now available right from the beginning. Enjoy! And please let me know if you face any bugs.

Your app is on the portal now: Easily Create a Photo Collage with Friend Brush :highfive:

As I told you, I like this app. Maybe a fantastic birthday present, when you make a big picture of your girlfriend/wife - of course with her on every tile :angel:

hessan · Mar 3, 2014

benkxda said:
Your app is on the portal now: Easily Create a Photo Collage with Friend Brush :highfive:

As I told you, I like this app. Maybe a fantastic birthday present, when you make a big picture of your girlfriend/wife - of course with her on every tile :angel:

Yea, that's really great news. I will try to keep the app fresh through new features. I actually gave out birthday gifts to some of my fiends before I released the app

when they asked how'd you do it, I told them about the app.

By the way, thanks for tipping.

jerryhou85 · Mar 4, 2014

Looks nice, gonna try it.

~wolverine~ · Mar 4, 2014

Nice idea but all my photos are on Google+ and I can't access them.

hessan · Mar 4, 2014

~wolverine~ said:
Nice idea but all my photos are on Google+ and I can't access them.

Thanks for the feedback. I will add this feature in the near future. However, the best results are with profile pictures as mosaics.

Niteshdcool · Mar 4, 2014

Hey..
This app is amazing.!! I shared a pic made from this with my friends and they all went bezerk..

Well keep up the good work..
And ya one suggestion can u make it possible to add multiple albums from the phone gallery to one brush.. It would be quite nice coz like i keep all my photos segregated into different albums and love to use them all together..
Thankx..

(Y)..

Sent from my WT19i using XDA Premium 4

hessan · Mar 4, 2014

Niteshdcool said:
Hey..
This app is amazing.!! I shared a pic made from this with my friends and they all went bezerk..
Well keep up the good work..
And ya one suggestion can u make it possible to add multiple albums from the phone gallery to one brush.. It would be quite nice coz like i keep all my photos segregated into different albums and love to use them all together..
Thankx.. (Y)..

Sent from my WT19i using XDA Premium 4

Thank you for your interest and your idea! Feedback like this helps me understand better what exactly users are looking for. Friend Brush was originally using just friend profile pictures for tiles (hence the name), and using photo albums was a late decision. So that part is still not mature enough. I will think about your idea to incorporate it in a user friendly way. Might not be in the next update, but for sure I will do it in the future. And if you like the app, I would be really glad if you rated it as I'm currently being stormed by haters on Google Play.

Thanks again!

Niteshdcool · Mar 4, 2014

hessan said:
Thank you for your interest and your idea! Feedback like this helps me understand better what exactly users are looking for. Friend Brush was originally using just friend profile pictures for tiles (hence the name), and using photo albums was a late decision. So that part is still not mature enough. I will think about your idea to incorporate it in a user friendly way. Might not be in the next update, but for sure I will do it in the future. And if you like the app, I would be really glad if you rated it as I'm currently being stormed by haters on Google Play.

Thanks again!

Haha.. Haters will soon know they were wrong.. And ya there is never a hurry.. U take ur time.. It wad just a suggestion..
Keep up the good work mate.!

Sent from my WT19i using XDA Premium 4

adamkm · Mar 5, 2014

Fantastic App! A few suggestions if I may.

1) I couldn't find anything that show's the full list of Premium features.

2) A little "help" about what the settings do would be useful. Like the random options of none to maximum. I tried both settings with the same brush and picture yet saw no difference.

3) It was not clear where the app was saving the creations or what it was calling them. Option to name them would be good. I plugged the phone in and searched the internal storage for "friends" to find where they were.

4) It would be great to be able to "favourite" the tiles you pick for the brush. In that if 2 tiles have virtually identical colour tags it would choose the 1 you marked higher priority. Although this is ofc a very minor suggestion

5) A bit of a "Tutorial" for want of a better word, more like basic help. As in the recommended number of tiles for the brush to get good results. I had about 200 of my little son and tried to make a creation out of that but the creation picture was poor. It was not really possible to make it out, this is most likely because of the lack of colours the app had available to make the creation because i had too few photo's. A little tip about this might stop people using too few and discarding the app as useless just because they didnt give it a fair shot.

6) Scrolling down the photo's in the creation is very slow (Xperia Z), maybe its possible for it to cache/thumbnail those. I have around 300 pics on my phone but it took a fair amount of time to scroll to pick a creation photo while it was loading them. It processed the brush and creation faster than browsing the album

Please dont take any of that as negativity, just suggestions. The app is absolutely brilliant and truly 1 of a kind!

Thanks

Adam

india86 · Mar 5, 2014

thanks for this wonderfull app....

one suggestion..when i am viewing the creation on my desktop while zooming the image it's blurred, but on phone its fine..can you have a look into this...

hessan · Mar 5, 2014

india86 said:
thanks for this wonderfull app....

one suggestion..when i am viewing the creation on my desktop while zooming the image it's blurred, but on phone its fine..can you have a look into this...

Thank you. How much are you zooming? Tile sizes are limited (32x32 pixels by default). You can set them to twice this size (64x64) by going to Settings. Hope this helps.

Niteshdcool · Mar 5, 2014

adamkm said:
Fantastic App! A few suggestions if I may.

1) I couldn't find anything that show's the full list of Premium features.

2) A little "help" about what the settings do would be useful. Like the random options of none to maximum. I tried both settings with the same brush and picture yet saw no difference.

Thanks

Adam

Well these can be found in Menu>Help...

hessan · Mar 5, 2014

adamkm said:
Fantastic App! A few suggestions if I may.

1) I couldn't find anything that show's the full list of Premium features.

2) A little "help" about what the settings do would be useful. Like the random options of none to maximum. I tried both settings with the same brush and picture yet saw no difference.

3) It was not clear where the app was saving the creations or what it was calling them. Option to name them would be good. I plugged the phone in and searched the internal storage for "friends" to find where they were.

4) It would be great to be able to "favourite" the tiles you pick for the brush. In that if 2 tiles have virtually identical colour tags it would choose the 1 you marked higher priority. Although this is ofc a very minor suggestion

5) A bit of a "Tutorial" for want of a better word, more like basic help. As in the recommended number of tiles for the brush to get good results. I had about 200 of my little son and tried to make a creation out of that but the creation picture was poor. It was not really possible to make it out, this is most likely because of the lack of colours the app had available to make the creation because i had too few photo's. A little tip about this might stop people using too few and discarding the app as useless just because they didnt give it a fair shot.

6) Scrolling down the photo's in the creation is very slow (Xperia Z), maybe its possible for it to cache/thumbnail those. I have around 300 pics on my phone but it took a fair amount of time to scroll to pick a creation photo while it was loading them. It processed the brush and creation faster than browsing the album

Please dont take any of that as negativity, just suggestions. The app is absolutely brilliant and truly 1 of a kind!

Thanks

Adam

Thanks for your comments and your interest!

I will answer your questions one by one here:

1) Did you click on "Why?" The button is available on the Google Play version, beside "Go Premium!" on Dashboard
2) There are Help pages about everything in the app. Just hit the menu button and choose Help from overflow menu. You can swipe to the screen you desire. Otherwise go to Settings and choose Help from there.
3) The app saves the creations to Pictures/Friend Brush on your external storage. Naming option can be added in the future.
4) I am thinking of new options for tiles for future updates.
5) Obviously the app can't do magic. 200 photos is a good number if they have diverse color tones. Camera shots normally have very flat range of colors. The app works best with profile pictures of your friends. About 300 profile secures a diverse enough spectrum.
6) I will look into that.

[APP][3.1+] Friend Brush

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