ScrapBook on the Blackberry Playbook

The Scrapbook application for the Blackberry PlayBook is a beautiful pictures application in which you can create nice collages of photos that you've taken.

When you open up the Scrapbook app, you are introduced with a washing line which your completed colages will get pegged to when saved. Also, there is a 'create' button in the bottom right of the start screen to begin creating your collage. This homepage is possibly one of the nicest start screens of any application out there for the PlayBook. It is a physics-based homepave in that when you scroll through your collages left to right, when you reach the end they swing out as if you were really sliding pieces of paper on a washing line. The image previews also look 3D which adds to the beauty of the animations and the idea of it being a washing line of pictures. When you click on one of your images, it simply pans in to show an enlarged preview of your image. Which, when you tap again, it pans out to the washing line view again.

When you click create, this is where the countless fun begins. You are brought to a very basic screen that shows a canvas as the main attraction of the screen. On the right you have three tabs that open up your images, stickers and wallpapers. In the bottom right hand corner you have a bin where you drag items that you wish to remove. And on the bottom left you have a camera button that is your save button; which you should be careful when hitting because, once saved, you won't be able to edit your collage. Anyway, clicking on the images button will bring up all the images that you have taken with your PlayBook's camera and you drag these onto the screen and once released they drop onto the piece of paper. It is exactly the same with the stickers, you pick a sticker, tap and drag to where you wish to place it. With the wallpaper, you choose which one and it will change to that wallpaper, simples.

 

There are a few features that keep this from being a simple and dull application. Such features as the ability to readjust and twist images using multi-touch pinch-to-zoome. The multi-touch is a little off and laggy sometimes, but it isn't so bad that it stops you from putting the image how and where you want. Another feature that the Scrapbook application has is the ability to connect the app up to Facebook; this enables you to post the finished product to Facebook when it is finished. 

However, this beautiful application does have quite a few downsides and there are plenty of things I would add in to make it a better application. The first downside I noticed was the lack of ability to edit your collage once you have saved it, as I mentioned earlier. Another downside to this app is that you can only have a certain number of your images in a single collage (I believe the limit to be seven). However, you can still add in stickers after your image limit. Things I would add to improve this application would be the ability to add in some form of text, such as bubble writing or maybe even just a text box. Also, seeing as Facebook is connected, maybe the ability to use your Facebook photos within the app would be a nice feature.

The Scrapbook application for the Blackberry PlayBook really shows off the PlayBook's graphical prowess. It shows off how good of an application can be made on the PlayBook; which makes me doubt other applications that have no transitions or animations. I cannot praise the developers of this application for the clear amount of time they have spent making this a beautiful application. It lacks some features that would make it a more useable application, but then no application is perfect. And for what this app has set out to do, it does extremely well.

Written by Luke. Twitter @l_harknessYouTube Channel