Popular 'Darkroom' iOS Camera App Gains Video Editing Tools

Apologies in advance for my kind of off-topic post, but I'm curious if someone can tell me if I'm missing something...

I saw mention that this app is subscription-based. I go to the App Store and the button which would normally show you the price just shows "GET". The long description, when expanded, mentions the subscription but without pricing info. Scrolling down farther I see that it supports Family Sharing, which is good. Scrolling up/down some more I see a drop-down for "In-App Purchases" which says "Yes" but with a drop-down arrow. Tapping that, I see a list of in-app purchase options prefixed with "Legacy" (I'm guessing those may not even be options anymore for new customers?). The last item in that list is the Yearly Subscription which lists a price of $19.99.

I don't know how good this app is/isn't (reviews are very good, but the video editing feature is brand new, so most of those reviews are based on the photo editing capabilities). I actually don't have a problem with subscription pricing if the app is great and the subscription price is reasonable. I'm mostly just posting this to say that I think Apple needs to revamp their App Store UI to better highlight the subscription pricing, what you do/don't get with various In-App purchase options, etc. As it stands now, it seems like it requires too much work to find out the details pre-download. Some developers (I'm not accusing this developer of being one) actually go out of their way to be sneaky about it, and try to trick you into subscribing, giving you a free trial, etc., and hoping you won't notice when the auto-pay kicks in on the subscription.

Hey there, I'm the cofounder and CEO of Darkroom. I realize this may be confusing, but unfortunately it's a consequence of our transition plan from in-app purchase to subscription (details here ('https://medium.com/the-bergen-company/darkroom-4-4-watermarking-app-icon-picker-and-an-update-to-our-business-e62f0ac29e28')).

Since we wanted to offer the new subscription as a free upgrade to users who previously purchased the app, we had to keep around all our old products on the app store, so they can be restored. There's no way for us to transfer a user's purchase from one product to another.

Our compromise was to add "Legacy" to all those products.

Apologies again for the confusion.

I always think of something else when I see that app name

Neither "$3.99 per month", "$19.99 per year", nor "a one-time fee of $49.99" sound appealing to me - I have a few subscriptions that I don't mind paying at all (Spotify, Netflix, Adobe, Office, etc.), but for an app like this it just doesn't seem worth it at all, especially when there are alternatives out there that are cheaper, a one-time payment or even free.

Then again - maybe I'm not the target demographic.

Hey there, the app is free, it has a rich set of free editing and management features (depth editing, raw editing, live photo editing, etc), and you can try all the paid features without making a payment. We only ask you to subscribe when you try to export using any of the premium features.

I pretty much gave up on this app after SO many silly bugs that persist. The developers do acknowledge the bugs but simply say "we are working on a fix". Which to me shows irresponsible app development process.

There will always be bugs but darkroom has bugs a plenty and it only takes about 5 min for you to run into something annoying. Simple things like edited photos not showing up in the edited category, their photos app extension acting finicky. Really crummy vignette tool that doesn't work properly. Unable to reliably edit a photo if its already been edited/cropped in the apple photos app. Portrait photo editing bugs. (just to name a few)

I sooooo much want to love and support this app/company but as I said. I gave up. I tried again a few months ago with a big update they had....ran into bugs within 5 min. Todays update a buddy tried and also ran into a bug within 5 min.

So much potential that will just never be realized. Apples editing in iOS 13 now gets me through 90 percent of my needs quickly and easily. Darkroom is simply trying to do everything....which it does only mediocre.

Tip to the devs.....strip it back and start fresh, keep it simple. Stop competing with the big boys because its just not working.

P.S. I participated in their beta program a couple years ago so Im not talking out my A** on these issues.

Hi @jonnyb098, we've talked on twitter about this, and I hope you give Darkroom a try, and I appreciate your passion about this especially given the length of your comment, but if anyone else is reading this, I'd like to point out that Darkroom has carried a 4.8 star rating since launch, is an Editor's Choice app, and is frequently used both by professionals and casual photographers (and now videographers).

We're continuously updating and fixing issues, but we're a very small independent team, so sometimes big fixes take time.

Apologies in advance for my kind of off-topic post, but I'm curious if someone can tell me if I'm missing something...

I saw mention that this app is subscription-based. I go to the App Store and the button which would normally show you the price just shows "GET". The long description, when expanded, mentions the subscription but without pricing info. Scrolling down farther I see that it supports Family Sharing, which is good. Scrolling up/down some more I see a drop-down for "In-App Purchases" which says "Yes" but with a drop-down arrow. Tapping that, I see a list of in-app purchase options prefixed with "Legacy" (I'm guessing those may not even be options anymore for new customers?). The last item in that list is the Yearly Subscription which lists a price of $19.99.

I don't know how good this app is/isn't (reviews are very good, but the video editing feature is brand new, so most of those reviews are based on the photo editing capabilities). I actually don't have a problem with subscription pricing if the app is great and the subscription price is reasonable. I'm mostly just posting this to say that I think Apple needs to revamp their App Store UI to better highlight the subscription pricing, what you do/don't get with various In-App purchase options, etc. As it stands now, it seems like it requires too much work to find out the details pre-download. Some developers (I'm not accusing this developer of being one) actually go out of their way to be sneaky about it, and try to trick you into subscribing, giving you a free trial, etc., and hoping you won't notice when the auto-pay kicks in on the subscription.

I love Darkroom and have since the beginning. I hate subscriptions for most apps as they dont offer the value proposition to support it. I have bought all the options for Darkroom on iPhone and iPad, and was happy to do it. (I dont remember but I think I had to pay twice because the iPad app was in addition to but I could be mistaken). Ive avoided signing up for the sub to this point since feb because I didnt see the value add versus what i had already paid for, but seeing that they are bringing the heat with video now that starts to tip things over for me. I like where things are going.

Yes there are MANY options out there for editing color on photos and videos. Ive tried them almost all and Darkroom is among the best and for me the best UI. Yes there have been some bugs in the past largely for what seems like a transition to a new code base so things got rickety for a while. They've done that now.

Shaping up to actually be worth the 3.99 a month. Ive got a 150 plus apps on my iPhone. and have yearly subs for about 6 of them. (these are non content apps, just software subs) Darkroom looks to be the 7th.