Kwilt : All of Your Photos At Once

By Kenda - November, 12th 2014

Social media has become our photo album. We share our memories via Facebook, Instagram, Google and more. What we don’t share we store online in Dropbox, Flickr and other sites. Many of those photos share a spot on our phone where they originated. But, other photos end up scattered to the four corners of the internet.

If you’ve ever tried to find ‘that one photo’ you know how hard it can sometimes be. If it was from a few months ago or even a few years – forget about finding it quickly. If you don’t remember when it was taken, forget about finding it at all.  Now, with Kwilt, you can bring them all home again.

Kwilt is the first mobile app to automatically create a personal and complete live digital photo stream by gathering users’ digital images from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google+, Google Drive, Dropbox, DLNA Certified® servers, iPhones and iPads. Kwilt reconnects users with their personal photos – often scattered across the web – by bringing them together in one beautifully designed hyper-fast streaming media platform.

1 in 5 U.S. consumers say they wouldn’t be able to locate specific pictures taken in the last year – Ipsos

Kwilt solves this problem by streaming users’ pictures from all of their media sources chronologically, by location or by theme, using a unique cloud-indexing engine and optimized streaming technologies to ensure photos are indexed and dynamically available in real time, in one place. View, edit and share photos by several different criteria:

• Year, Month or Day
• GPS Location where the photo was taken
• By photo name
• Favorites and specific user created albums
• By source: Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Dropbox etc.
• Screen captures, hidden photos and more.

• Universal access: Kwilt connects to Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google+, Google Drive, Dropbox, DLNA Certified® servers, iPhone or iPad.
• Streaming not Storing: Kwilt streams your pictures live, dynamically and in real time, from your favorite photo platforms, without taking up storage capacity on your mobile device.
• Dynamic loading: Once authorized, your images in Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google+, Google Drive and Dropbox are automatically accessible from your mobile device.
• Platforms: Initially available only on iOS (including iOS 8) an Android version is coming in 2015.
• Customize: Fully customizable albums of pictures assembled from various sources allows for easy curation of photos in any number of unlimited arrangements.
• Enhance and edit: 16 state of the art photo editing tools including stickers and drawing to enhance images for sharing or personal enjoyment. HD editing provides easy, state of the art adjustment tools for stunning photos in minutes.
• Kwilt Share and Beam: Individual photos as well as entire kwilts can be shared from the app via social media. Kwilt  can also be beamed onto a TV using Airplay,  Chromecast, Roku, LG and Panasonic.

☰ The Kwilt ‘Capture’ Feature

Photos can be selected and assembled into a Kwilt (aka collage) for sharing. While this is the calling card for this app, I found it to be the least cooperative option.

 

It took a few minutes to figure out. The pop-up tip for the Kwilt option was too vague – only saying ‘narrow your selection’.  I was lost for a moment since I didn’t even know how to create a selection, much less narrow it down.  With some experimenting I realized you need to touch AND HOLD an image to select it and a check mark will appear.  A quick pop-up explaining that step would be helpful for first time users.

Lack of Design Control. There is no advice on how many images make the best design and I haven’t found that sweet number yet. You can use ‘shuffle’ to switch between preset sizes and arrangement, but I continuously found myself with a blank space after saving. This is because of the Kwilt branding image that is added at the end, creating additional, empty space underneath.  I tried it several times, with different images counts, and always had the same result. (I can’t find an option to remove the logo  – paid or otherwise. I already have the ‘ad free’ version and still the logo appears)  I also couldn’t find an option to center or crop images either, so you don’t have much control over how each image displays.

But… You don’t need to love the collage feature to love this app. The other features are powerful and useful enough to stand on their own and make most users forgive any frustrations with the collage. Gaining access to images from your social channels without memory overload, the ability to find old and random images quickly, and the added bonus of being able to stream to a television device for group slideshows are definitely options that will take the sting out of photo retrieving and sharing.

Get Kwilt On iTunes – Price: FREE