This is the third post in a short series of Android camera app reviews. The final verdict based on all reviews can be found here.

PicsArt - Photo Studio tries to do everything. In addition to being a camera app, it has a huge store with in-app purchases - font packs, clip art, collage backgrounds and more. PicsArt really loves to tell you about the store, so unless you turn off notifications, be prepared for spamming. The app also boasts its own social network, with interesting and recent photos from other members, contests, tags, artists and so on - in addition it also wants to connect you to pretty much every social network available in the internet.

PicsArt lets you import pictures not only from your phone, but also from sites like Facebook, Flickr and Dropbox. You can build collage from existing photos or new photos. You can use the PicsArt camera or you can use another camera app of your choice, which I feel is a great touch since it doesn’t force you to install a separate camera to use PicsArt unless you want to. If you are using PicsArt’s own camera, you get a live preview and it also features time laps, timer and burst shooting.

PicsArt comes with a fair amount of filters and effects, borders, textures and various other elements you can use to change your picture. If you are using the PicsArt camera, though, there is no stacking. This means that you can’t use any more than one of them at the same time. So if you decide on a nice border, there’s no way to also use a filter on the same photo. Using PicsArt’s own camera doesn’t allow any post-processing either. Also, the UI is a weird mix of portrait and landscape, which makes it all even more confusing.

But if you use another camera app or import a picture to edit from the phone or somewhere on the internet, it’s a completely different story. You get a much wider range of tools, filters, effects, masks and whatnot available to you. If you need more, it’s very likely you’ll find something interesting in the in-app store. As opposed to while using PicsArt’s own camera, stacking is also possible, and there’s even an undo function if you need that.

For some reason, it doesn’t look like PicsArt supports geo-tagging, which is weird since sharing is such an important aspect of the app. Neither does it save the original picture, but a possible workaround for this - given that you didn’t use PicsArt’s built in camera - is to save a version of the picture before you start editing it.

PicsArt really tries to do everything and while it does a good job with post-processing, the camera is way beyond average. If you are looking for a plain and simple camera app, this app is absolutely not for you. But if you want tons and tons of option, an in-app shop that will suck your wallet dry so you can share your finest shots of food with everyone everywhere, you’ve come to the right place.

Scan the QR with your phone to download PicsArt - Photo Studio directly from Google Play.

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