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

Retrica feels like a scaled down and less pastel version of Candy Camera – Selfie Selfies (read my short review here). It too focuses on selfies, but still has some nice features you can use even if selfies isn’t your main focus.

Among Retrica’s features we find geo-tagging that actually works and pictures you take are saved in full resolution. The app also comes with real time preview of any configured filter and effect, which is a great help to the “photographer”. It has timer and interval options, nice for time lapses. There are quick settings for vignette, vignette blur and a there is a very limited set of borders options - only black/white and light or bold, and the border is unfortunately not displayed in the live preview. While the number of filters available in the free version is rather limited - 25 more filter are available if you decide to pay for an upgrade to the pro version - you can adjust filter level, which covers one of the shortcomings of Candy Camera.

On the flip-side, however, Retrica, does miss a lot of convenient features that its bigger brother from another mother has: There is no post-processing and no color/brightness/contrast adjustment options: What you see when you take the picture is what you get (except for the aforementioned border). There is no filter stacking, you can’t import and edit pictures and originals are not saved. That the original picture is not saved can be a pain in the ass since it stops you from importing the original photo into another editor.

In terms of features, Retrica just doesn’t cut it compared to many other Android camera apps. But if you are looking for a simple app that delivers a high quality but static result, Retrica might be the way to go.

Scan the QA code with your phone to download Retrica directly from Google Play.

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