"Oh no, not another photo sharing app. What is this? 2012?" Yes, yes, I know that's what you are thinking, but how do I say this nicely? You are wrong. Takes is seriously mind-blowingly fantastic.
I was skeptical at first, I must admit, because the person who introduced me to the founder, as well as the founder himself, described it to me as "An app that takes your pictures and makes amazing videos out of them." "There are a thousand apps that do that", was my response. Well, lucky for Takes users, the team knows how to make awesome products better than they know how to tell stories or market those products because Takes is so much more.
The app just launched at SXSW and based on my Twitter stream, which is clearly a very scientific metric, it has been taking off nicely.
So what is Takes and where did it come from? Amit, the founder, explains that the idea came from none other than Harry Potter. "In Harry Potter they have these things where the photos in the newspapers start to move, and I thought 'Oh, this could be really cool if I could make every photo come alive,'" he said.
So how does this work? Well, you continue snapping photos as you regularly would, so no behavior change is involved. Except what Takes does is analyze the movement of the phone and capture live video (as opposed to a slideshow from your pictures) that is associated with that picture. Like many things, I can explain Takes to you (and I intend on it) but nothing beats seeing it in action. Since it is free, I say why not?
"We monitor the sensors of the iPhone, and the movement of the iPhone," says Man.
If you take a very fast shot, it's going to be a short clip, but if you're going to take a picture and you're really careful composition-wise, it's going to be a longer clip. The idea is that we're trying to get the perfect video segment for that photo.
So here is what Takes does. You take some photos of an event, whether it is a concert or your kid standing up for the first time. Now, you want to save those pictures because, well pictures are easily shared and stored locally. But now you lost the chance to see the event in movement, which lets be honest, is a much better experience than viewing a photo. Well, after you take the pictures, you can select as many of them as you want, and as soon as you click Next, your video is presented to you. Again, not a slideshow, a video video.
You can then rather impressively swipe left and right or up and down to change the music and filter of the video respectively. That is a feature that will impress you just as much as the video itself.
As soon you decide on music and filter, click Next and share away. It is as simple as that. No cloud processing of the video, no "We will send you an email when your video is ready", and no lame amateur looking video that anyone could have made with Movie Maker.
The end result of Takes is a seriously professional video composed of what you thought were stills taken with your phone.
The only negative thing I can say about Takes is that on the one hand, good luck finding it through a Google search or any other search for that matter. "Takes" is just too generic of a name for the Web. On the other hand, kudos to the founders for getting the domain Takes.com.
Anyway, back to the product... Besides the awesome video you create using Takes, the app has solved another huge dilemma I have almost daily. No more need to choose between pictures and video. Now you can "Takes it" and have both.
I would call that a game-changer, how about you? Download it and thank me later.