{"id":338074,"date":"2017-04-12T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1475362"},"modified":"2017-04-12T00:00:40","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T16:00:40","slug":"the-dream-of-the-90s-is-alive-in-the-pasted-photo-collage-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/the-dream-of-the-90s-is-alive-in-the-pasted-photo-collage-app\/","title":{"rendered":"The dream of the 90s is alive in the Pasted photo collage app"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Launching out of beta today on iOS, Pasted<\/a>\u00a0is a throwback to simpler times, when making a collage meant picking up a pair of scissors. It\u2019s an appeal to Gen Xers put off by the overly complicated world of photo apps \u2014 or just searching for some inspiration through nostalgia. The apps\u2019s primary trait is its simplicity and its greatest asset upon launch is its connection to perennial indie rock darlings, The Shins.<\/p>\n

The app is the first from Spruced LLC.<\/a>, a spinoff of Portland, OR-based creative firm The Brigade \u2013 and really, it\u2019s got the vibe of an Instagram based out of that Pacific Northwestern city. The dream of the 90s is alive on Pasted, and the app is, fittingly, a pretty good way to go about putting birds on things.<\/p>\n

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Co-founders Zeke Howard and Ben Fogarty say their team was searching for inspiration to launch its first app, when Shins frontman James Mercer approached them with the idea for a simple collage tool.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was vacationing with my family in Hawaii, and there\u2019s a little restaurant in Kailua called Buzz\u2019s,\u201d Mercer, a 50-percent partner in Spruced, tells TechCrunch. \u201cIt\u2019s probably from the 50s. Somewhere along the way, one of the owners had cut out some photos of all of the regulars and they had made one of those old fashioned collages.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the basis of the app, really. You start by selecting images from the your camera roll \u2013 as many as you want, essentially, all at the same time, and the app cuts them out, collage-style. It uses open-source facial recognition technology to spot people and cut around them accordingly, in a choppy sort of triangle shape. Failing that, it attempts to isolate the focal point.<\/p>\n

It then dumps them all on a blank canvas. From there, you can move photos around the page and alter their aesthetic with a right swipe, choosing from nine different filters, each playing in to the app\u2019s overarching vintage aesthetic, with black and white, sepia tone, Ben-Day dots and the like. Swiping up and down, meanwhile, will adjust the canvas to one of eight different colors.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s really the strong suit of the app \u2013 the simplicity of interaction. \u201cI think the difference is in the gesture based interface,\u201d says Howard. \u201cWhere most everything out there is menu based and there are tutorials, ours we keep as simple as possible.\u201d There are a bunch of stickers and \u201cPaste Packs\u201d to customize things further.<\/p>\n

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You can add shapes and flowers and sunglasses and generally make the whole thing look like a Lisa Frank binder. That\u2019s also where the company will be monetizing \u2013 selling premium content packs for the app.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no built-in social component, here. Instead, the app is designed to art to share on other social networks like Instagram, along with the requisite hashtags. \u201cA lot of the current collage apps force you to add a lot of things at a time, versus throwing them on there more naturally,\u201d says Fogarty. \u201cIt makes the process feel more organic and natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pasted is definitely simple, and depending on precisely what you\u2019re aiming for in an art app, that could either be its best or worst quality. It\u2019s easy\u00a0to understand and get started, out of the box, even for those with little technological or artistic knowledge. But even with all of the upcoming feature packs, it may have trouble maintaining feature hungry users\u2019 attention for much longer than a few goes.<\/p>\n

That said, the\u00a0the company is set to launch a broader push highlighting artists\u2019 output with the app in an attempt to show how far that simplicity can go in the right hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Launching out of beta today on iOS, Pasted\u00a0is a throwback to simpler times, when making a collage meant picking up a pair of scissors. It’s an appeal to Gen Xers put off by the overly complicated world of photo apps — or just searching for some inspiration through nostalgia. The apps’s primary trait is its simplicity and its greatest asset upon launch is its connection to… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

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