Sharing a quick picture on social media can be a pain when you’re out and about. If I wanted to share an image on Twitter, I’d have to snap the photo with my iPhone’s camera app, open my photo library, and then send it out to Twitter using the sharing feature. It’s a lot of work, and I’d rather not fiddle with my phone while I’m out spending time with people.
Now, there’s a camera app that can do that (and much more) with just one tap. Do Camera helps you, well, do things with your photos right when you take them. Users choose from a set of “recipes” that do things like save images to Dropbox, post them to Twitter or share directly to Facebook.
It’s all powered by If This Then That (IFTTT), a web automation service that has been around for a few years and connects a wide variety of tools like Evernote, Google Drive and Twitter with one another. I’ve been a longtime IFTTT user, and seeing Do Camera (along with its siblings Do Note and Do Button) is a heartening sign for me, since one of IFTTT’s greatest failings has been its lack of user-friendliness. It’s a robust tool for power users, but the full IFTTT interface is a bit overwhelming, and can be hard to understand.
Do Camera is a complete contrast to that: users select a recipe from IFTTT’s collection of recipes (the app can store up to three). The selected recipe then then runs whenever users press the shutter button, performing the designated action.
Available recipes include adding the photo to Facebook, saving it to a folder in Dropbox, or posting the image to Tumblr. To switch between selected recipes, users just swipe back and forth. Once they click the shutter, the app will run the recipe.
Users who are feeling a bit adventurous can choose to create their own recipes using the app’s built-in composer, but I found that my needs were already taken care of by recipes that other people created and IFTTT highlighted in the app’s gallery.
I understand that the IFTTT team is trying to keep the “Do” apps simple, and that’s why they’ve limited them to running only three recipes, but there are times when that limited selection feels claustrophobic, especially when it comes to sharing images privately. If I set up a recipe to message an image to one of my friends, the only way for me to send it to another is to either modify the recipe or set up a whole new one.
There’s also one nagging problem I have with IFTTT as a whole: it’s not clear how the company plans to make money. Obviously, there’s some potential in selling promoted recipe spots, and the company could offer a premium subscription. But whenever I get extensive use out of their products, I always have a nagging feeling that it might not be around in a year or two.
That’s not a good reason to skip out on Do Camera’s capabilities, but I worry about its longevity.
If you like Do Camera, Do Note and Do Button are worth a look. The former is a good way to share snippets of text with other services (much like my beloved Drafts), while the latter turns your phone into an internet-enabled remote control: push a button, and then something will happen. If you’re in the mood for some seriously hardcore automation tools, check out IF by IFTTT – an app that will let you create your own recipes that tie services together. (Users can also manage the recipes in their Do apps from the IFTTT web interface if they want.)
Do Camera is available for free from the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.
