Photo Quality Check: From Designer's Need to App Store Release
Photo Quality Check represents my first venture into mobile app design and development and my only solo full-stack project to date. Born from a designer's frustration, this two-year journey transformed into a comprehensive learning experience in mobile design and iOS development while working as an art director at a creative studio in Lisbon.
The Origin Story
As a print designer and amateur photographer, I often found myself in client offices needing to verify iPhone photos for print projects. The App Store at the time lacked a crucial tool: an app that could preview photos at 100% magnification by mapping each image pixel to an iPhone screen pixel—a fundamental feature designers rely on in desktop applications like Photoshop. This gap in the market sparked what would become an intensive self-learning journey.
The Development Journey
The project began with laying a foundation through a six-week intensive course in C programming and iPhone development (Objective-C and iPhone SDK). What followed were countless late nights exploring coding best practices, debugging, and transforming concepts into functional features. I embraced the full-stack approach: from initial market research and interface design to writing the complete codebase and even shooting and editing the initial release demo video in Final Cut Pro.
Design Evolution
The initial release targeted iOS 5 and iOS 6, embracing Apple's then-prevalent skeuomorphic UI design philosophy. However, the mobile design landscape transformed dramatically with Apple's iOS 7 release, which introduced the flat design paradigm. Rising to the challenge, I thoroughly overhauled the app's UI in version 1.1 to align with Apple's new design direction. This redesigned interface earned recognition from Behance curators in the website's "App Design" section [see the redesign project here].
Professional Recognition
The app's release garnered enthusiastic reviews from professional photographers and iPhoneography experts. Below are some quotes that I featured on the app's website. There, they talk about what they like about the app and how it had made their work easier.
Chris Prakoso, Photographer and main editor at Moblivious.com
"Sitting tucked in, right at the top of my list of apps is the Photo (Quality) Check app. This simple, efficient app has saved me from more disasters, more re-shoots, than I dare imagine."
Cat Milton, Mobile Photographer and main editor at Mobile Photography Central
"What I really like about this app is that if you are looking to print your images Photo Check shows you a preview of the maximum print size for each photo at two standard resolutions 300dpi and 150dpi."
Nicki Fitz-Gerald, designer, iPhoneography artist and author at iPhoneographyCentral.com
