Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of very pretty landscape photos using a specific filter that I’ve never seen before. It makes photos look like something straight out of a Makoto Shinkai or Studio Ghibli film. Take a look:
wOW this app made pasig river look so nice?????? pic.twitter.com/PzQRrPTR1y
— denise ✨ (@denibeans) December 6, 2016
I tried #everfilter and… wow. pic.twitter.com/xXsTwQe1JO
— Leann (@_leanncruz) December 6, 2016
At the press of a button, Everfilter turns your photos to art. People have observed that Everfilter works best on landscape photos as opposed to portraits because of how it processes photos: the sky turns as blue as it can get, and clouds suddenly turn up snowy white or burning orange.
But aside from that drawback, Everfilter is a problematic app.
#everfilter เก็บข้อมูลทุกอย่างตั้งแต่ IMEI, account data, IP ไปจนถึงความแรงสัญญาน provider บอกด้วยนะว่าถ้าคุณกังวลเรื่อง security อย่าใช้ ! pic.twitter.com/kOBjOv7d6M
— ไอแพทไทเกอร์ไอเฮีย (@iPattt) December 5, 2016
First off, the app gets a whole lot of information from your device. The tweets above show screenshots of the app’s user policy, which list down what information the app can get from your phone, including your IP address, what you’ve downloaded on your phone, and “Aggregate Information,” which in lay terms, is bad news.
If you care about your security, don’t download this app. But to be fair, who reads these documents anyway? A lot of other apps get a lot of information from our phones as it is. It’s not new.
The worst thing, though, is this, courtesy of more Twitter sleuths:
@ mutuals using everfilter;u; the app steal sky oucs from artists and theres privacy issue about it please consider it before using
— エリン☆@テストเท (@ariessensen) December 5, 2016
Stealing art from other artists? Not cool.
UPDATE: Everfilter released a note declaring it temporarily unavailable in the App Store and Google Play.
現在Everfilterサービスには、著作権問題となるコンテンツは含まれておりませんが、皆様に多大なご迷惑をおかけしたお詫びと反省を表し、App Store及びGoogle PlayでのEverfilterの配信一時停止を決定致しました。#Everfilter pic.twitter.com/gRtrDMm7OQ
— Everfilter (@EverFilter) December 6, 2016
We can only rely on the broken translations for now (as we did with previous tweets), but the takeaway is that Everfilter has folded due to the numerous complaints for the mean time. The app is a novel idea that deserved its hype, but we wish they didn’t cut any corners. The team tried using the app and it works on some devices but not on others. Sound off in the comments about what you think of the app and if it’s working on your phone.
