Now and then I come across a photo app for the iPhone that is so good I must share it.  I recently saw a review of an app called “Simply B&W” and couldn’t wait to try it out.  It is exactly what the name says:  it does simple black and white processing on any photo.  You can choose something from your library, or take a pic.

Then, there is a limited but quite useful set of processing options:  you can apply a filter (red, green, blue, yellow, orange) to an image; or you can adjust brighness, contrast, and grain.  GRAIN!  Exactly what I’ve been missing the most, with digital.  I used to rely heavily on grain to create all kinds of atmosphere in a print.  I like grain and never considered it to be a flaw in film that had to be worked around.  Now, finally, I can add grain to a digital pic.

Simply B&W is NOT an editing program: it doesn’t have cropping, for instance.  It does one thing and does it well:  take a color photo and turn it into a high-quality black and white photo.  You can then pull that into your favorite editor, such as Iris, to do further work on an image.

Here are some quick pics using Simply B&W: