The Roll App by EyeEm

First off, what is EyeEm?

EyeEm is a global community and marketplace for photography. I believe that it is the first photo social network app - even before Instagram (by a few months). The founder, Flo Meissner, came upon the idea after having his camera stolen in New York City. He was given an iPhone and after taking photos with it, realized the potential and rise of mobile photography. EyeEm became an idea to fruition based on this story.

The EyeEm community includes upwards 17 million photographers and 70 million images. The platform is definitely different than Instagram but similar as far as the social aspects. In Instagram, you will be hard pressed to find amazing images because you would have to sift through celebrities and memes. EyeEm's focus from the beginning has been to showcase the quality of work and the photographers. EyeEm has partnered with many photography communities since its inception.These partnerships are fueled by Missions for photographers to complete. EyeEm also continues to show exhibitions of work throughout the world based on the missions and contests they have. To step it up even further, EyeEm also has the Market. The Market is where the individual can designate photos on their EyeEm grid to go for sale. Brands, individuals, and any others who may like the work are able to license the images through EyeEm. Lastly EyeEm launched EyeEm Vision in 2015. Vision is technology that helps rank, categorize and surface content through algorithms.

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What is The Roll?

Enter The Roll App!

Per their press release:

"The Roll aims to replace your existing camera roll and eliminate endless scrolling," said EyeEm Co-founder and Product Lead Lorenz Aschoff. "It's as easy as one tap to quickly organize thousands of your images and find your best ones."

The Roll tags your images, groups them by topics, location, and events, with the best shot based on those categories. If you have photos that you have taken in sequence for example, The Roll stacks them, then scores them based on aesthetics. You will be able to see the score (1-100), keywords, and meta data.

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How do you replace your default camera app?

The Roll app is set to replace your default camera roll because of its pretty awesome technology. Once you open the app, it asks you to gain access on your photos. Once that is completed then it begins to start tagging, categorizing, and ranking. The time it takes to filter through the default camera roll alone is overwhelming for anyone and specifically for those shooters who shoot at high volumes. This app helps alleviate that for you by finding your best photos and also your best photos within categories and tags. I was really surprised at how full the tagging tech is. If you look at the image on the left, you will see that it tagged this photo with over 27 keywords. EyeEm's database contains 20,000 keywords so I am pretty sure all your photos and mine will be covered.

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My Thoughts on The Roll

Based on EyeEm Vision, the company's vision technology, The Roll covers the basics of photography and gives you an Aesthetic Score. This is pretty cool. For me, the idea of critique nowadays is crucial to better your image making. This scoring and ranking is akin to having this done by your peers. Well, kind of! The percentage you receive on your individual images may make you proud or may turn you off on the whole idea altogether. I say, "Give it a try."

Although you can always disagree with the technology, I believe that this will help you take better pictures. Photos that are under or over exposed, noise, etc are all filtered and scored accordingly. Your best image from any sequence is brought to the top. This can help you decide on what you would like to share and post and also delete and save space as well.

When I went through my photos through the app, I did have those "Yeah, you are right, app." I like that photo and worked hard on the composition, exposure, even the subject. I think I do deserve that score. It could have been better or as shown in the last two images, I almost hit 100%. Now I know, sunsets will get high scores for aesthetics. I mean really, who does not love a sunset photo?!?

The same goes for the photos that I did not score well on. An overexposed photo, a low light image with too much noise, or another image here where I just could not hold the camera steady enough - the Roll App came through and gave me really low scores.

I think you take it for what it is worth. You want to take better photos. Use the ranking and scoring system to do that in some way or fashion.

The bottom line is go out and shoot and get better at it!

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My Final Thoughts

As a photographer, as a photographer who loves to take photos with my smart phones, I think that the Roll App is a must have. I love the idea of how well it categorizes and tags my images. This saves time and really allows me to trust in what EyeEm is doing. They love photography.

The ranking and scoring system is good. I would think that the next iterations and updates are only going to make the app better.

The Roll App is simple to look at, but behind the scenes, the Vision does all the work for you. That is a great thing.

Go download both EyeEm (iOS / Android) and the Roll App now!

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