OS X Lion First Look: Photo Booth

BYTE -- Photo Booth is popular among kids of all ages. Anyone who's been in an Apple Store knows that people will line up just to make funny pics. In OS X Lion, Photo Booth has even more special effects for your pics.

Like several other apps OS X Lion has built-in, Photo Booth now launches in full-screen mode. The metaphor is a real carnival-type photo booth – curtains and all.

The previous window viewing mode is still available. Toggle between the two with the icon at the upper right of the screen.

My favorite part of Photo Booth is you don't have to do it alone -- bring a friend.

Some of the new special effects are animated. Here's Lovestruck.The hearts spin around your head. Aw.

Unfortunately, Lovestruck and other special effects that use facial recognition won’t work if your friend doesn’t have a human face. That means, sadly, no fun pictures with your favorite cat, dog or Lambchop puppet.

All the new features in OS X Lion make this reviewer dizzy. Want evidence. Here's the Dizzy effect in Photo Booth. .

Another fun effect is Bug Out, which uses facial recognition to perform special effects on your eyes. Don't I look purdy?

If you really want to know where I come from, add an 'a' inside my name. Here's me as a martian. Maybe they'll let into Area 51 now.

Though I did not get to produce this post from the bridge of my extra-galactic space ship parked in Area 51, I did manage to get some R&R at Yosemite this weekend to wrap up some content for BYTE’s launch. I needed the break!

Finally, Photo Booth does something retro I like. It produces four-up photos to capture different expressions, just like a traditional Photo Booth would. Apple’s Photo Booth easily delivers these sequential photos.

Not all the new features in OS X are homeruns, but this one definitely is. Photo Booth is one application on the Mac that will have people arguing over who gets to drive.

Based in Houston, David Martin is a technologist at BYTE. Follow him @David_W_Martin or email him at [email protected].