Popular Darkroom photo editor for iPhone and iPad gets new features and a subscription model
What you need to know
- Darkroom 4.4 is now available in the App Store.
- The app now includes watermarking and an expanded icon picker.
- The app also introduces a new subscription model.
Darkroom, a popular photo editor for iPhone and iPad, has been updated to version 4.4. It brings with it an expanded app icon picker and support for watermarking, but neither are the biggest change. With version 4.4, Darkroom is now available as a subscription.
Darkroom isn't the first app to go the subscription route and it won't be the last. And the company outlined the reasons for the switch in a blog post today.
The Darkroom team hopes that the additional revenue brought in by a subscription model will allow it to expand and, as a result, improve the app. It's a story we've heard time and again from developers looking to find a sustainable approach, and the Darkroom team things it has found it here.
So what does that mean for users? Firstly, if you previously bought any Darkroom filters – or paid for anything at all – you'll get all of the premium features for free. So don't worry about losing functionality as part of this move.
Everyone else will be able to subscribe for $3.99 per month or $19.99 per year. But importantly, there's the option to pay a one-time $49.99 fee.
Hopefully, that single $49.99 option will prevent users from piling on, as always happens when a company switches to offering subscriptions. Unfortunately, I fear that won't be the case.
You can download Darkroom from the App Store now.
Master your iPhone in minutes
iMore offers spot-on advice and guidance from our team of experts, with decades of Apple device experience to lean on. Learn more with iMore!
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.