You know that television advertisement for a major technology company, where the tagline is “To the vapor” or something like that?  The one with the family of uncooperative photographic subjects sitting on a couch?  Yeah, that one. 

I love the idea and think it could absolutely be a life changing concept.  I also thought it was something limited to advanced photo manipulation software in skilled hands, not the average consumer.  I was wrong, very wrong.  Not only is there a simple way to achieve everything in that commercial (and more), but substantial computing hardware or software is not required, just a simple mobile application. 

GroupShot is exactly that application, currently for iOS only (an Android version is reportedly in development), and it works like magic.  Part of the beauty is the simplicity.  GroupShot uses a fast series of photographs, they need to be nearly identical for it to work well, which allows the user to select the area(s) of the initial image that are not perfect and replace them with the corresponding part of another in the series.  The selection of the area for replacement is simple, like using a highlighter, and “flipping” through the alternates is just a simple swipe. 

An example will speak far louder than words, so we asked the staff at DOWNTOWN Magazine to help out.  As the father of three children who refuse to all look at the camera at the same time, I have already put this application to very extensive use.