Lego Photo review

Damien McFerran

We review Lego Photo, an app that allows you to add lego effects to your photos

Published on Jan 25, 2010

Lego has been a firm family favourite for several decades now and the iconic red block logo is an instantly recognisable brand all over the globe.

It’s fairly easy to see then why an app such as Lego Photo – which essentially allows you to take any image and make it appear as if it’s constructed of bricks – is going to go down a storm with iPhone owners of all ages.

The app gives you the option of either taking a brand new photo or using an existing one from your phone’s gallery. After a few seconds you’re presented with a “Lego-fied” version of the image, displayed in a series of multicoloured blocks. Tapping the screen results in a pleasing ripple effect as the colour of the bricks changes, but the image remains the same.

When you’ve found the colour combination that suits your mood you can save the image, but it’s worth nothing that it saves directly over the photo if you’ve decided to take a fresh snap to use.

The first time we experimented with the colour changes we saved several times assuming that the app would create successive copies of the image, but in fact it merely overwrites the original.

If you want to use the same image but create several different variants then it’s best to take a snap using the iPhone’s default camera application and then edit that image using Lego Photo.

Of course once you’ve crafted your blocky masterpiece you can email it to friends or even perform the procedure on all your contact photos so your address book is filled with Lego-faced people, but that’s really all there is to it.

Aside from creating wacky pictures, there’s little else on offer here. However, depth of functionality isn’t really what Lego Photo is about; it’s a free app and works perfectly well for what it is, so there’s little reason to grumble about a lack of features. Besides, it’s virtually guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of anyone who has ever cradled a Lego block in their hands, and that’s no mean feat.

If you remember the good old days of sitting on the carpet attempting to build the Eiffel Tower out of Lego bricks but then realising in horror that you didn’t have enough to complete the task then Lego Photo will bring all those happy (or not so happy) memories flooding back.