Thank you for the review, which gives the community the opportunity to get a first impression of the app. I totally agree with you. There are certainly still some basic functions missing, but I am pretty sure that Tom and his team will work hard on it. The reactions to my feedback to Tom and the team shows me, that the feedback from the community is really taken seriously and that we can expect a lot more with further updates/versions. Of course, around €60 per year is a lot and with the current status quo, it is entirely understandable that people are not willing to spend the money on it. But you can also see it as an investment/support in an ambitious team that will conjure up a great app for the community over time...at least that was my reason for registering. 🤩 ...at the end: everyone can - thanks to your review - decide for themselves a little more easily whether it is worth registering or not 😊 Thank you again Sascha for your constructive and honest insight! CS 🤩
Thanks for reviewing this app! I think you're very kind in your review. I'm not sure why anyone would pay for an AstroBin rip-off with just a fraction of the functionality with all kinds of restrictions - on a phone? Why would you use a phone for this? I'm at a complete loss. Yes, sure I have some of my images on my phone just to make sure I can pester anyone who's even remotely interested in astronomy at a drop of a hat, but why, why would I want to view images that don't fit on a 4K screen on a phone?
Well, from an Astrobin perspective it makes no sense at all, I fully agree. But Tom wants to bring Insta users to his service. So people who are already more phone focused and look for a better Instagram kind of. That might make sense for some people and there might be a market…. IF…… his service is really better! Because Insta is free, so that people are willing to move and pay 60 bucks a year it really has to be good….. actually very good…. and at the moment from an overall experience it is worse than Insta. Especially because of the clumsy UI and the missing search functionality. As stated, I can imaging that it has potential in the future, but he released it too early or he should have released it on a much lower price at the present time…..
This app has a lot of potential. I have downloaded it and paid the couple of pounds it costs to register. There is also a web based version in the pipeline that will be released shortly, making the viewing of the images an even better experience.
I absolutely agree - it has a lot of potential. What I see here in the comments is that presently the price asked is still too high for what it offers and not offering a trial, not offering monthly payment and not open the viewing up for free for everybody like Astrobin does hurts the App. A web based version might have its advantages, but opens up other issues like that the protection from "stealing" pictures (e.g.screen capture) will not be possible anymore on the web.
@@viewintospace Using screen capture to steal images can easily be solved by using a plugin on the website, but it's early days yet. If Tom gets too much criticism about the payment system, I'm sure he'll do something about it.
@@briangriffiths937 unfortunately this is not correct. There is no way, literally, to prevent a person downloading an image that you put on a website. You can only make it slightly inconvenient, is all. This is why AstroBin doesn't do trivial tricks like disabling right-click to "Save image as". It can be easily bypassed with 1 minute of googling and I don't want to offend the users intelligence or offer a false sense of security with ridiculous marketing claims. You mentioned "installing a plugin", but why would the wannabe thief install a plugin? :) This is not something that the website owner could force. Doing screenshot and videorecording avoidance on iOS and Android is surely more inconvenient for somebody wanting to steal an image, but it's also easily bypassable, for instance you could start a screenrecording before opening the app, then open the app and go to the image you want to steal, then stop the videorecording and extract a high resolution still frame.
Personally I don't care for Instagram at all. I like to frame my Astro images in a manner that works artistically for me and because it doesn't fit predefined requirements they get rejected. Besides it's a lot like Facebook which I think is pretty trashy as well. And I think the worst place to view my images is on a bloody phone. I don't care if it is the popular medium for people to share images. That just doesn't cut it for me. Seeing my pictures on a full screen computer is the only way to see them unless they are framed and mounted on the wall. And of all the places out there to archive pictures online ,I prefer Astrobin which is a much better place to display pictures in all their beauty and not have them destroyed by Instagram compression methods. It's a much more classy operation.
I think you might be missing the point of Picastro as I don't think that it's specifically meant to do what you're wanting from it. While it does offer the option for hosting highly technical image details like Astrobin, I don't really think it's trying to do this same thing as a whole. You speak of wanting to view your own photos in your own preferred way. It would make sense for folks such as yourself to prefer Astrobin as it's more of an image hosting site than a sharing site. Yes, other people can view your photos on Astrobin, but images rarely have anywhere close to the same audience reach as something like Instagram, Facebook, Picastro, etc. Obviously if your astrophotography is for you, sharing is not necessarily your goal so Picastro wouldn't make sense for you. That said, people who like to have their image stored and publicly hosted on Astrobin but also like to share images to an audience (like myself) Picastro makes the most sense. Instagram is absolutely terrible in that the compression ruins images and the algorithm is just plagued with what it think you want to see versus what you actually want to see. Not to mention the ads are just horrific. I know many, MANY people who have been using IG for a very long time, myself included, that are happy to pay a subscription fee to do away with all the horrid trash Meta throws into the mix in order to share astro images in a social manner with folks who share the same interests, but might be more interested in the social, artistic, and sharing aspects of the hobby rather than the *purely* technical side (which is where Astrobin excels) I think Picastro and Astrobin each serve very different groups of people and astrophotography philosophies, and it would be very unfair to compare them in a 1 to 1 head on comparison. I think the best way for people to review and choose one or the other is simply lay out a pros and cons list to each and determine which is most useful for themselves. Personally, I have subscribed to both and am very happy I have both the technical image hosting provided by astrobin and the no-nonsense Picastro that does away with all the awful IG bloat and provides the sharing, fun and social side.
Not even registering works for me on Android. But from what you showed in your video, it seems to have a long way to go before it could be of interest. What I would really like to see at some point is a mobile app for Astrobin... 😅
I is not only not better than Astrobin, it is not even coming near. That said, and to be fair, that does not seem to be that it aims to be but an replacement for Instagram.So the main issue is two fold - even when it comes to a comparison to Insta, it is not convincing, and on top of that, while Insta is free, it costs way too much for what it offers....
Not worth the money. Even if it was a fully functional version. I would rather give the money to content creators that give me something to help my imaging. Like Seti Astro for example....
Thank you for the review, which gives the community the opportunity to get a first impression of the app.
I totally agree with you.
There are certainly still some basic functions missing, but I am pretty sure that Tom and his team will work hard on it. The reactions to my feedback to Tom and the team shows me, that the feedback from the community is really taken seriously and that we can expect a lot more with further updates/versions.
Of course, around €60 per year is a lot and with the current status quo, it is entirely understandable that people are not willing to spend the money on it.
But you can also see it as an investment/support in an ambitious team that will conjure up a great app for the community over time...at least that was my reason for registering. 🤩
...at the end: everyone can - thanks to your review - decide for themselves a little more easily whether it is worth registering or not 😊
Thank you again Sascha for your constructive and honest insight!
CS 🤩
Thanks for reviewing this app! I think you're very kind in your review. I'm not sure why anyone would pay for an AstroBin rip-off with just a fraction of the functionality with all kinds of restrictions - on a phone? Why would you use a phone for this? I'm at a complete loss. Yes, sure I have some of my images on my phone just to make sure I can pester anyone who's even remotely interested in astronomy at a drop of a hat, but why, why would I want to view images that don't fit on a 4K screen on a phone?
Well, from an Astrobin perspective it makes no sense at all, I fully agree. But Tom wants to bring Insta users to his service. So people who are already more phone focused and look for a better Instagram kind of. That might make sense for some people and there might be a market…. IF…… his service is really better! Because Insta is free, so that people are willing to move and pay 60 bucks a year it really has to be good….. actually very good…. and at the moment from an overall experience it is worse than Insta. Especially because of the clumsy UI and the missing search functionality. As stated, I can imaging that it has potential in the future, but he released it too early or he should have released it on a much lower price at the present time…..
Thanks for your honest opinion. Sounds like it has some potential in time.
This app has a lot of potential. I have downloaded it and paid the couple of pounds it costs to register. There is also a web based version in the pipeline that will be released shortly, making the viewing of the images an even better experience.
I absolutely agree - it has a lot of potential. What I see here in the comments is that presently the price asked is still too high for what it offers and not offering a trial, not offering monthly payment and not open the viewing up for free for everybody like Astrobin does hurts the App. A web based version might have its advantages, but opens up other issues like that the protection from "stealing" pictures (e.g.screen capture) will not be possible anymore on the web.
@@viewintospace Using screen capture to steal images can easily be solved by using a plugin on the website, but it's early days yet. If Tom gets too much criticism about the payment system, I'm sure he'll do something about it.
@@briangriffiths937 unfortunately this is not correct. There is no way, literally, to prevent a person downloading an image that you put on a website. You can only make it slightly inconvenient, is all. This is why AstroBin doesn't do trivial tricks like disabling right-click to "Save image as". It can be easily bypassed with 1 minute of googling and I don't want to offend the users intelligence or offer a false sense of security with ridiculous marketing claims. You mentioned "installing a plugin", but why would the wannabe thief install a plugin? :) This is not something that the website owner could force. Doing screenshot and videorecording avoidance on iOS and Android is surely more inconvenient for somebody wanting to steal an image, but it's also easily bypassable, for instance you could start a screenrecording before opening the app, then open the app and go to the image you want to steal, then stop the videorecording and extract a high resolution still frame.
Not paying a cent sorry. Big no no from me, I already subscribe to astrobin and that's enough.
Personally I don't care for Instagram at all. I like to frame my Astro images in a manner that works artistically for me and because it doesn't fit predefined requirements they get rejected. Besides it's a lot like Facebook which I think is pretty trashy as well. And I think the worst place to view my images is on a bloody phone. I don't care if it is the popular medium for people to share images. That just doesn't cut it for me. Seeing my pictures on a full screen computer is the only way to see them unless they are framed and mounted on the wall. And of all the places out there to archive pictures online ,I prefer Astrobin which is a much better place to display pictures in all their beauty and not have them destroyed by Instagram compression methods. It's a much more classy operation.
I think you might be missing the point of Picastro as I don't think that it's specifically meant to do what you're wanting from it. While it does offer the option for hosting highly technical image details like Astrobin, I don't really think it's trying to do this same thing as a whole. You speak of wanting to view your own photos in your own preferred way. It would make sense for folks such as yourself to prefer Astrobin as it's more of an image hosting site than a sharing site. Yes, other people can view your photos on Astrobin, but images rarely have anywhere close to the same audience reach as something like Instagram, Facebook, Picastro, etc. Obviously if your astrophotography is for you, sharing is not necessarily your goal so Picastro wouldn't make sense for you.
That said, people who like to have their image stored and publicly hosted on Astrobin but also like to share images to an audience (like myself) Picastro makes the most sense. Instagram is absolutely terrible in that the compression ruins images and the algorithm is just plagued with what it think you want to see versus what you actually want to see. Not to mention the ads are just horrific. I know many, MANY people who have been using IG for a very long time, myself included, that are happy to pay a subscription fee to do away with all the horrid trash Meta throws into the mix in order to share astro images in a social manner with folks who share the same interests, but might be more interested in the social, artistic, and sharing aspects of the hobby rather than the *purely* technical side (which is where Astrobin excels)
I think Picastro and Astrobin each serve very different groups of people and astrophotography philosophies, and it would be very unfair to compare them in a 1 to 1 head on comparison. I think the best way for people to review and choose one or the other is simply lay out a pros and cons list to each and determine which is most useful for themselves. Personally, I have subscribed to both and am very happy I have both the technical image hosting provided by astrobin and the no-nonsense Picastro that does away with all the awful IG bloat and provides the sharing, fun and social side.
Not even registering works for me on Android.
But from what you showed in your video, it seems to have a long way to go before it could be of interest.
What I would really like to see at some point is a mobile app for Astrobin... 😅
All the pieces are coming together, we'll get one relatively soon :)
I don't see what is better than AstroBin. Prize is near the same.
I is not only not better than Astrobin, it is not even coming near. That said, and to be fair, that does not seem to be that it aims to be but an replacement for Instagram.So the main issue is two fold - even when it comes to a comparison to Insta, it is not convincing, and on top of that, while Insta is free, it costs way too much for what it offers....
Not worth the money. Even if it was a fully functional version. I would rather give the money to content creators that give me something to help my imaging. Like Seti Astro for example....
No chance! Not paying a cent…..
Big NO for me