What Fuji's news means for iPhone Apps

Recently Fuji has announced it is making public it's photo finishing API's.

What could this mean for iPhone customers?

It could mean If a smart app developer applied these API's to there app you could theoretically, snap a pic on your iPhone edit it, remove red eye, sharpen the foreground, lighten the background, remove the unwanted fence post, ect. This is then, the potentially brilliant bit, sent your enhanced photograph straight to a Fuji branded minilab, where it would be ready for you to collect.

Walk in, give your name, collect and off you go. And if the retailer has a SMS system liked to their point of sales, as soon as your photos are printed you could be texted their ready for collection.

This could be the real world equivalent of sending your photos to the cloud, only this way you "automatically" obtain a physical print to cherish.

The problem with digital, unless your incredibly disciplined is most casual snappers wait until there memory card is full, panic and print everything or even lazier than that purchase a new card. If your online you may have tried uploading your photos to an online printing service like Bootsphoto or photobox, these are fine but can be quite slow at uploading your pictures.

Where an app may trump these services is in not necessarily in the speed of upload, as this maybe even slow if connected to 3G, but it it's ease of use. And if the app was Snapspeed for example you could edit the alright shot and make it a great before you send it for printing. This would be quicker then going home and editing it on the Macbook, more time intense still than using the very limited cumbersome editing functions on the instore kiosk.

Imagine taking a handful of shots on your iPhone of your little protege on their sports day, moments after winning a medal those pictures are sent to the lab and printed. Later that same day while you pick up something for dinner, before you pick up your champion, you pop in and collect your triumphant shots. Collect your mini Bolt from school and share his success in the playground with some great pictures.

An app with these API's beautifully done would bring back the joy of holding prints again.