Use this free app from Kimd when shooting concerts, the audience will thank you

By Les Shu July 29, 2014

The good kids at Pop Photo recently stumbled upon an app called Kimd that’s designed for taking concert photos. The idea is simple: As a courtesy to those around you, Kimd lowers the brightness of your smartphone screen and automatically prevents the flash (usually a bright LED light) from turning on. Within the app you can take photos or record a video.

Whether artists or audiences like it or not, photography and videography have become part of the concert-going experience, thanks to the smartphone and – gasp – tablet. If you are one of the many who enjoy raising your arms above the audience and recording the moment on your phone, Kimd helps you be courteous to other concertgoers, as the bright light from screens and flashes are usually what are annoying in a dark environment. It dims the screen by 10 percent and overlays a “black veil” with a 30-percent opacity on top. As Pop Photo points out, yes, you can manually make these adjustments yourself, but why bother when you have one-touch access through an app that does it for you? Not to mention, it’s free.

“Right now our only goal is to see an entire concert hall using Kimd, because everybody deserves to enjoy the show again,” the French/Canadian startup company says in its press release. “Installing Kimd is a mark of respect to other concertgoers, and that’s what technology should enable.” The company has the tagline, “Be kind.”

While Kimd is described as a “concert camera,” it’s brilliant for other low-light situations where bright screens are unwanted, especially if there are loads of people around. It could be your kid’s school recital, a dimly lit restaurant, or a packed airplane. You could even use it to stealthily photograph someone or something, ensuring the flash never goes off (not that we condone this type of behavior, mind you).

Kimd is available for iOS only, but an Android version is in the works.

(Via Pop Photo)

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

I am formerly a senior editor at Digital Trends. I bring with me more than a decade of tech and lifestyle journalism…

Mobile

How to create the ‘VSCO Girl’ look and other fun edits with filter-based apps

how to be a vsco girl vscogirl3

By now, you've probably heard of the "VSCO Girl" phenomenon -- a trend that sprung up seemingly out of nowhere over the spring and summer of 2019. If not, here's the 411: A "VSCO Girl" is a Gen Z woman who favors a very particular way of dressing and speaking alongside some specific products and accoutrements that project a unique style.

We're going to pass on telling you exactly how to achieve this singular style, since real live VSCO Girls have been doing those honors for a while. Here, we focus on another VSCO Girl fave: The photo app VSCO that pulls it all together -- for The Gram, of course. With simple filter-based editing tools, apps like VSCO offer a multitude of unique styles to throw on your pictures, and allow you to do so in a few quick taps.

Photography

Importing photos to Lightroom on iOS will soon be less of a pain

Adobe Lightroom CC phone

Lightroom Sneak Peek: Seamless Import into Lightroom on iOS

Importing photos from a camera to Lightroom on an iPhone or iPad requires two imports -- one to the Camera Roll, and one to Lightroom itself. But, with an upcoming update to Lightroom CC, mobile imports will soon be less of a pain. In a sneak peek shared on November 13, Adobe Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty shared a look at a streamlined import process coming soon to iOS.

Mobile

Cinemagraphs inject verve into ordinary photos and videos

When photos are not enough and videos are too much, try a cinemagraph

best cinemagraph apps feature image

When a mere photo just isn't enough, a video seems like too much, and nothing seems quite right, it's time to contemplate creating a cinemagraph. This medium combines still photos and video in a particular way that isolates and animates certain parts of the scene while the rest of the tableau remains static. Cinemagraphs are popular on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media, and put a creative spin on your visuals. And you can create them right on your smartphone with the best cinemagraph apps.

A cinemagraph, a relatively new medium for photo art, is not exactly an animation, GIF, or Apple-style Live Photo, but they involve elements similar to all three. Cinemagraphs are a hybrid developed and popularized since 2011 when a couple of photographers shooting Fashion Week started experimenting with them. They are often referred to as Harry Potter pictures, because of the way the image within the frame comes to life, as it does in the movie.