Tech bytes for tea?

Bring a smile to friends and relatives this Chinese New Year by sending them a festive greeting dressed up as the traditional God of Wealth.

The Lunar New Year is just round the corner. This year it falls on 3 Feb – that’s next Thursday.

Part of the Chinese New Year tradition is to send greeting cards carrying festive greetings. Many carry well wishes for good health, happiness, and success in career or studies.

Bring Chinese New Year greetings dressed up as the traditional God of Wealth.

By far, the favourite festive greeting is to for prosperity, such that “Gong Xi Fa Cai” has become a set phrase even in the English language. It means “Congratulations on hitting it rich!” And that usually happens when the Chinese God of Wealth (财神 – cai shen) pays you a visit.

Combine the two and you get an Apple app that allows you to make a simple greeting card on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, dressed up as the ubiquitous god bearing a well-wishing banner and smiling favourably on the recipient.

Remember those cardboard placards of cartoon characters with the face cut-out so that you can scramble up behind the placard and stick your face through the hole and pose as the cartoon character? Well, “God of Wealth camera” simulates that.

Using the app

The app is simple and comprises four simple steps with a few options to choose from. You can jump to any step by pressing the four buttons at the bottom of the screen. Look here for screenshots.

Step 1: Take a photo with the camera on your Apple device or choose one from the photo album. A front facing portrait works best here.

Step 2: Identify the face. A translucent Cai Shen face is initially placed where the app thinks the face is. You can move the face, rotate it and resize it to superimpose it on the face in the photo ( if there is more than one face) that you want to use.

Step 3: The face is put in the hole in the placard. There are five designs available, and for each of these, you can change the default text greetings on the banner that Cai Shen holds in his hands. You can also choose to remove the long beard (actually it’s the moustache) from the face.

Step 4: Export the picture to your album as a jpeg file, or post it to your Facebook account from inside the app. All done in a few minutes.

Wish-list

Potentially, the most time-consuming step is the second step. If you’re lucky, the face is properly positioned when you first go into Step 3. Otherwise, you have to go back and forth between Steps 2 and 3 until you get it right: adjust face position, size and rotation in Step 2, see its result in Step 3 and go back to Step 2 to re-adjust.

Some might find it tiresome, but take it as a challenge or game of sorts and it can actually begin to become a little fun, especially when you finally position it right. If only you can adjust the face directly in Step 3, it would be more intuitive and less iterative.

It also gets difficult to activate the side and corner handles to adjust the size and rotation of the face when it is very small. If only you could zoom in to make the face bigger just for making adjustments. But then again this is a free app. So just snap or choose a photo where the face is large.

Why the option to to remove the moustache? I found that out soon enough. It makes it so much more tricky (fun?!) to position the face with the moustache in the right place! So if you don’t have the gumption, just turn off the “beard” option.

I tend to leave the greetings alone. Typing in English is no go, only the first four letters appear on the banner. You have to type in Chinese characters in typical four-worded wishes. Even then, I find the Chinese characters stiff and blocky. The default calligraphy based greeting on those banners look much nicer unless you have a compelling reason to change the greetings – like putting a funny or naughty greeting instead.

Overall, a pleasant app that doesn’t hang, does one thing pretty well, kills time and keeps the kids entertained.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with the developer in any way. Just thought I’ll post a digital-imaging related app for the festive season.