WeChat views a global audience for its new photo app, StoryCam

Yet another photo editing and sharing app, I hear you exclaim. Do we really need one? Since we love taking pictures of food, scenery, pets, and just everything – and because selfie was the hottest new word last year – perhaps there is room for more snap-happy apps.

That’s why Chinese web giant Tencent (HKG:0700) has come up with StoryCam as a companion app to WeChat, its hugely popular messaging app. It’s a bit like Line did with Line Camera. StoryCam, which came out last month in both English and Chinese, is similar to camera apps like Aviary and Line Camera in that it allows you to put text and cutesy graphics over photos. It’s designed to complement WeChat, which has grown to have 272 million monthly active users around the world (though the majority are in China).

Stickers for your pics

When it comes to editing your snaps, StoryCam has five themes to choose from: featured, place, weather, food, and lifestyle. There are several different options within each theme. They all come with real-time weather, temperature, date, and location. Users can edit the location. It all helps make your photo feel even more of the moment so that it’s telling a story. Hence the name of the app.

StoryCam’s graphics are like stickers for your photos. Unfortunately there’s no option to write whatever text you want, so you’ll still need an app like Aviary to write random stuff on your photos. Plus, the new app comes with 13 photo filters, just in case Instagram’s are not to your liking.

After a user is done personalizing the photo, it can be shared from StoryCam directly to WeChat buddies or the WeChat Moments section, or via email, or just saved to your phone for usage with some other photo app. You probably use lots of them.

There are no paid options inside StoryCam yet, so it’s all free for now. It’s available for both iOS and Android.

Five themes: featured, place, weather, food, and lifestyle

(Editing by Steven Millward)