You all know how much we love FX Photo Studio here at TBL...so we thought it would be super fun to catch up with Alex Tsepko of the MacPhun team so he could give us the inside scoop on everything MacPhun...they've got so many more strings to their bow then you may have originally thought!! 

<h4>How would you describe MacPhun, as a company, and what apps do you offer?</h4>

MacPhun started as a project of two friends, who developed computer games and then switched to iOS development when one of them got his first iPhone. I joined MacPhun about a year ago, when the company started to grow rapidly and required more people and creative minds. Since last year we have decided to focus on photo and video apps for both pro and amateur photographers and videographers. I would say that our apps are for people who want to create something exceptional and noticeable with their iOS devices, but either don't know how to do that with complicated software or don't want to waste their time learning difficult software. You can check our apps: FX Photo Studio, Perfect Photo, Silent Film Director, PhotoPal plus many many more...and you'll see that all of them allow you to create real art in minutes. Last May we also started Mac app development and have released three applications: FX Photo Studio, FX Photo Studio PRO and Color Splash Studio. The latter is #1 photo app in many countries and we do our best to keep it this way...go get it if you haven't already!! 

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<h4>How many developers do you have on your team? Do you all work from the same location or are you globally based?</h4>

We have around 25 people working with MacPhun globally in USA, Ukraine, France and Japan. Those are developers, marketing people, designers, testers, etc. I think that a company which develops apps for iOS and Mac and targets international markets can't just spend all their time in one location, you should get to know the markets you work with. 

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<h4>Can you tell us about your flagship app and give us its story: when, how and why it was created? Have you reached a wide audience with the app?</h4>

Our flagship photography app is no doubt FX Photo Studio - with versions for Mac and iOS. The story of FX Photo Studio started in 2009 when same two friends thought it would be cool to make an iPhone app with the largest number of effects on the App Store. When they first created FX Photo Studio it was called 101photofilters, but then the number of effects grew, we added more features and the app turned to a real photo studio, so we decided to call it FX Photo Studio. Since last year we have added over 50 new effects, plus the masking tool to paint with effects, the color splash tool came with the recent update, not to mention many other features which make the app a true powerhouse for creative photography either on iOS or on Mac. 

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FX Photo Studio has often been compared with PhotoShop as there's so much you can do with it, but we don't want to position the app this way. Photoshop is a professional photo software for pros and FX Photo Studio is a very casual photo processing application that let's anyone spruce up their images, add some creativity and gives people a reason to say "WOW!", when they see your pictures. FX Photo Studio is something different for a wider audience, including those who would never use photoshop, either because of the price or complexity.

While FX Photo Studio is our flagship app on both iOS and Mac, we have just launched a brand new app for Mac only and that's been big news for us recently. Color Splash Studio for Mac is a very intuitive software for making awesome pictures with selective colors. Not wanting to launch into full-on promotion, I will just suggest you check it out in the Mac App Store, it is not difficult to find it - Color Splash Studio is either #1 or #2 in photo category in most of the stores around the world! 

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<h4>What improvements will you be making to the app in the next update?</h4>

Well, the update for iOS version had just been released with tons of upgrades. It would take a while to mention them all, but to make a long story short we added a color splash tool for selective photography, enhanced the masking menu (now users can choose the area to apply each of 194 effects), added new sharing features and more. The Mac version update is coming shortly with the support of layers, new effects, frames and more new features. But the current version 2.0 is still really awesome for creating photography and editing on the Mac. I personally use the app everyday, just to see what I can create with all those filters and tools!! 