Mextures- A Story Behind Building the Perfect App for Photographers

It was just a couple years into using Instagram myself before I noticed one name pop up regularly: Merek Davis. Having first been introduced to him as "The Mextures Dude," the fascination with him and the incredible inspriation he brought along with him had me hooked. I immediately began downloading free Mextures individually from his website and using apps like Image Blender to add them to my shots to enhance them with these magnificent colors, textures and custom film grains. 

We've covered Mextures before here on Fstoppers, but I wanted to talk a bit more about the man and the history of the application. Early on, Merek's path to his current app started when he wanted to simply sell high res texture and film grain files he called Mextures to the top end photographers. Shortly after launching those and selling only a handful, he knew that wasn't quite the right formula.

He then went back to the drawing board, and began offering his textures in a mobile friendly size for use on Instagram. He offered the textures for free, asking only for people to tag #mextures in return, a tag that has now grown to over 700,000 uses. As the popularity grew, so did Mereks follower base along with a legion of people asking when he would release new mextures. Shortly thereafter, the rumors swirled about an app. He went through more than 20 developers tyring to find the best match for someone to create his dream app that would help photographers put a mobile Photoshop-like system in their pockets. Eventually meeting developer Wes Billman, Merek began building an app he and Wes would eventually make available in Apple's app store. The time and effort paid off big when soon after the app launched it hit the top of the charts and recognized as one of the best photo apps by Apple.

The app is for iPhone only and has been toted as one of the best photography apps on the market. Its simple timeline-esque UI gives you full control over how much you want to add to the image and has a large collection of Mextures to choose from, including light leaks, grain, grunge and graidents. The options give you full control over how much or how little you want to add to each image. The best part and one of the most unique pieces compared to the ever popular VSCOcam or Snapseed is the non-destructive feature. You can go back and edit each individual piece as on a timeline.

With most photo apps these days, it's one and done and if you don't like the edit you find yourself going back deleting the shot or starting from scratch. What Merek has done here is bring more freedom to the creative side of things with mobile editing. One of the biggest jumps for me personally was the addition of editing tools like contrast, saturation and sharpen. Having those paired with the custom Mextures makes it a perfect combonation. 

Having the chance to meet Merek a couple years ago over dinner while shooting in Phoenix was an incredible experience. His passion for photography and building something greater for others was awe-inspiring. I have been following his work and progress in the app for the past two years and I will say this, the best is yet to come. 

If you want even more of Merek Davis, Cult of Mac recently did an excellent interview with him that I highly recommend checking out. 

Also be sure to check out both his website at MerekDavis.com along with both his personal and Mextures Instagram pages for some incredible photos by Merek and all the contributors. 

Also be sure to check out his app available in the app store here!

I would love to see who in the community has used Mextures or has been adding to the growing tag #mextures on Instagram so please feel free to share your shots in the comments below.