If a picture is worth a thousand words, a Tubey slideshow has got to justify its $4.99 price tag in the App Store.

From our experience here at AppSmile, seldom do we come across an app that has the potential to reclaim its purchase price. How so? We’ll let’s introduce Tubey first.

CirclePix developed Tubey as a compliment to popular video hosting services like YouTube and Facebook. It allows the user to select pictures from their photo library on the iPhone or iPod Touch and turn them into a well arranged slideshow right from the palm of their hand.

The first step is to choose your pictures. Next you can apply effects (the animations during photos). We would like to see more transition effects such as peels and of course star swipes, but for now only fade transitions exist. Once the pictures and effects are cued, you can move on to sound creation.

Got a little John Williams or Danny Elfman in you? Tubey offers hundreds of music selections to choose and add as background ear candy. Of note, Tubey grabs all music selections off their server, so no song files reside on your device. This is good at keeping the applications footprint small, but it makes complete video creation impossible without an internet connection. Unfortunately, Tubey won’t let you choose songs from your iPod library as background music. But we can understand this may involve copyright infringement.

Are you more into David Attenborough’s style? No problem, Tubey also let’s you narrate your flicks using the iPhone’s microphone (Touch users will have to use an external mic for this feature.)

When you’ve finished composing your video, Tubey steps you through adding a title, description, and tags. All features that will help browsers find you on YouTube. Now upload your video to Tubey and it will get posted to YouTube and Facebook provided you have linked Tubey to your outside accounts. This takes around 30 minutes to process to the server.

So how can you make money with Tubey? It may come in as a handy tool in a variety of situations. For example, if you’re looking to sell your house, car, a potato chip that looks like Wayne Newton, anything -- you can make an advertisement using your iPhone camera and Tubey. Then link the uploaded video to eBay or Craigslist. Feel like introducing yourself on Facebook? Upload a portrait montage and narrate a little bio. Do you have a monetized blog? Tubey can also upload direct to BlogSpot.

Tubey can also come in handy for recreational purposes. Imagine you’re on vacation and, after retiring to your hotel for the night, you want to update your friends back home with your adventures. Just throw together a slideshow of the day’s photos for them to access on YouTube.

Now we must mention that Tubey requires you to sign up for a Tubey account and provide them with your YouTube and Facebook info. Yet all this is free of charge after buying the app from iTunes. Additionally, a Tubey intro will be added to you videos (see our Tubey video below). Without these requirements, Tubey would’ve reached the coveted 5-Dimple rating.

With its $4.99 price tag (as of this review) Tubey is in the mid-level range of iTunes App pricing. However, considering it would mainly be used by travelers or for business reasons, we tend to think this is appropriate as it performs remarkably well.

Still on the fence? Try Tubey for free HERE.

Tubey gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating: