iPhone photo apps

in Equipment by Marcelo Krause — July 10, 2011 at 10:57 PM | 0 comments

As I write this test, in June 2011, the iPhone is about to replace de Nikon D90 as the most used camera on Flickr. The phone became a regular camera for many people, although image quality is not as good as one DSLR. Even well know photographers every now and then post a pictures over the internet taken with a mobile phone. For sure, the iPhone is very useful when one wish to share the photo immediately by e-mail, on a website, blog or any of the social media websites that are very popular  these days. Many photographers do some kind of digital adjustments on the pictures they take with a regular camera, so why not do it with the pictures shared with the iPhone? Sometimes editing a picture with iPhone apps can be fun and lead to interesting results. Below there is a brief description of the apps I am currently using (June 2011).

 

Camera +  - $1,99 + $0,99

http://campl.us/

The app has basically 2 mode: the camera and the editing mode. The camera doesn’t bring a lot of enhancements over the original iPhone camera app. It has a timer that can be useful and there is a “stabilization” function, but it seems that the only thing it does is wait you to stop shaking to actually take the picture.
The editing mode is the one I use the most. It can edit pictures from the app own camera mode or from the photo library on the phone. The app let you apply presets  from a good range of “scenes” like backlit, sunset, cloudy, etc. It is also possible to crop and rotate the picture in many ways. There are 27 “filters” ( plus 9 as a $0.99 ad on) that can be applied with a nice option that let the user set the filter strength with a slider. There are also 18 different kinds of  borders to finish the picture. The app has shortcuts to send the photo facebook, twitter, flickr or by e-mail. A nice touch is a “info” screen that display the photo metadata and a small map with geotag information.

It is one of my favorite photo apps

 

 

Instagram – Free

The app is a mix of photo app and social media. It let the user apply 15 different preset filters that gives the pictures a look that remind photos taken with old Polaroid and Instamatic film cameras that were popular decades ago. The app let you share the picture by e-mail and trough many social media websites, besides sharing trough the app itself.  The editing forces a square crop on the photos, that I personally think it’s not suitable for many situations.

 

 

 

 

Pic Grunger –  $0,99

http://saspring.com/picGrunger/

Pic Grunger is a very cool app that gives your picture a look that resembles old, faded, scratched and worn out photos. It uses pictures from the camera or the photo library on the iPhone. The app can add borders to the pictures and the effects strength and looks can be adjusted.

 

 

Photosynth – Free

Photosynth is an app from Microsoft that is used for creating the so called “immersive photos” or 360 panoramas. Of course the result you get using your hands and a phone are not the same quality as some pro systems with a tripod, but the app do a pretty decent job.  The making of the panoramas can be quite simple, and the user can stitch as many images he desires. The resulting panoramas can be uploaded at the Photosynth website and the link can be shared. The app also saves a low resolution copy of the panorama at the camera roll.

 

 

SlowShutter  Cam – $0,99

http://www.cogitap.com/slowshutter/instructions.htm

This app let you take pictures with the iPhone as if you were using a slow shutter speed on a DSLR. It let you capture light trails and blurs. It has 3 different capture modes that requires some experimenting to get used to it.

 

Adobe Photoshop Express – Free

This app is named after the famous photo editing software from Adobe. It let you adjust many things such as contrast, saturation, brightness, let you crop and rotate the photo. You can also sharpen the image, do some noise reduction, add borders and crop. It has 7 preset filters for different looks. It is nice and it is free.