If you've come to our blog a time or two you've probably noticed that I really enjoy playing with photography apps on my iPhone(see my iPhoneography posts
here).
Over the time I've had my iPhone I have got a lot of photo apps(too many, probably) and I though it would be nice share my iPhoneography toolbox here with you.
I'll start at the top and work my way down with a simple review(this is not a comprehensive overview of iPhone photo apps. There are a lot of cool looking ones out there I don't have)
360 Panorama - With this app you can make panoramic images by just moving your phone up and down as you spin in a circle. It makes it really easy, in fact I don't think it could be any easier. However, it really struggles in low light or even indoors. It's a trade off, but it's a pretty cool app all the same.
TiltShiftGen - As far as fake tilt shift apps go this one is my favorite. Even though apps like Camrea+, Instagram, and others have added tilt shift to their apps, this is easily the one that does it the best. It also allows you to change saturation, contrast, and brightness levels which can really help the tilt shift effect(you can add a vignette as well).
Diptic - Diptic lets you use several images to create a single diptych, triptych, or.. fourtych? Whatever you call it, it gives you a lot of options as far as layout and size goes and works really well. You can save a large high res version of your image and you can also post it to various places like like Facebook, Flickr, or Posterous. It's one of my favorite photo apps. I highly recommend it.
PictureShow - This is a camera replacement app that also lets you edit your photos to look like it was taken with an old camera. There are a lot of apps out there like this these days but this is one of the best. It's solid, it's got a TON of editing options, and it's pretty and easy to use. I like it's shuffle button that adds random effects and lets you save an edit you like into your favorites. It's a great "old camera" editor. Totally worth a buy.
SynthCam - This is what I'm going to call "Proof of a Concept" app. If you know much about photography you know and understand the term depth of field. It's basically the way things in the background look blurry and the subject is in focus(this is the effect tilt shift apps try to simulate, just in a different way). The iPhone's camera has a very deep depth of field making things both close and far away appear with the same amount of focus. This makes it very hard to make macro photography or photos that feel like they have a lot of depth. This app tries to simulate a shallow depth of field by having you move your phone slightly while it keeps the subject in focus. It does this both this image tracking and accelerometer tracking. Sadly, more often than not it's very hard to get a clear photo. It's a very cool and creative idea but it doesn't work all the time. It's not a bad app by any means and when it does work it's really really awesome but I wouldn't call this a "must have" app.
Actioncam - This app will quickly take a series of photos and automatically put them together into a diptych. It's quick, easy and fun. While it doesn't let you manually add photos like Diptic, it does give you various options as far as how many photos to take and how to arrange them, two simple filters, and a timer which is also handy. I don't use this one as much as I do Diptic but I have gotten a lot of fun stuff with this app and it does capture an action in a way Diptic can't.
8-Bit Pocket Camera - Do you remember the Game Boy camera? Yeah, the old black and white Game Boy had a camera you could attach to it. It took little pixilated pictures using only black, white, and 2 shades of grey. This app replicates the Game Boy camera perfectly and has a ton of features as far as layouts, borders, diptychs and colors go. This app is not for making big pretty pictures, it's for the nostalgia. If you like old school looking pixilated photos or had a Game Boy camera you will probably have fun with this app.
Pro HDR - There are a few HDR apps out there but this is by far my favorite. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Put simply, an HDR image is a made up of two photos of the same thing, mixed together. One photo light, one photo dark. This is excellent for getting images of a cloudy sky with a building or something in the foreground. Like you might expect, this app quickly takes two pictures, one light one dark, and mixes them together and it does it very well. It also lets you edit various levels after taking your photo before saving it to your camera roll. I love this one, it's highly recommended, especially if you like taking photos of sunsets.
Hipstamatic - Buy this. This is by far my favorite iPhoneography app. It's been around for a long time and over time become better and better. Basically, Hipstamatic lets you take photos that look like they were taken with an old toy camera. There are several different lenses, films, and flashes that you can choose from to make your photo(with the option of adding more via in app purchase). It's well designed, it's easy to use, it's just awesome. After Hipstamatic came out there where a ton of apps trying to jump on the "toy camera" bandwagon but none in my opinion have ever matched it. There is a lot more to this like the ability to post photos on Flickr or Facebook and you can even order prints from within the app but I'll just say leave it at this... Buy it. It's great(P.S. One little thing that might dissuade you from getting this is that you can't load photos from your camera roll. This isn't a big deal for me, but I think it's worth mentioning).
ClearCam - One of the problems with taking photos with your iPhone is that it's often tricky to get a clear photo. The combination of the camera's technical limitations and a shaky hand can be quite frustrating. This app, however, makes getting clear photos quite easy. It has two modes, Quick and Enhanced. The Quick mode will quickly take 4 photos, analyse them to find the clearest one and save it to your camera roll. The Enhanced mode takes 6 photos and mixes the clearest parts of each photo together into one very clear image. It works really well and it's what I use most when taking photos.
Camera+ - This is an excellent camera replacement/photo editing app. It's got tons of great features for taking photos like a Burst mode, a timer, and the ability to lock the white balance while focusing elsware on the photo. The editing features are also great, giving you lots of presets and filters to choose from standard to vintage as well as the ability to crop and rotate and so on. It's really well put together and feels quite slick. If you only want to spend money on one or two photo apps I would recommend this one and Hipstamatic.
PS Express - This is Adobe Photoshop's photo editing app. It has your standard editing features like brightness, contrast and saturation as well as some filters, none of which are really great or terrible. I almost never use this app because I prefer other apps that do the same thing much better but it's free so I can't really criticize it for not being as fun as other apps out there. It's a great if you don't want to spend any cash and just want to put simple edits on your photos. It recently updated to offer the addition of noise reduction via an in app purchase but I wouldn't recommend going for it until they improve upon it. The noise reduction comes out looking very muddy until you pull it back so much that the noise is hardly reduced at all. Anyway, it's a good photo editor for being a free one, but there are better apps out there.
Decim8 - This app is not for everyone. Like it's name eludes to, it "decimates" photos. It distorts, flips, inverts, and in one way or another "destroys" your photo in all the right ways. This is not for making your standard pretty pictures. This is for making dark distorted art. This is for experimental, abstract photos. There are several different filters you can switch on or off(several at a time if you like) to experiment with and the results are always different. Half the time it's just a mess, half the times it's super awesome. This is another one of those apps that I would recommend but I wouldn't call a must have. This is just a bit of supplemental fun for those who like the abstract side of photography.
Tiny Planets - This app does one thing but it does it well. It bends your photo around itself making it look like a tiny planet. You can also bend it around the other way to make a tiny tube. Panoramic images work really well but you can get cool stuff out of standard sized photos as well. It's simple, it's fun, and it's free. No reason not to grab it.
Polarize - This app turns your photos into poloroids by adding a poloroid border and a vintage edit. You can also add some text to the bottom of the poloroid much like you would with a sharpie. I used to use this app a lot before I got caught up with other apps but I still like this one. It may not have a lot of features but it does what it supposed to and it does it well. Sadly, I don't think this is available in the US app store anymore. Not sure why.
TouchRetouch - One of the things most lacking in photo apps is the ability to paint things out of a photo that you don't want. Things like a stranger in the background or a blemish on your face. This app works much like the Photoshop CS5 Content-Aware Fill tool. The iPhone, obviously, doesn't have the power your computer has so this doesn't work quite as well as Photoshop does, but for an iPhone app it works pretty darn well. Surprisingly well actually. The controls and interface are easy to understand. All in all a solid app.
ColorSplash - This app converts your photo to black and white while keeping your chosen details in color. There are a lot of apps that do this now but this one is by far the best one(and one of the first of it's kind as well). The thing that sets it apart is the interface and control. It's really simply and easy to zoom in and get the little details that really make the effect look cool and work well. It's not something you will need all the time but it's still very cool and the best of it's kind.
Labelbox - Sometimes a photo needs a caption, that's precisely what this app is for. It lets you stick a little piece of tape on your photo and write in it. Simple as that. There are several styles and colors of tape to choose from and even a few extras you can buy if you are so inclined. It's simple, it works, and it's free. Can't think of a reason not to get it.
SwankoLab - I really want to like SwankoLab more than I do. It's a really awesome concept, done really well, but for some reason I don't use it much. It's essentially a photo editing app. The interface is a little pocket darkroom where you pick your chemicals and how much you want to use and then you develop the photo. There are lots of different chemicals to use to manipulate your photos and you can save your favorite formulas to use later. It's really well designed(this app was made by the Hipstamatic guys) and it's clear they put a lot of work into it. I think the reason I don't use this much is that it's really hard to edit with a specific look in mind. More often than not it feels like just guessing and hoping that whatever formula you threw together makes something cool. Still, despite all that I can't call this a bad app because it's really not. It's a really great app, if your willing to dedicate yourself to a lot of experimentation.
Phototreats - Yet another photo editing app. You can put your photos through various filters much like some of the previous apps I've talked about. The reason I keep this one is a lot of the filters are really unique like the snow and the lens flair filter. It's also free, which is always nice(there are extra filters you can purchase in app) It's free, so get it.
Pano - Another app to make panoramic images with. It has you take the photos one by one, showing a ghost of the previous image on the side of the screen so you can line it up as you go along. It's fairly simple and a works much better in low light conditions than the 360 Panorama app does. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose this one.
100 Cameras in 1 - This is a unique kind of photo app. As you might expect, there are 100 different filters to send your photo through but there is more to this app than that. First off, the filters themselves are pretty great. They are primarily made up of a color treatment and a texture overlay(really great textures too). It really gives a unique look to your photos. The other thing that makes this app special is the way it's presented and used. The interface is clean, there are soothing sounds throughout, switching between filters is very easy, and other little things like the amusing names of all the filters. There are even Game Center achievements for things like using all the filters or navigating every page in the app. This may not offer everything you need in a photo filter app, but it's still a great app and worth the buy.
SlowShutter - This app lets you take prolonged exposures. I thought initially that I would have all kinds of uses for this app but I've struggled to get much use out of it. That's not because it's a bad app, it actually does what it's supposed to very well. It's various settings like how long the exposure is and how much light to let in are all very customizable. It's pretty easy to make neat blurry images or light paintings and so on. It's a good app, I think it's only drawback is that it's not something I need very often.
Percolator - This is a really neat one. It modifies your photo by turning it's various elements and colors into dots. It might sound odd, but the effect is really cool. You can choose a few different types of dots and colors. You can even change the density of the dots making a very real or very abstract looking photo. It's one you kind of have to see to understand. It's a one trick pony, yes, but it's a really cool trick and I like it.
ToonPAINT - This app is kind of self explanatory. It makes your photo look like it was drawn or painted. It works well enough but what sets it apart it that it lets you paint in your black and white toonafied image. This really adds to the effect. You can also use it's autopaint feature with an in app purchase as well(can't say personally how well it works though, haven't tried it). Another one purpose app but it's free and neat. No reason not to play with it.
Halftone - This app is awesome! It modifies your photo to look like it was pulled right out of an old comic book. Much like the sunday comics in the newspaper are printed, in that cyan, yellow, and magenta dotted look(you can customize how the dots look too). It also lets you add comic style captions if you like(including word bubbles) and there are lots of different paper styles to choose from that can really change the feel of the photo. This one is totally worth the purchase.
ComicStrip - This app is kind of like Halftone and Diptic mixed together. You choose from one of several comic layouts, you add photos, you add word bubbles, you save. There's no fancy filters like Halftone but that's ok, it does what it needs to. There are several different word bubble styles as well as various "Blam!" "Boom!" type expressions you can add in. It's fun!
That's the last of them(I told you I have too many photo apps). Hopefully you have a better idea now of what iPhone photo app you may or may not want to buy.
Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 7:16AM 
