At the end of my previous entry about iphoneography, I was thinking I should include a list of the photo apps I have on my iPhone. But I’m on vacation and I was tired by then so I didn’t. Someone mentioned that it’d be nice to know what apps I’d used on the photos I posted. For some of the more basic adjustments/color corrections, etc., I can’t really remember. But here’s a list of the apps I have on my phone and a few thoughts about them. They are in no way comprehensive reviews, since there are handfuls of sites that do that, as well as ratings in the app store. If you’ve got any photo apps you can’t live without, leave a comment!
PS Mobile (free)- This is the Photoshop Mobile app. It’s pretty basic but also quite useful in it’s basicness. You can crop, rotate, flip and adjust exposure, saturation and tint. It’s also got a couple of gimmicky filters like sketch or soft focus. I start most editing in PS Mobile because I find that the iPhone underexposes in nearly every situation that isn’t BRIGHT SUN.
Camera Bag ($1.99) – This is a set of 11 basic filters. I usually check through them all but I’m guessing I end up using one of them maybe 20% of the time? The sample photos on the app page look really nice so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong but most of the filters don’t end up adding anything to my photos. It’s still probably worth the $1.99 though.
Quad Camera ($1.99) – This was fun for a couple of days and I haven’t opened it again since then, which was probably 8 months ago. It takes 4 or 8 photos in rapid succession and creates a single image file of your shots. You can alter the layout. If I purposely set out to make something with this, it could probably create some interesting things but it’s not an app that occurs to me often.
Mill Colour (Free) – I think this is my most used photo app. It’s got ten predefined filters and within those, I generally find one that I like. It’s also got freestyle adjustments for gamma, grain, saturation, brightness, etc. For the price, this really can’t be beat.
Best Camera ($2.99) – This is the app I was referencing in my last post. The filters that it has are pretty well laid out on the linked page. In addition to those, you can directly upload to a variety of places like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc., from the app, as well as participate in The Best Community. A lot of photographers swear by this app but honestly, I don’t think it’s that great. I wouldn’t buy it again.
Camera Kit ($.99) – This is supposed to emulate film processing with push and pull processing and developing methods. Unfortunately, also like film, you can’t preview the effect of the filter while you’re applying it which makes the whole process annoying long and unwieldy.
Mill Color
PanoLab (free) – This app will stitch together several photos to create a panorama. It’s free, so it’s probably worth that. I’ve made a total of zero actual panoramas, with the exception of the one I just made of my living room in the dark to test the app.
TiltShiftGen ($.99) – I love this app. In addition to saturation, brightness and contrast controls, you can apply radial or linear blur to give it a fake tilt shift effect. That’s how the three fall photos and the downtown Minneapolis photo in the entry below were edited. I use this app a lot.
FotoMuse ($2.99) – This is one of my more recent purchases so I haven’t used it a lot yet. It’s something of a grunge app. It’s got a wide variety of grungy borders and overlays. The witch’s house photo and the photo in this entry were both created with this app. It’s fun but not if you’re a photo purist.
PhoneGrafer ($1.99) – This has several color filters as well as sharpen, self-timer, etc., but it takes approximately two years for each filter to be applied and I have no patience for that. I wouldn’t recommend this one.
Polarize (free) – This gives your photo a polaroid frame and allows you to put handwriting-like text on the bottom. Very exciting.
(updated 8.29.10)
Hipstamatic ($1.99, plus extras) – This has been one of my favorite, most-used apps. You can select the film, flash and lens and it replicates different toy cameras. Great for making crap look like art.
FX Photo Studio ($.99) – This has something like 140 effects in it, from the really bad PS kinds to overlays and frames. I like the way it previews the effects but I don’t really use the app all that much.
ShakeItPhoto ($.99) – Love this one! Make “instant” photos. You even have to shake the phone to develop them. Produces lovely, muted tones.
Cross Process ($.99) – Love this one, too. Does some nice vintagey colors in addition to cross processing.
Incredibooth ($.99) – A photobooth for your phone! Makes a neat little strip of four photos, just like the real thing. (iPhone 4 only)
HDR for Free (uhh, free) – This works about as well as you’d expect a free phone app to add dynamic range to a single, low-megapixel image. Which is to say, really all it does is add a ton of saturation. I don’t really recommend it.
That all being said, here are some unedited, unfiltered iPhone kitty pics. :)
(Turns out the iPhone is also good for photographing and videoing your sister modeling a Snuggie but sadly, I am not allowed to share those.)