Probably the queen of all the photographic apps, Syntetic Corps’ masterpiece creates stunning images with an unique vintage look and feel. This app smells analog even during the capturing process. In fact unlike other apps, Hipstamatic lets you achieve the desired look by forcing you to choose the right lens, film and flash before you push the button. There are dozens and dozens of combinations and you can have more downloading their Hipstapaks, additional kits of films and lenses. You can even order gorgeous analog prints from within the app.
Instagram is another favorite of mine. It’s more a community than a tool, equipped with a few good filters this 5-starred app easily makes you shoot, edit and share your images in a stimulating network of iphoneographers. Since you can upload images from your library you may want to share even images took with other photo apps. The app allows you to share your work using twitter, tumblr and many more.
Noir Photo is something I can’t live without. It’s the app that makes me feel into my old wet and smelly darkroom. With extremely simple controls, just three dials, this jewel can give you fine control over your black and white creation. With ease you will dodge and burn, and will be able to emphasize specific areas of your images. A must have for you serious photographers who want to create cinematic images that tell a story.
The iPhone camera is great. The iPhone 4S camera in particular is spectacular, is capable of taking very detailed images. Anyway the controls of the standard camera app are not up to help you serious photographers. Unlike standard camera, Camera+ can separate focus and exposure easily. It also has nice features like antishake and burst mode.
Six by six is something I recommend to Instagramers, since it gives the same control over focus and exposure as Camera+ do but in an old fashioned square viewfinder with grids and bubble level. When I wanted to take a square picture to post later on Instagram, I found sometimes difficult to compose in a rectangular viewfinder. With 6×6 this problem is solved. Cool for nostalgic fellows: you can mirror the viewfinder like a twin lens reflex camera.
Adobe Photoshop Express doesn’t need introductions at all, it’s filled with tools, adjustments and effects that every iPhone photographer needs. Very strong and reliable app, I’d only wish it was more expandable. Especially when it comes to borders, would be great to create my own border templates in my Photoshop desktop version to later use on my mobile pictures.
I find Photoforge apparently more powerful than Photoshop. It has in fact a larger set of tools but, in my opinion, some of them are not appropriate for the iphoneographer’s approach. It is anyway very convenient, a Swiss army pocket knife. The killer feature is anyway the ability to handle layers and layer masking.
Image blender is the perfect tool for the skilled and creative iphoneographer. With a streamlined user interface lets you select two images to blend (background and foreground), a blending mode (normal, multiply, screen and more) and the opacity. Some blending modes don’t work so fine but the most common (and useful) do. The key is the interface, it lets me blend my images on the go, while I walk even while I run. Five stars.
The iPhone 4S camera made a giant leap forward in terms of optical quality but iPhone photography still lacks depth of field control. Sensors in these kind of devices are way too small, hence the dof is too deep. With Tilt Shift Generator you can achieve tilt-shift miniature effect but even emphasize parts of the images simulating the shallow dof given by large aperture lenses.
I’m not really into panoramic photography but sometimes is cool to go wide. I tried several apps like Panoramatic and Pano but I find 360 Panorama more streamlined and effective.
