Recently, I’ve seen several conversations on Twitter and Facebook discussing tripod mounts for an iPhone.

The Glif is a simple iPhone 4 accessory with two primary functions: mounting your iPhone onto a tripod and propping up your iPhone at various angles. It’s been out for a while and we’ve featured it in the past here on the blog, but have never reviewed it, until now.

For most uses, the Glif is an inexpensive and practical option to carrying around bigger, bulkier and more expensive tripod mounts.

The Glif is simple gadget that easily clips to a corner of your iPhone 4. It has a standard 1/4″ thread for mounting on tripods. When not in use, it’s small and lightweight and easily slips into a pocket, purse or backpack.

It’s made of rubberized plastic. For a small device, it’s pretty durable. It’ll stuff into a pocket without breaking. The iPhone slides easily and securely into it. The plastic grips it well. I definitely wouldn’t take it on a roller coaster or fling it around — your phone will come out in that case — but the Glif provides a secure grip for most uses. It attaches to any corner of the iPhone and has a recessed slot inside so it doesn’t press the phone’s volume buttons if you attach it to that corner — a nice touch and well-thought design. It works on any iPhone 4 — GSM or CDMA.

If you use a screen protector on your iPhone, it’s possible to slide the phone into the Glif without peeling it up. Some users, however, have reported problems using the Glif with a screen guard.

The Glif also doubles as handy iPhone stand for watching video, reading, surfing and FaceTime. The notch on the bottom of the device clips on the phone and supports it at a comfortable viewing angle. Because the Glif is so small, lightweight and portable, it’s easy to tote around. Because it’s so small and clips to the back of the phone when used as a stand, it doesn’t get in the way if you have to use your iPhone as a … phone.

I do not like a caseless iPhone. I think the iPhone needs a case to recess the lens a little bit to prevent scratching. Unfortunately, the Glif cannot be used on an iPhone in a case or a bumper. This can be a little bit of a hassle to remove your phone and keep track of the case when using the Glif. Also, it’s iPhone 4 only. Owners of older iPhones (and future iPhones if Apple makes any changes to the device’s case) are out of luck.

Other than that, the Glif is an inexpensive, well-designed gadget. It works great as a tripod mount in normal situations and has the added bonus of being a pretty cool iPhone stand as well. The tripod mount is great for video, shooting selfies, or for shooting slow shutter iPhoneography. Then you can clip the Glif to the back of your phone to review what you just shot. If you’re looking for a tripod mount, the Glif is worth a look. I bought mine when it was a KickStarter project and I like it a lot.

The Glif is $20.00 and is available from theglif.com. International shipping available.

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I don’t know how I missed this back in February, but here’s a pretty cool piece of gear — the SnapMountâ„¢ Tripod Mount for iPhone 4.

As the popularity of iPhone photography grows, so has the number of devices to mount an iPhone to a tripod. They range from spring-loaded clamps all the way to the supremely cool OWLE Bubo. If you’re looking for a lightweight and inexpensive tripod mount, the SnapMountâ„¢ looks like it’s worth checking out.

SnapMount, shown with a Joby Gorillapod (not included)

SnapMountâ„¢ is an easy to use, versatile tripod mount for iPhone 4. It has some cool features designed in, including easy access to all ports and controls, two threaded mounts for landscape or portrait mounting, and easy snap-on/snap-off use. It securely holds your iPhone 4 around all four corners to reduce the risk of it slipping out of the mount. It works with any tripod with standard 1/4″ threading. The SnapMountâ„¢ is bulkier but looks more secure and substantial than the comparably-priced glif.

Other features include:

• Works for both AT&T and Verizon iPhone 4
• All iPhone external controls available, including headphone jack, volume up/down buttons, speakers, and 30-pin dock connector; and no portion of the screen is blocked
• Also works as a stand—stands upright on any flat surface without needing a tripod
• iPhone can be charged while mounted
• Recessed areas ensure most external headphone jack attachments will fit while using SnapMountâ„¢
• Small and lightweight—weights only 0.7oz (20 grams)
• Reinforced brass threaded inserts ensure a secure hold to any tripod with standard 1/4 in. threading

The SnapMountâ„¢ Tripod Mount for iPhone 4 runs $18.95 plus tax and shipping. It’s available from the SnapMount website or from Amazon.com.

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Recently, I wrote about The Best Free iPhoneography Apps: Camera Replacements. Now that you’ve shot your image, how are you going to process it? Here are nine great image editing apps and best of all, their price is free!

I realize that this list is not complete. There were several apps that I didn’t include for various reasons. In compiling this list, I found some apps that duplicated features of others. In those cases, I chose what I felt to be the app that did the job quickest, easiest and best. Also, there are great free apps being released all the time.

Some of these apps may be ad-supported, but none of them add a watermark to your images and all save at or really close to your iPhone’s full resolution, unlike many lite photo apps available. These are all full-featured apps and they produce good, if not outstanding effects. Again, for little more than bandwidth and real estate on your iPhone’s screen, there are some gems to be found in the photography section of the App Store. These apps should start you off with a well-rounded iPhoneography toolbox or enhance your existing iPhone “camera bag” — and all for free.

Free Image Processing Apps

Color Leap (formerly Zipix Lite)
Color Leap by Zipix is a quick, easy all-around image enhancer. In addition to exposure enhancement (simulated flash), Color Leap now also features image sharpening and noise reduction — reducing the grainy artifacts that you typically get in dark areas of iPhone photographs.

The app has a bare-bones camera and you can load any image from your iPhone’s Camera Roll. Settings aren’t adjustable, but Color Leap does a good job of fixing dark areas of an image, often times doing a better job than many commercial apps. It also does a good job of tweaking the contrast of a decently exposed image, compensating for the overall gray cast in some iPhone images. The sharpening is subtle, which is good as it’s very easy to over-sharpen in an iPhone app. The noise reduction didn’t eliminate, but it certainly reduced artifacts in my test image without blurring details into unrecognizability.

I often recommend Color Leap to friends who may be a little hesitant about spending money on an exposure enhancer. Definitely worth a download.

App Store link: Color Leap

Flash For Free
A single purpose app, but it accomplishes that purpose very well. Flash for Free is an exposure enhancement app from Free the Apps who produce several other free and commercial photo apps for iPhone. It’s easy to use. You can only open images from your camera roll. You then choose the best image from a nine thumbnail preview screen. I particularly like the multiple thumbnails showing you the various intensities of the effect. It’s a unique feature not found in any paid apps I’ve tried so far. The exposure correction is good with good brightness and color saturation — on par with many of the mid-level commercial apps. It doesn’t leave your photos looking flat and washed out.

Combined, Flash For Free and Color Leap are good, free apps that should cover many of your exposure tweaks.

App Store link: Flash For Free

Format126
I recently wrote a full review of this Format126 both here and at iPhoneography.com.

Format126 by Chris Comair and Glyn Evans is one of the jewels of free iPhone photography apps. It makes your images look like they were shot with a number of retro cameras and films from the 1960′s and 70′s. All eight filters are well-rendered and very usable. They span the gamut of color effects from a stark monochrome (MonoHi) to the oversaturated look of the LOFI filter. The PolaColor filter produces results that are different than the look of the Polarize app — the images are a little more washed out with different vignetting. The three monochrome filters produce good results that look like a superfast film.

Format126 is a great concept and a worthy edition to your toolbox of Retro Camera apps. The filters are well-rendered, nicely done and the app is easy to use. It’s a fun and, especially for free, an essential app.

App Store link: Format126

Mill Colour
Mill Colour by The Mill is a color grading app that gives you unprecedented control over your image. Rather than taking a broad slider-based approach to image adjustment, Mill Colour uses a dial-based approach allowing you to make extremely precise color control in editing the lift, gamma, gain and saturation of an image, with a level of precision and subtlety unavailable in any other image editing app.

Mill Colour also features 10 preset “looks” to quickly and easily apply effects like adding warmth to the image using the Golden filter, some great retro bleached effects and a really nice monochrome Noir filter.

There’s an excellent help page in the app to guide you through what everything does. Mill Colour supports iPhone 3GS resolutions. It’s one of the best image editing apps for iPhone period.

App Store link: Mill Colour

MonoPhix Lite
The little sibling to MonoPhix, MonoPhix Lite by Phoenxsoftware is a color-to-monochrome (black & white) conversion utility. It gives you much greater control over the contrast of your image than simply converting to black & white. The single slider control adjusts the contrast all the way from a smooth grayscale to a very high contrasty black & white. The Lite version doesn’t have the separate highlight and shadow adjustments and the sepia and antique filter that the commercial MonoPhix has. Having greater control over your black & white conversions is nice and the investment to upgrade is worth it, but MonoPhix Lite works very well in most situations.

MonoPhix Lite creates excellent monochrome conversions — better than most commercial apps. It’s quick, easy and creates impressive black & white images.

App Store link: MonoPhix Lite

PhotoSharpFree
From the developers of the mighty mighty PhotoForge, PhotoSharpFree by GhostBird Software is the sharpening component of their flagship image editor. PhotoSharpFree enhances the details of objects in your photo by applying an unsharp mask filter — something Photoshop users will recognize.

Tip: Don’t go crazy with the sharpening! Use it sparingly for best results. Cranking the sharpening won’t improve details that aren’t there — it’ll just make your images look ugly. Photoshop 101.

Once you figure out the menu bar on the bottom of the screen, the app behaves pretty much how you’d expect. PSF features a nice Undo/Redo for easy comparison. Another nice touch is that the app retains any undos when you quit as long as you don’t close the image.

The app also has Hue, Saturation and Brightness adjustments. PhotoSharpFree supports up to 1200 x 1600 resolutions — iPhone 2G and 3G. If you don’t already have an image editor like Photogene, PhotoForge or Perfect Photo, no other free app offers this combination of filters and this level of control.

App Store link: PhotoSharpFree

Photoshop.com Mobile
Click here to check out my full review of the app.

With the names Adobe and Photoshop in the title, you would expect an image editing juggernaut — the mack-daddy of image editing apps for iPhone. It’s a good app, but it’s not editing powerhouse you expect. Photoshop.com Mobile by Adobe Systems is fast and stable. It’s got a pretty lean feature set and some good filters. There are basics like crop, rotate and flip — PS Mobile performs these tasks quickly and easily. There are basic adjustments for exposure, saturation and tint. The Vibrant filter does very nice tweaking contrast and pumping up saturation. I use the border filter often to create a classic, plain white edge around an image. Missing are some of the Photoshop basics that are found in other iPhone image editors — features such as sharpen and overall blur. Within the app, you can upload and share our images to Photoshop.com.

Photoshop.com Mobile is not the only image editor you’ll need, but it’s a nice addition to your toolbox. If you overlook that it has the Photoshop name, you’ll like it a lot more.

App Store link: Photoshop.com Mobile

Polarize
Another great app from Chris Comair, Polarize is a fun app that makes your images look like they were shot with an old, retro Polaroid SX-70 camera. You can use the app as a camera or load images from your camera roll. The effects are great. The app punches up the color saturation and adds a subtle vignette around the frame, eally doing an excellent job of recreating an old instant photograph. You can also add a caption to the bottom of the image in a handwritten font — a nice touch not found in any other Polaroid app.

App Store link: Polarize

Tripod
I’ve found the iPhone is more likely to produce blurry images because of movement when I shoot in lower light situations. Tripod is the anti-shake component split out from CodeGoo‘s excellent commercial app Camera Genius. It’s pretty basic. You press the shutter release and Tripod waits until camera movement is below a threshold before firing the shutter. The less camera movement, the sharper your pictures. There are other apps with anti-shake, but I prefer CodeGoo’s settings. It just feels right and it’s helped me to get sharper low-light pictures.

App Store Link: Tripod

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Got a favorite free photography that I’ve missed here? Tell us about it below in Comments!