While I’m tied up trying to put the finishing touches on my upcoming presentation at Macworld this week. I thought I’d throw an easy topic for discussion out there and see what kind of replies we get from the community.
What are some of your favorite photo apps that you’re currently using? These don’t necessarily have to be the biggies — Instagram, Camera+, etc. — but your favorite day-in-day-out go-to photo apps. I’ll get things started off after the jump. From there, please discuss your faves in the comments of this post. >>>
I’ve been spending a lot of time going over the history of iPhoneography recently. One of the trends I saw is how sharing the iPhoneography community seems to be with its resources, techniques and recipes. Websites like Tina Rice’s Combo Apps blog and Nicki Fitz-Gerald’s iPhoneography Central were created for sharing iPhoneography apps and techniques.
My toolbox is up on display in My Camera Bag, which is desperately in need of an update. My photo app tastes lean towards apps that recreate the very style that digital photography has replaced — the look of film. I like a subtley apped image that looks like a photo. In no particular order are a few of my go-to apps that I’m currently using:
Hipstamatic
Yeah, I still love Hipstamatic. Since the rise of Instagram, it seems that Hipstamatic has become overlooked in iPhoneographic circles for a number of reasons. Hipstamatic is still a wonderful app and there’s nothing like it in the App Store. It’s the most expensive $1.99 app I own and worth every penny. The quality of its filters is unsurpassed. Colors, textures, tones and now variable faux depth of field — it’s filters are lush, rich and colorful. One of the things I love about hipstamatic is using the lens and film combinations. Each has their own look and a knowledge of the characteristics of each lens and filter helps get better results from the app. It’s like shooting with an old film camera where you have your favorite, well… film, lens and body combinations. Only cheaper and digital.
ClassicPAN
This was misskiwi’s first photo app and still one of my favorites. It’s a single-frame pano app with the great set of original misskiwi “films,” still among the best analog film recreations of any photo app. The framing creates dramatic cinematic shots. It’s also the only photo app available with a simulated LOMO SprocketRocket filter. Sure, you can shoot, filter, crop, and vignette. ClassicPAN gets it all done in camera and saves your original image to boot.
Simply B&W and Noir Photo
The two black & white apps I use most. Simply B&W is an amazingly simple app to convert images to great looking black & white photos. It’s the first to use colored filters to enhance the conversion. That’s similar to using colored filters to enhance the image when shooting analog black & white film.
I use Noir Photo when I want a little more drama in my black & white conversions. Noir Photo adds more contrast, accentuates more highlights and with its great looking vignette tool, really lets me focus light where I want on the image. Using this app reminds me a lot of some of the old cinematic techniques of the silent film epics that used lighting and vignette to alter the look of a subject.
LensFlare and LensLight
The best lens flare, bokeh and chromatic aberrations available on iPhone. Nothing else comes close.
LensFlare ( )
LensLight ( )
Other apps I use often are:
Hueless (). I get the urge to shoot in black & white, rather than convert later. Hueless has the best tools and interface of any black & white camera in the App Store. It’s fast and gives me the tools to create great black & white images in camera.
Squaready Pro ( ) for quickly cropping and prepping square images for Instagram. I used the free version so often, I dropped the buck (it’s now two) for the ad-free version.
AnalogColor ( ), a great little app for quickly adding retro film looks and leaks to an image.
PhotoForge2 ( ). I’ve been turning to this one more recently. No particular reason other than it’s a powerful, stable, full-featured photo editor that has everything I need.
Okay, your turn. What are some of your go-to photo apps? Let us know in the comments below.
=M=
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