Smartphones have become an essential tool for photographers – they come in handy in every aspect from shooting to editing to marketing. So here are a few of the best apps out there for a photographer’s back pocket.
Instagram has come a long was since its rudimentary beginnings, where users took a photo, stuck a filter on it and shared it with their mates. Now, it’s an industry giant with over 500 million monthly users.
It offers a range of filters and editing tools, which are quite advanced like sharpening, tinting and perspective correcting, as well as offering a wide range of filters.
However the real USP of Instagram is the community. With so many users, there’s an audience for any type of image and it can offer a platform for photographers to connect with others and get their work seen by a large number of people.
The app sits alongside a family of add-ons that can enhance your experience and boost how creatively you can use it.
Price: Free
Camera+
This app helps you to maximise your phone camera’s capabilities by providing a DSLR-like interface. It allows you to set your shutter speed, ISO, aperture and white balance in order to get pro shots with your phone. It also offers a timed shutter, burst mode and manual focus, giving you far more scope to control every aspect of your image.
As well as different shooting options, you can also use a variety of post-production features. It boasts a number of filters as well as specific editing controls such as colour correction, exposure and sharpness.
Price: $1.99 iPhone/ $4.99 iPad
Photopills
PhotoPills should be an app on every landscape-loving photographers phone – it’s an invaluable tool when it comes to landscape photography.
It can tell you timings for key time periods such as sunrise/set, twilight, golden hour, blue hour, moon rise/set at a particular location. It also boasts augmented reality feature and 2D maps to show you where the sun, moon and milky way lie at your location in order for you to more accurately plan your shot and visualise what it will look like.
Not only does it help you to scout locations and plan your shots around the sun, moon and stars, but it also has capabilities to help you to calculate exposure, minimum subject distances, and give you the length of time needed for the star trails you want.
This app isn’t the cheapest, but it’s an investment that’s well worth making for amateurs and pros alike.
Price: £9.99
Cortex Camera
For low-light conditions, Cortex Camera is your man. It vastly reduces the amount of digital noise created by high ISO values and it reduces any shake caused by longer shutter speeds. It takes multiple shots then blends them together to create one sharp image with very little noise. A nifty tool for keen smartphone photographers heading out after hours.
Price: $2.99 on App store
VSCO
VSCO boasts an incredible range of filters and editing effects that can help you to enhance your shots. Although the app is free, you can purchase more presets as in app purchases. As well as a huge collection of filters, you can perform more intricate editing such as adjusting skin tones, adding vignettes, and altering the highlights and shadows. You can either shoot in app or import from your phones camera.
It also allows easy sharing to social networks such as Instagram and Facebook, as well as offering its own creative community.
Price: Free with in app purchases
Facetune
This is a great app for enhancing portraits on your phone, offering capabilities such as teeth whitening, blemish removing and skin smoothing. You can also adjust facial features by making eyes larger, noses smaller. It boasts a powerful augmented reality system that enables you to see these edits in live time.
As well as making adjustments to the physical features in the shot, it allows you to add realistic lighting effects and add filters to your images.
Price: £3.99