With the arrival of the iPhone 3GS, and my jealousy of the improved camera & processing power, I have taken a day or so to try out several new photography apps on my iPhone 3G – I have come to the conclusion that I can’t afford to get one until my current contract is eligible for upgrading in December, so I may as well make the best of what I’ve got! So here is a review of the new apps I’ve tried, along with some stalwart favourites I already use regularly.
I will be reviewing 7 apps – and they are all apps that I would recommend to anyone who takes a lot of photos with their iPhone, as I do. The apps I am reviewing are: AutoStitch, Photogene, NightCamera, Mobile Fotos, Flickit, ShakeItPhoto, and HP iPrint.
I already have a fairly good point and click camera – the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77 which was a wedding present to James & myself. However, I don’t always have this with me, and if I do it is no doubt sitting at the bottom of my bag. More often than not, I will find myself pulling out my iPhone from my pocket to take the quick snaps of everyday life – the blink & you’ll miss it ‘kodak moments’. As a result, about half of my photos are probably taken with my iPhone.
Warning! This post is very image heavy.
AutoStitch - £1.19
AutoStitch is a photo-stitching app, which stitches several photos together to create one large panoramic image. I found it very good – it is very good at recognising the features in photos to stitch them together in the right order. It worked fairly quickly, considering the task – and despite me throwing a lot of photos at it with some of my tests, AutoStitch never crashed on me. It is very simple to use and does a great job!
For this kind of app, it’s really better to let the photos speak for themselves…
Selecting photos to stitch:
Original photos & panorama:
(download zipfile of all images)
Panorama after cropping in Photogene:
Edit: Auto Stitch now includes a cropping tool built in. Yay!
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickr pool
Photogene - £1.79
Photogene is a very well rounded photo editing app, which runs well on my iPhone 3G. It has a wide range of editing tools, including: crop, rotate, filters, borders, etc. You can even adjust the sharpness, contrast, colour levels & exposure. This is a great app for the moments when you take a photo but need to adjust it slightly before uploading – Photogene saves you the hassle of getting the photo off your iPhone to make changes before uploading it.. no computer required! The filters/changes I applied to the image were applied quickly & the photo saved to the camera roll in good time.
Start page, crop & rotate:
Filters:
Colour adjust – Levels, Exposure, Colours, RGB (not pictured):
Symbols:
Frames:
Starting image & final result:
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickr pool
NightCamera - £0.59
NightCamera is a great app for low light situations where the slightest shake of the hand as you take the photo blurs your photo. It has a built in shake detector using the iPhone’s accelerometer which snaps the photo at the optimum moment, as your hands are still. I’ve actually found this app great for self portraits as you don’t have to press the camera button to snap a pic, you just have to point it at yourself & wait for the camera shutter sound to tell you your photo is done! The latest version of the app also includes a timer option and a fullscreen shutter, which allows you to use your whole screen as a shutter button.
Shake detection:
Photo with regular 3G camera:
Photo with Night Camera:
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Mobile Fotos – £1.79
Mobile Fotos is a well rounded Flickr application. Preferring Flickit (see below) for uploading apps, I tend to use Mobile Fotos primarily to browse Flickr. You can view your photos, your contacts & groups – as well as exploring the ‘Interesting’ and ‘Most Recent’ photos. This app has twitter integration & also allows you to view nearby photos based on your location, which is cool.
Start page, your photos, twitter integration:
Nearby photos:
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickit – Free!
I really don’t know why you wouldn’t want this app if you are both a Flickr & an iPhone user. This app beautifully melds the two things together, with a gorgeously simple interface. It only does one thing – upload photos to Flickr – but it does such a fantastic job it doesn’t need to do anything more than that to be great. You can do all the usual things when you upload the photos; add them to sets, tag them, set the privacy level – even geotag them with your current location. This one is an absolute must for any Flickr member.
Three steps – Add photos, Add details, Upload:
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
ShakeItPhoto - £0.59
ShakeItPhoto is a Polaroid style app for the iPhone, similar to the Poladroid app which is available for Mac & Windows. It basically applies filters to your photo to make it look like an old style Polaroid photo – you can even shake it while it develops! The finished photos are very well done, and much nicer than any of the other similar Polaroid apps I’ve tried/looked at.
My main criticism of the app is that you can’t use photos from your photo library, only direct captures from the camera. Also, it would be nice if there was an option to save the original photo to your camera roll as well as the finished photo. Edit: You can now use photos from your photo library.
Photo developing:
Example photos:
(original size photos: desk, tree, Homily)
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickr pool
HP iPrint – Free!
This app is another simple app that does one job – it allows you to print your photos straight from your iPhone to your HP printer. You select the photo you want from the standard photos interface, and then tap Print. Easy peasy – another app that saves you having to connect your iPhone to your computer to do what you want with it.
Interface:
Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Conclusion
Well, there you are – hope this has been useful. I figured the photos mostly spoke for themselves – they are photo apps after all!
Tags: iphone, recommendations
