Favorite Photo Apps for iPhone or Android
- Author & Photographer: Teri Didjurgis
Please read my disclosure.
Favorite Photo Apps for iPhone or Android
Let’s face it – camera phones these days are amazing taking high quality photos without the sacrifice of carrying 5-10 pounds of gear around.
Admittedly, I shoot almost all my photos now on a DSLR. But there are days, I just can’t lug the DSLR around, I am in an environment where professional cameras are not permitted, or I am just out having fun with family and friends and want to keep it light.
My iPhone X and this group of apps helps me edit photos and remove unwanted items. There are also a few apps which help for DSLR photography as well which are handy to have on your phone.
Editing Apps
I exclusively use Lightroom to edit my DSLR photos and now almost always uses Lightroom CC to also edit any photo on my iPhone. Once you become familiar with the Adobe applications capabilities, both the desktop version and iPhone version become second-hand nature to brighten up a photo, add clarity, saturation, contrast and many other function to make a photo pop!
Many people use the app with presets and it also makes it easy to sync your photos and keep everything organized.
*The desktop version of Lightroom is not free, but the mobile iOS and iPad version of Lightroom is and has MOST of the editing functionality available.
If Lightroom is too complicated, you might try either VSCO cam or SnapSeed. I used these previously before I made the leap to Lightroom.
SnapSeed
Snapseed was the first app I used for editing back in 2014. My main goal was often to remove shadows out of photos taken at non ideal times of day. Snapseed has all the other basic editing tools including tuning, cropping, sharpening and straightening.
One of the best features is the “Selective Adjust” tool that allows you to select an area in a photo and adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation of the selected area. I love brightening an area to draw focus to it.
VSCO Cam
Correction Apps
Touch ReTouch
Touch ReTouch app is designed to deal with unwanted content in your photos. It is equivalent of Photoshop on your phone with an easier interface. With just a touch, you can make an area vanish as it takes replacement pixels from the background.
I use this to remove any sort of bright orange construction cone or obnoxious sign. I have also used it to remove dog poop on the sidewalk, an obnoxious photobomber, and even something on your face… aka that blemish that popped up at an inopportune time. I don’t really like to over edit or alter an image so much that someone else would not recognize the place if they went there. But the orange cones have to go!
PS Express
Photography Tools
Night Sky
The Photographer’s Ephemeris is a new tool and used by landscape, architecture and astrophotographers. The app calculates how the natural light will fall on the land, day or night, for any location on earth.
Really helpful for sunsets & sunrises in natural locations where you are not quite sure how the sun is going to appear during different seasons.
Photo Pills is another new addition to my phone. It has all the tools to get the perfect shot including phases of the moon, milky way, night sky stars, and tools to calculate equivalent exposures with filters, in low light and at night.
This is like a magic calculator and I am still learning all the functions. I like the star trails tool which will tell you how long your trails will be at different settings. The Sun tool is also useful for the Golden Hour and Blue Hour time windows
Photometer
iWatermark
iWatermark will add a professional looking logo, photographers signature or copyright to protect their photos. This app also has QR code functionality to add one to your photo which can be read with a smartphone which is useful to send info about your company including website & contact info.
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