Photo taking and sharing is more popular than ever thanks to smartphones going mainstream, with 2011 promising even more growth. Many developers have already cranked out flashy photo apps that allow you to share, enhance, edit, and apply effects to make even an amateur look like a seasoned photog.
On New Years you’re bound to be snapping pics all day and night, from Boston’s famous fireworks and ice sculptures to the bars, cruises and balls. Here’s our top picks for 5 iPhone photo apps to have on hand to get you through the night and into the next day:
For a fun twist on an otherwise standard night of pics:
For $0.99 this app brings classic photo booth fun right into your pocket, allowing you to catch your friends in the moment wherever you go.
Pocketbooth settings allow you to choose from 4 photo effects (color, B&W, antique or sepia), 2 paper stocks (glossy or matte), 2 border colors (black or white), and even change the time between shops and number of photos in the strip. After you’ve taken the strip, you can save it to your camera roll or share it to Facebook, Twitter or over email.
This app on sale for $0.99 will help capture your night as if it were a cartoon. The app applies cartoon effects through your camera lens to create images that look like they’re from a comic book. You can do the same with video clips, literally capturing your night as if it were a live cartoon show (that promises to be fun to watch the next morning no matter your age).
Customize how you want your toon to appear by selecting a weight from paintbrush, pencil or pixel marker. When you’re finished, you can share the videos or pictures to Facebook, Twitter or over email.
If sharing is top of mind:
Instagram is a must, and is completely free. This app lets you snap photos, apply filters (like “Gotham” and “1977”), tag a location, add a caption, and then share to your social networks (Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter, and even Foursquare) and followers.
Why Instagram over other apps that allow you to share the photos you snap? Because a core element is following other peoples feed of photos. And since the app is becoming hugely popular, this means you’re most likely to have other friends using it who you can follow, too.
For when you have time to edit the next day:
This app will turn your casually snapped photos into masterpieces, and it’s on sale right now for $0.99. The app allows you to crop, rotate, and change the gamma light of your photos. But the real fun is in this app’s offerings of over 181 stunning filter effects you can apply to your photos — from “Leather Canvas” and “Stencil Graffiti” to “X-ray.”
181 not enough? The app even offers you control to adjust and customize to what extent/amount those effects are applied. After you’re done brushing up your photos, FX Photo Studio makes it easy to share them to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and over email.
This free, ad-supported app allows you to selectively color photos you snap. Want those eyes behind the 2011 glasses to pop? Or how about have just your friends in color and not the five creeps in the pic behind you? All you have to do is choose a photo (which converts to black and white), the size of your brush, and use your finger to color areas of the photo. Once you’re finished, save the picture to your phone.
The app works great on up close photos on the iPhone, but I wish it included the ability to zoom in on the photo when coloring (it’s much easier on the iPad).
What are your favorite photo apps? Share them in the comments!
