The iPhone 4 and 4S sport some of the best phone cameras on the market. While these cameras take stunning pictures, you may want to take them further by applying filters, clarity and other customization options. To do this, you will need to choose from a wide variety of photo apps for iOS. While there are tons of available options, a lot of them really suck. To make matters even worse, a lot of the less-than-stellar camera apps cost money, so you may end up out of a few bucks and left with a “meh” application.
To prevent you from wasting your money, I’ve crafted a list of my top four favorite iOS camera apps. I have extensivly tested these applications and can assure you that they’re worth their asking price!
Table of Contents
1. Instagram – Free
Love it or hate it, Instagram is pretty amazing. With its extensive lineup of filters, frames and tilt-shift functionality, these features not only add a “hipster”/vintage style, they add a bit of personality. You can also use other apps such as Instaframe to customize your Instagram photos even further.
Instagram also features a rich social experience by not only integrating with popular social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, but also by adding their own mini social network. You can use Instagram’s network to share photos with your followers, rate your favorite photos and view user profiles. You can even send postcards of your Instagram photos!
2. Camera+ – $0.99
While Camera+ was removed from the App Store in 2010, it’s back and in full force for only $0.99. Camera+ features an extensive lineup of clarity filters that allow you to get the most from your photos. Camera+ has a ton of funky filters like “Polarize” and “Faded”. If vintage is more your thing, you can download their Analog Pack for only an additional $0.99.
If you want to make more simple edits, like cropping a photo, you can do that with Camera+. And for those times when you forget to turn off your “troll rotation lock”, just flip the image in the “Adjust” menu.
As for social networking, Camera+ lets you easily tweet and share your pictures from the application. Images can either be uploaded to Camera+’s servers or sent to Flickr.
3. FX Photo Studio – $0.99
If you’re filter high, FX Photo Studio is the photo app for you. With 194 filters, you have a ton of choice as to the effect you would like your photo to have. You can also make simple edits to your photos such as cropping, rotating and adjusting the brightness and hue. FX Photo Studio also features a cool customization mode called Color Splash. When enabled, your photo will turn grayscale and you will have the option to color in portions of the photo, causing a cool effect.
FX Photo Studio lets you share your edited images with tons of social networks such as Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. If you’d like to save the photos locally, you can save them to your documents, clipboard or Camera Roll.
4. Hipster – Free
Hipster is an interesting photo app. When you take a photo with Hipster and apply an image you can then export it as a “postcard”. This “card” will then be shared across your social networks as well as the Hipster network where people can comment, rate and follow your photos. You can add the Foursquare location where the photo was shot to the postcard’s caption. If you’d rather not share your location, you can choose your own custom caption. To me, Hipster is a great alternative to Instagram if you’re still angry about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram.
We Want Your Thoughts!
Now that you’ve heard my top camera apps for iOS, what’re yours? Please tell us in the comments below this post.
