As many of you know I love photography and run my own little personal photoblog over at (www.flixelpix.com). Although I can’t ever envisage the day phone cameras will replace the SLR they are getting considerably better for quick, creative photography.
Firstly there is Hipstamatic and Swankolab for capturing and processing classic style photos on your iPhone, then if you want to be a little more professional about your editing then Tiffen’s Photo FX Ultra is worth a look.
iPhone photography is becoming an art form in its own right with various flickr groups and competitions. Our 69 stunning photos taking with the hipstamatic app remains a firm search favourite.
Since purchasing the iPhone 4 I have been playing with the cheapest and feature rich iPhone camera application I have come across.
Camera+ offers the ability to capture, edit and share photos on the move, it is everything the iPhone camera should have been. At the time of writing the developers have submitted an updated version of the application for iPhone 4 users so expect this little application to get even better in the next few days.
Capturing
Camera+ considers every aspect of mobile photography workflow. A handy grid when taking a photo not only ensures your photographs are straight but also allows you to follow the rule of thirds quickly when on the move.
Camera+ also offers a handy image stabilisation function to ensure each photo is as sharp as possible which is particularly handy at music gigs ! The grid is great and I would highly recommend using it as much as you can.
One slight negative is the editing function allows cropping but I can’t seem to be able to rotate the crop to straighten aspects in post production. Perhaps will we see this feature in a future update.
Post Production
This is where things become fun. Say goodbye to snapping and sharing rough unprocessed images on Facebook or Twitter. Camera+ features a comprehensive range of editing and enhancing features.
Each photography session is displayed in a lightbox type arrangement, click on your photo to see a range of editing and sharing features.
The first step in your mobile photography workflow is to crop your work appropriately. If you didn’t line up your shot perfectly when you took it, you can easily fix that with Camera+.
With a single tap, you can make your pics square, 4×6, 8×10, etc. As I mentioned earlier it would be great if there was a straighten or rotate option.
It is clear a photographer has been in the driving seat in designing this application. Lisa Bettany who you may know from http://mostlylisa.com/ has designed a range of stunningly effects.
With a single tap, you can transform a photo from a drab iPhone snap to an emotionally laden masterpiece. There are dozens of 1-touch effects for you to experiment with so that you can get the perfect results every time.
With Camera+, you can also easily add 1-Touch boarders with several great border designs so that you can put the finishing touch on your photos before sharing them with friends.
Sharing
If you enjoy sharing photos then you are going to love this application. With Camera+ you can share your photos with friends on a range of social networking sites : Facebook, Twitter, Email and Flickr are all included.
The process of sharing is quick and easy and accounts can be set up in the application settings.
Everything works perfectly the only aspect worth mentioning is that Twitter sharing doesn’t use the traditional services such as TwitPic but a nicely presented Camera+ sharing area, you can view a sample of one of my shares here.
Samples:
I have posted a few sample photos to both Flickr and Twitter (see here). The sharing feature is worth buying the application alone. The fact I can also add photos to flickr sets means I can keep mobile uploads together for easy management.
Conclusion
I am using Camera+ on a daily basis, the capturing, editing and sharing features are stunning and application is genuinely fun to use. The only two criticisms I can come up with are that the sound effects can become annoying but can easily be switched off and some of the processed images can be a little noisy in places. Although these might read a negative they are not enough of a reason to give Camera+ the TotalApps 5 rating.
With future improvements promised I can’t see me straying from Camera+ for quite sometime to come. At only 59p (introductory offer) it is definitely an essential partner for your iPhone camera!
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