10 Great Photo Apps for iOS and Android
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| Improve the photos you take on your phone with an app such as Camera Zoom Fx, which adds features like image stabilization to Android devices. |
Next time you're asked to say cheese, odds are somebody will be taking your picture with a cellphone.
A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that 82 percent of cellphone owners use their mobile device to take a picture. The younger you are, the more likely you've snapped a pic with your phone — 94 percent of people ages 18 to 29 have done so.
But are you getting the most out of your phone's camera? Instagram is a start, but there's a life beyond — with other great apps that allow you to improve your photos and share them with family and friends. Here are some of the best photo utilities for iOS and Android.
Camera apps
You may have to use the camera built in to your phone, but that doesn't mean you can't improve on the camera app. TapTapTap's $1 Camera+ adds a bushel of features missing from Apple's default camera app, such as image stabilization and a flash for the front-facing camera using the screen as the light source. Androidslide's $1.50 Camera Zoom FX helps improve your photo with burst mode to capture fast action and a time-lapse feature. You can then polish the photos by cropping or using color effects and other post-shoot image enhancements.
Image editors
If you want to do more than crop, auto-enhance and remove redeye on your phone, grab an image-editing app. ShinyCore's $4 PicSay Pro for Android adds effects such as making the photo look like a pencil sketch and adding word balloons. (A free version offers simple effects like distort.) Apple's $5 iPhoto app for iOS goes beyond that by including brushes to lighten or darken areas on an image and effects such as converting a color image to black-and-white, for example.
Photo sharing
Instagram may dominate sharing, but you can find alternatives that may be better in some cases. Facebook Camera for iOS lets you post pictures directly to the most popular social network. Dropbox recently updated its free Android app to allow it to automatically upload photos to your cloud storage, to which you can send a link for people to view. Apple's Shared Photo Stream, built in to iOS 6, does the same through iCloud — just add the email addresses of people you want to see the photos. [See also: Facebook Camera App Focuses on What Matters]
Photo printing
There's still something special about having a printed image in a photo book that you can thumb through. Apps make it easy to send the best of your shots off for development. Walgreens' free app for iOS and Android sends your images to your local pharmacy for quick pickup. If you can wait for the photos to arrive by mail, check out Shutterfly's free iOS app or Snapwood Apps' $3 ShutterFolio for Shutterfly with Android devices.
