Nokia has long been known for releasing phones with great cameras and fantastic software to go along with them. The Nokia Lumia line is no exception. Owners of the Nokia Lumia 900 know that the 8-megapixel shooter with Carl Zeiss lens captures amazing photos.

A few weeks ago, Nokia released Creative Studio, a photo application that allows Lumia owners to take their photos to the next level. This walkthrough will help illustrate the app and show you how it can enhance your photo taking experience on the Lumia line.

Installing and getting started

First of all, Creative Studio is only available on Nokia Lumia phones, so if you have a Nokia Lumia 900, Lumia 800, or Lumia 710, load up Marketplace and look in the Nokia Collection, you’ll find the app there.

Once installed, Creative Studio will let you take, edit and share photos using really fun editing tools and effects. Also, there’s a panorama feature to explore as well.

To begin, Creative Studio comes with Live Style options, which apply filters to your photos in a real-time fashion. Your Live Style options include:

▪    Sketch: Makes an effect that looks hand drawn

▪    Night vision: as if you’re looking through night vision goggles

▪    Color: adds a hyper color affect

▪    Dreamy: a fun fuzzy live filter

▪    Cartoon: sort of like sketch, but in color and with more detail

▪    Silkscreen: adds a silhouette look to the image.

 

Also, in the live photo alteration arena, Creative Studio allows you to do face warps, including:

▪    Megamouth: amplifying your mouth

▪    Pinocchio: makes your nose look big

▪    Super chin: places emphasis on your chin

▪    Dweeb: stretches your face vertically

▪    Alien: makes your forehead look weird

▪    Twister: adds a typhoon effect to the center

Again, these are for fun instant photos, and the Lumia 900 would be amazing with these effects as you can see them live with the front facing camera.

Touching up photos after they are taken

If you want to touch up a photo after you’ve captured it, please take a look at these filters you can apply:

▪    Freaky

▪    Dreamy

▪    Back to ’76

▪    Summer evening

▪    Flawless skin

▪    Auto enhance

▪    Silkscreen

▪    Watercolor

▪    Cartoon

▪    Sketch

▪    Watercolor

 

If you want to make adjustments to your photo without adding filters, you can do this with Creative Studio. Options to adjust include cropping, rotate, contrast, sharpness, color, exposure and color boost.

With these options, we’re looking to go beyond the facilities brought to Windows Phone customers and offer Lumia owners an added toolset with their photos. This way you can make your photos your own!

Going wide with panorama

Just in case you’re at a location that you want to capture a panorama shot, Creative Studio has you covered. For me, I love taking panoramas as sometimes these shots are the only way to capture an image how you’re seeing it in real life.

With Creative Studio, choose Panorama from the main screen and the app will guide you through the process of taking four photos and stitching them together into one. The app will help you through the sequence and ensure that you place the camera in the correct spot for a nearly flawless stitch. I found the functionality to be amazing – especially considering how other panorama apps behave.

A mobile photographers’ dream

Creative Studio is meant to provide Lumia owners with a tool set to unlock the  capabilities of their Nokia’s camera. With fun filters and sharing options, the app is fun to use and functional as well.

Have you had a chance to check out Creative Studio?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below?

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