These guys and gals really are some of the most clued up on the interwebs, so if they recommend something you know it’s worth a look. With this in mind, we’ve scoured their discussion threads for their recommended apps on a subject we all love, smartphone photography.
ProShot
With an app like ProShot, you can kiss your DSLR goodbye: this little beauty is a shutterbug’s delight. It gives you super control over all the settings you’ll need to take shots like a pro—white-balance, ISO, exposure compensation, flash, focus, grid-displays—and its custom mode lets you save your favourite setup for easy access.
PhotoBeamer
PhotoBeamer is one of the more space-age creations in our portfolio: a slideshow app that lets you display your photos on any web-enabled device. You load the PhotoBeamer website on the second device and it’ll display a QR code; then you scan that code with your phone and the two devices link up. Massively handy for sharing all those holiday pics with mum and dad!
Photosynth
This is the panorama app you’ve been waiting for. It pops up as a lens within your camera app; you tap the screen to select your first frame, move your phone up, down or around, and tap again to end. Then bingo, the app will stitch all the shots together into one seamless panorama. The best bit, though, for travel photographers, is you can geo-tag the results and upload them as interactive images to Bing maps.
Fhotoroom
Fhotoroom is an impressively comprehensive image editing package, just in case you haven’t quite nailed the shot with ProShot. It’s got all the usual tools you’d expect from a desktop programme, allowing you to adjust saturation, exposure, red-eye, light leakage and more. You can also frame and style your pics with various Instagram-like effects. A lot of bang for your buck with this one!
Blink
This is pretty basic, very easy, and very sweet: Blink takes a lot of photos, really fast, so you don’t need to ever worry about missing that crucial shot. It even records frames before and after you hit the shutter release. Magic, right? Just select the best of the bunch afterwards. Perfect for those with wriggly toddlers…
Phototastic
Phototastic lets you add effects to your photos (colours, vignettes, brightness, vintage appearances, etc), but, most importantly, it also lets you create collages of your pics. There’s a bunch of handy templates to help you arrange your shots, and, afterwards, you can upload the results to your social media accounts. Perfect for showcasing those unforgettable occasions!
Fantasia painter free
Another photo-editing app, but Fantasia Painter one’s designed for budding artists. It’s got all the filters, colours, shapes and text tools you could ask for, and the range of brushes and fonts is great. The free version is just as good as the paid one, as long as you don’t mind ads. We don’t!
CameraPro
Like ProShot, this is another ace photo-taking app, and we think it’s a toss-up which is better… ProShot is a little more user-friendly, while CameraPro has a couple of added features, but they’re both all-round brilliant. We especially thought the self-timer and time-lapse options were great value for money.
Creative Studio
An exclusive for Nokia Lumia users, Creative Studio is a photo-editing app that lets you do the usual in-phone fixing and trimming. A nice feature here is that the app keep the pics at their original resolution, so there’s no sneaky compression going on behind the scenes. You can access it from the Lumia’s native camera app (hit ‘edit’), and it’ll always retain your original image as well as the jazzed-up version. Quick and easy (you don’t need a degree in Photoshop to operate it), and, most important, free.
Lomogram
Thanks to more than 40 filters, Lomogram can make any photo look fantastic. With a ton of effects, light effects and borders, you can make an infinite range of original looks. Add to that auto-vignetting and brightness, contrast saturation, exposure adjustments and easy to share features, and you’ve got one of the best Windows Phones photo apps out there.
Ten cracking photos apps that will give you plenty to play around with. But are there any others you think warrant a mention? Earn some comment karma, by sharing your thoughts down below.