6 photo applications for your iPhone

6 photo applications for your iPhone

Apps to help edit and share your pictures while you're on the go

If you're toting an iPhone around in your pocket, chances are you've pulled the phone out more than once to snap a photograph. The camera app that comes preinstalled on your iPhone works for snapping casual shots you want to send as a text message or email to friends, but what if you want to do a little more with your pictures? There are literally hundreds of different photo apps available for the iPhone. Here are our top 6 photo apps for the iPhone.

1. Instagram  is both a photo editing program and a social network of sorts for your photos. The app lets you take photos or load an existing photo out of your photo album, and then apply a filter to the picture to give it a different look. Pictures that you edit can then be shared with friends on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or Tumblr and can also be uploaded to your Instagram profile where other Instagram users can check them out.

 

2. Hipstamatic Rather than add filters to your photos after the fact, Hipstamatic changes how you take those pictures in the first place. The app attempts to replicate “the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras from the past,” by essentially turning your iPhone into one of those cameras. The app has a number of built-in lenses and flash options you can virtually swap out to customize the pictures that you take. The screen on your iPhone looks like the back of a camera when you’re framing your shots, and photos take a few seconds to “develop” rather than show up on your screen immediately.

3. ColorSplash is a Photoshop-esque app that lets you adjust the colors in photos stored on your iPhone. ColorSplash removes the color from your photos and then lets you paint color back in on specific portions of the photo using your finger. For instance you might make a photo of your child playing in the yard back and white, and then go back and make just your child color in the photo. The app has four different “brushes” to choose from, and allows you to zoom in on portions of pictures to accurately highlight details.

4. Photosynth is an app created by Microsoft that allows you to take 360-degree panoramic pictures with your iPhone. The app guides you through taking a number of photographs of a location, and then stitches those photos together to create a panoramic view of the space.

5. Snapbucket is a photo app created by the photo sharing site Photobucket. The app has a number of built-in filters such as 70s, sunrise, and and antique that can be applied to pictures to give them a different look. The app also has several frame and vignette options for you to customize your finished image, and offers a way to instantly share that image on Twitter and Facebook as well as on Photobucket.

iPhone App of the Week: Add cats to any picture with CatPaint

CatPaint adds a feline friend to any photo

 

If there is one thing that dramatically improves the quality of any picture, it's cats. Improvement by cat is the idea behind the app CatPaint, which allows you to add an assortment of feline friends to any photo you have stored on or take with your iPhone. The application also comes with a preloaded space background that you can simply add cats to.

Catastrophic
CatPaint comes with 16 different kitties for you to choose from. You can add as many cats to a particular picture as you would like, or you can simply pick the perfect cat to match the environment you plan on putting it in.

Paws up
Tapping a cat from the tap menu will put it in your picture (complete with a "mew" when it arrives). Once your kitty's inside your photo, you can use the iPhone's pitch/zoom feature to make your cat larger or smaller, drag and drop it to the perfect location, or flip the cat different directions to make sure it gets optimal photo placement. Cats will always be placed upright in a photo, so tilting your iPhone can help you achieve the ultimate cat placement.

When cats attack
In addition to being able to place your cats wherever you'd like, you can also instruct your cats to attack someone or something in your photo using lasers. All cats in CatPaint are equipped with the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes; you, the artist, customize the length and target of the lasers.

Share the fur
CatPaint has built-in sharing functionality, so you can share your cat masterpieces with others. The application has built-in support for Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, allowing you to post photos directly to those sites from the application. Cat photos can also be saved to your iPhone and sent to others via text message and email. If you create a particularly magnificent work of art with the cats, you can also submit your photo to the CatPaint gallery and share it with other cat enthusiasts.

6. CatPaint Every picture shared on the internet could probably use a few more cats in it. CatPaint is an app that lets you add additional felines to any photo. The app comes with a number of built-in cat options. Cats can be adjusted in size and location on the screen, and can shoot lasers out of their eyes for added dramatic effect.