Top 10 iPhone apps for photographers

The camera on the iPhone gets a lot of stick, and it’s true that it was only with the release of the latest iPhone 3GS that the hardware got good enough to even begin to be thought of seriously, but that hasn’t stopped developers creating programs – all available through the App Store on your iPhone or through iTunes – that add fun, flair, features and other photographic fripperies to your phone. Here are the 10 best photography apps for iPhone, and if we've missed off your favourite iPhone app for photography be sure to add a comment below.

CameraBag £1.19

The App Store is stuffed with applications that apply various effects to your photos, but CameraBag is one of our favourites. It comes with 11 different filters that give the photos you shoot on your iPhone – or load from your PC – distinctive retro looks.

The Lomo-like ‘Lolo’ filter that kicks up saturation and contrast, and the Holga-like ‘Helga’ filter that washes out highlights and applies hefty vignetting are the stars, but the Polaroid effect, high-contrast mono of the 1962 filter, and faded chic of the 1974 filter are also charming. It’s a shame that it won’t save full-resolution shots though.


Buy CameraBag here: iTunes Store

DSLR Camera Remote
Professional Edition £11.99

By far the most expensive app here – there is a much simpler cut down edition also available, for a tenth of the price – DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition is nevertheless both impressive and, for a few, genuinely invaluable.

Connect a compatible Canon or Nikon DSLR to a PC or Mac on the same WiFi network as your iPhone, run a little server app on it, and you can use your iPhone or iPod touch to control it. As well as firing the shutter, this pro edition lets you adjust the shutter speed, aperture, bracketing and more, and on cameras with live view, you can see what the camera sees before you shoot.

Buy DSLR Camera Remote here: iTunes Store

Flickr £FREE

Despite strong competition, Flickr remains one of the most important and visible photo sharing sites on the web, used by amateurs and pros alike. This free official app lets you browse your photos – by tag and set, if you like – and those of your contacts. You can search too, and it’s a well-designed and slick app.

Perhaps best of all, though, it makes it easy to upload shots you’ve taken on your iPhone directly to your Flickr account. You can name, comment on and tag your photos, and choose whether or not the location information, captured automatically when you snap a photos with your GPS-equipped iPhone, is embedded as well.

Download Flickr now: iTunes Store

Gorillacam £FREE

Joby, makers of the fine range of bendy-legged Gorillapod camera tripods, also now makes a £35 model for the iPhone. It’s very good, but what’s even better is that Joby partnered with AppTight to create this fantastic do-anything free app. You can pay for a handful of single-function apps to enable, say, an intervalometer, a self-timer, a tap-anywhere shutter or a spirit level on your iPhone, or you could just download this one that does them all and more.

It’s not particularly pretty, it’s true, but it’s terrifically versatile, and free; you’ll never launch the Camera app again!

Download Gorillacam now: iTunes Store

OldBooth Premium £0.59

Every other app in this list is included because it’s a good creative tool that helps you get more from your photography, either on the iPhone or another camera. This one, though, is sheer silliness, and we makes no apology for that.

The basic idea is that you take photos of friends (enemies?) and family then paste their faces into yearbook-style headshots. It sounds corny – and boy, it is – but two things save it. Not only can the effects be pretty convincing – the scale, rotate and brightness controls are useful and intuitive – but the app is built with such care that it’s impossible not to love it

Buy OldBooth Premium now: iTunes Store

PhotoCalc £1.79

PhotoCalc could hardly be a greater contrast to OldBooth. It’s a tool for proper photographers, combining a bunch of reference guides – explaining the ‘sunny 16’ rule, filters and more, plus a glossary of terms – and some handy photo-friendly calculators. Punch in your camera model and the focal length and aperture of a lens you’re using, for example, and it will tell you the limits of its focussing, including its hyperfocal distance. There’s a similar calculator for flash exposures, and a useful sunrise/sunset module that tells you when the golden hour is at your current or any other location.

Buy PhotoCalc now: iTunes Store

Photo fx £1.79

While Photogene, next on the list, is a good manual photo editor, we’ve also included Photo fx because it’s a good tool for giving your photos a bit of polish without knowing your levels from your curves.

Though there is some manual control, it’s more about simply tapping on a filter preview to apply it. These aren’t – with a few exceptions – about creating special effects like CameraBag does, but about applying subtle pro-style boosts to shots. As well as a bunch of film effects, you can warm shots as if a sunfire reflector had been used, add some skin-softening soft focus and much, much more; the basic app has 32 filters.

Buy Photo fx now: iTunes Store

Photogene £1.79

Though Adobe does make a simple version of Photoshop.com available for the iPhone – and it is free, so you don’t lose anything by trying it out – we much prefer Photogene.

Like Photoshop.com, it lets you crop and rotate your shots, and though it lacks the former’s effects filters, it’s a much more comfortable environment for those used to editing shots in Photoshop proper. There are sliders for sharpness, exposure, saturation and RGB channels, and, crucially, proper levels controls. Given that most shots taken on the iPhone could use a bit of black clipping, this is welcome indeed.

Buy Photogene now: iTunes Store

QuadCamera £1.19

This, we love, and not just because it reminds us of the classic multi-lensed Lomography Oktomat. It makes a virtue out of the iPhone’s less-then-impressive camera, shooting a number of shots in sequence – you can adjust the timing – and splicing them together in a 2x2, 4x1, 4x2 or 8x1 grid. You can have it apply a vignette too, and a few checkboxes to add different colour effects – high contrast, vivid, bright, dull and more – help you create lovely, ephemeral photographic artefacts. We’re not sure why, but these snapshots seem to capture time better than an actual video.

Buy QuadCamera now: iTunes Store

TiltShift Generator £0.59

Tilt-shift lenses for SLRs are expensive beasts, but happily, this app lets you get most of the fun for a fraction of the cost. You can use tilt-shift either simply to blur a foreground and background to put the focus more obviously on your subject, or to create a special effect which makes photos, especially those taken from a height, look like miniature models.

Best of all, this app has exposure and saturation controls; the most convincing tilt-shift fakes boost colours to heighten the effect that you’re looking at a model, not a photo of a full-sized cityscape.

Buy TiltShift Generator now: iTunes Store

Top 10 iPhone apps compiled by Chris Phin, Deputy Editor of MacFormat magazine