Photo Editing Software and Applications

ProCamera 7 ($0.99) by Cocologics is the brand new iOS 7-only version of the award-winning pro camera app that was introduced years ago. If you’re a serious iPhone photography fan with iOS 7, then this is one of those apps you’ll want to check out for yourself.

ProCamera has been around for quite some time, and it earned many fans because of it’s powerful features, while still remaining pretty user-friendly for even the average photographer. Even though I’ve mostly switched to the native Camera app for now in iOS 7, I still enjoy third-party camera apps for their feature sets, like Camera+ 4, and now ProCamera 7. Photography has always been something I’m interested in for fun, and while I don’t think I’m a pro, it’s still incredibly satisfying, especially with my iPhone, which keeps getting better and better for photography with every iteration.

While the old version of ProCamera had tons of features, I can’t say that I was a big fan of the interface. However, thanks to iOS 7, ProCamera 7 has received a major facelift, making it fit the aesthetics of the OS quite nicely, but without changing too much of what previous users are used to. The interface is flat and uncluttered, but the features remain the same, and it’s very intuitive to navigate your way around. There’s also the transparent header bar when viewing images, making it feel as native as ever. ProCamera 7 is as responsive as ever — I had no issues with lag or slow navigation on my iPhone 5.

PiZap.com launched in 2008 and has grown into a highly social and creative community with over 50 million registered users that create over 130 million pictures annually. PiZap offers users a variety of fun and free tools to creatively enhance, and share their photos. Since the start of 2013, piZap's primary focus has been launching and improving the photo editing experience for mobile and tablet users. The commitment to mobile has really paid off, as both iOS and Android applications have a 4.5 star rating and continue to add several thousand new daily users.

“We are really just getting started on mobile. We have succeeded in bringing our core features to phones and tablets, and we will continue to innovate and listen to what our users want as we keep developing the app,” said Sam Crisco, piZap CEO.

From a development perspective, piZap designed the app in HTML5. This allows for condensed development cycles and increased distribution opportunities.

If you yearn for the golden days of black-and-white photography or want to explore the possibilities, Dynamic Black & White is a great app to have. With the app's slider tools, you can fine-tune your photo in a dizzying number of ways. Sharpness, brightness and contrast controls are in the app, as well as tone and spotlight tools. The tone slider lets you add mood and depth to an image.

The anticipation of a new phone can be quickly punctured by reality. Don't worry - we've got ten apps you can nab to make it interesting. At first glance some might dismiss the iPhone 5S as a clone of its predecessor, but look closer and you'll find a few subtle differences. There's a faster processor, better camera and fancy fingerprint scanner to name but three.

But to whet your appetite we've put together our tailored guide to your first iPhone-5S-powered trip to the App Store, bringing you the best apps that will keep you gazing lovingly at your new toy when you feverishly rip it from the box.

"I do some professional photography work when it’s called for (engagements, product shoots and sometimes event work), but I feel the need to clear the air even before it starts. I am as absolutely sick of terrible photo apps as you are. I hate all the photography apps that claim to be “the next big thing.” There’s a special place of disdain in my heart for photography apps that don’t do what they claim to do, or are, in effect, more time-consuming than doing similar work in Photoshop.

First of all, Beautune’s interface isn’t perfect. I want to make it exceeding clear, after my gushing, that although I love this app, it’s not perfect. For the most part, though, this is an app that’s a piece of cake to use. The interface is a big part of it."

You Doodle has been downloaded over a million times and is the only iOS image editor you will ever need. The ever growing list of features, seems to grow. Being able to share a photo or drawing to Dropbox, Facebook or Instagram has a convince with mentioning. 

Whether you are professional photographer that likes to travel light (i.e. without a laptop) or casual photographer that simply likes the convenience of using the iPad, there are a number of apps in the app store for editing photos. We have sifted through the bunch and selected some of our favorites.

Facetune, the highly rated portrait photo editor for iPhone and iPod touch, has just received its big 2.0 update.

Facetune 2.0 introduces localized filters and new frames, among other enhancements. With localized filters, you can now control the exact placement and intensity of each filter. And with the app’s new frames, you can add creative photo frames with support for a before-and-after comparison of the edited and unedited photos.

• Textures: Now users can apply amazing textures to the photo, to add another unique picture effect. Each texture can also be controlled for intensity and localization.
• Tones: We have added a full color spectrum to choose from.
• Menu redesign: Fuller and clearer import and share menus.
• Share Screens: We improved the general look and functionality of the share screens.
• Help Screens: Redesigned help screens, with extensive explanations of each feature, with beautiful and easy to understand graphics and videos.
• Demo Photos: We have added new Demo photos for users to practice on.
• Existing Feature Improvement: All the features you know and love are now more accurate and effective.
• Bug fixes.

Love photo sharing but wish you could tell more of the story behind each photo as you share it? Shadow Puppet is a new app that’s designed to help you do just that. Rather than simply sharing photos by themselves or with text captions, the app lets you share sets of photographs while narrating what the recipient is seeing.

The app was created by reader Adrian Graham and Carl Sjogreen, who have worked at Google and Facebook. Graham spent three years at Google as the product manager for Picasa.

Once you tap the record button, all your sounds and actions are captured by the app. You can talk about the photos, zoom into them, tap areas in them to indicate what you’re talking about, and flip through the set.

The thinking behind the new Android and iOS app Chirp is that if animals in nature communicate through sound, machines should too. And so, the four person Animal Systems team created an app that does just that: no bluetooth, no email, no 'bumping' - images and other files are sent using only 2-second sound clips.

As you can see, the concept is extremely simple. Once you’ve selected a photo to share, all you have to do is hit the yellow button and any phone within earshot (or is it micshot?) that has the Chirp app open will receive the photo.

Since Chirp works exclusively through sound, there is no security, but the app has to be on and in the foreground in order to hear your chirp. On the up side, that means that sending a photo to tens of people at once is super easy. On the down side, any unwanted eavesdroppers will receive the file as well.

Basically, specific sound frequencies are assigned a number or letter by the app. When you take a photo or select a file, it’s assigned an alphanumeric code that is then encoded as sound in the “chirp.” When you press the button, the “chirp” broadcasts that code, which others running the app decode into a link and, ultimately, your photo. All of this happens in real time.

"We're delighted to publish the first of a three part special series of iPhone Photography Tutorials with the app Mextures. So what is one of the hottest categories of apps today? Grunge apps, that take those pristine shots and make them look as though they’ve been sitting in a shoe box for years – the same shoe box that the film was stored in for years before exposure. I’m going to be discussing Mextures (by Merek Davis), one of the newest apps in this category, in a series of posts."

We've run across some neat web apps in the past -- be it the Face to GIF app that lets you create animated GIFs with ease using your computer's webcam, or something a bit more practical like UT’s enlarging and denoising app. The ‘Average‘ web app definitely falls on the less-practical side of things. It allows you to easily combine any number of Flickr photos from a set or tag into a composite average of them all.

Until recently, Linux only had GIMP as an acceptable photo editing tool. That’s changed, thanks to a couple new tools that provide impressive features: Darktable and Shotwell. The great thiing about these two tools is that they are specifically developed for editing photos, rather than general image manipulation. This ultimately provides a better-designed interface and a more efficient workflow. I compared the two applications based on the interface and features in order to see which is the best tool for the job. Shotwell Shotwell is a rather lightweight application found in most Gnome-based distributions. Most distributions had included F-Spot before..."

★★★★★ "Painting has never been so easy, the ink engine is fantastic, lines are looking smooth, the feeling is amazing"This is a Drawing application that let you sketch and paint with water colors, feather, pencil, brushes...
The engine is Really Fast ! There is No delay between the touch and the following line."