2023 Update: Most of these apps (if not all) are no longer supported or on the App Store. That said, my favorite photo app for iOS for the last several years is Lightroom Mobile.

As you may know, I’m an avid iPhone user and burgeoning Apple fanboy (I finally made the leap last October and bought a Mac…best computer I’ve ever owned.  When they say “it just works”, they mean it).  One of the best parts about owning an iPhone are the thousands and thousands of apps available, including photo-related apps.  Today, I want to touch on just a few of these and let you know why I love them so much.

Camera+
(On sale for a limited time for 99¢)

This is a great replacement for the standard iPhone camera.  First off, pressing the shutter release button lets you snap pictures instantly–no waiting for the stupid “iris” animation like on the bog standard camera app.  Secondly, photos shot in this app are saved to a lightbox within the app that lets you do editing before saving to your iPhone’s camera roll.  Editing options include “Scenes”, allowing you to adjust white and color balance and exposure at the touch of a button (choices include such things as Flash, Backlit, Cloudy and Auto, amongst others).  There’s also an “FX” zone that lets you apply color effects (“Vibrant”, “So Emo”, “Purple Haze”, etc.) and retro effects (“Lomographic”, “70s”, “Ansel”, etc.), special effects (“HDR”, “Faded”, “Polarize”, etc.).  You can also buy other sets of effects through in-app purchases.

The app also allows you to crop, flip and rotate your photos before saving.  In addition, you can share your photos to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter from within the app.

 

Photogene
($1.99 )

Photogene is the Swiss Army Knife of photo apps.  Any image in your camera roll can be cropped, resized, color-adjusted, sharpened, levels-adjusted and so forth.  It’s like having a nice subset of Photoshop in your pocket (in fact, it’s much better than Adobe’s Photoshop app.  The only thing I don’t like about Photogene is the B&W filter, which is entirely too-contrasty.

 

Pro HDR
($1.99)

Sure, the iPhone camera has built-in HDR functionality and it does an okay job of taking two photos in succession at different exposures and blending them together into one final image, but Pro HDR is so much better.  It does a great job of pulling out shadows and properly exposing highlights.  The only downside is that the timing between the two photos is a tad slower than the native camera, no doubt because Apple’s using some sort of secret internal API, so you need to have a steady hand and a static scene.

 

Best Camera
($2.99)

Well-known commercial photographer Chase Jarvis is the creator of Best Camera.  The name of the app isn’t a boast, but rather ties into Chase’s philosophy that “the best camera is the one you have with you”.  Meaning that having any camera, in this case an iPhone’s camera, with you at any time is better than having no camera at all.  Chase even released a book expounding this philosophy with a collection of his best iPhone photos.  This app allows you to shoot photos, add effects and upload to Flickr, Facebook or TheBestCamera.Com–a photo sharing site just for users of this app.  The effects are pretty neat, including a retro-feeling contrasty black and white one and a couple of great color effects.  For some reason, I find myself coming back to these effects time and time again, because I just love the results.

 

Flickr
(Free)

 

There’s not much to say about this app except that it’s an excellent way for you to upload your iPhone photos to your Flickr photostream.  It supports tagging, geo-tagging, adding to sets, etc.  You can also comment on photos and explore other users’ photostreams.  My only gripe:  No way to add photos to groups!  Perhaps Flickr will fix that soon.

 

So, there you have it, my favorite iPhone photography apps.  If you’re interested in becoming a better “iPhoneographer”, then check out iPhoneography.