Our 8 favourite photo editing apps of all time for the iPhone [part two] #PhotoWeek: Instagram, Camera+, Snapseed

If you missed my first post all about my favourite photo app collection (click here to catch up), then I’ve rounded up the best in iPhone photo editing goodness to make your images pops and your creations sparkle. Let me know if you think we’re missing any vital apps in the comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Here are numbers 5 to 8…

5. Camera+

When it comes to photo editing on-the-go, Camera+ is one of the more advanced options, allowing you to add different filters, styles and layers to your images, as well as make more basic tweaks too. There are two handy ‘scene modes’, which allow you to ‘liven up’ your photos easily, you just pick what you’ve taken a photo of and Camera+ will do all of the hard work for you and optimise the settings for that particular scene, you can choose from food, sunset, portrait, beach and a few others, too.

Camera+ is another great app with a built-in replacement camera, in fact many people tell us that’s the best bit of the app. Using the Camera+ camera instead of the default one allows you to set exposure and focus, use a stabiliser mode for taking good photos on-the-move and also add a flashlight or a grid depending on your situation.

I’m personally not keen on the Camera+ user experience, it doesn’t feel half as intuitive as Aviary or Faded, but I know a lot of people who swear by it as both a camera replacement and a great way to edit their snaps.

Camera+ is available from iTunes for £1.49.

6. Instagram

Yeah I know, I know, how original, right? But the truth is Instagram is a pretty decent photo editing app in its own right, even if you don’t take into account how great the sharing options and community element is. Only a few months ago Instagram made a load of great changes to the way its app works. It still serves up its (now iconic) photo filters, but it also allows you to make some key tweaks to your photos and unless you’re REALLY into your mobile photography there’s more than enough to make a big difference to your snaps, like adjusting brightness and contrast, adding vignetting and changing the focus with tilt-shift effects.

As I’ve mentioned a few times above (you can tell it’s a sore point), it’s a huge shame Instagram doesn’t let you alter the intensity of its filters. Granted tweaking the brightness and contrast can allow you to make subtle changes manually, but an intensity slider would be really handy and it’s long overdue. We don’t all want our photos to be so obviously edited and unfortunately everyone knows exactly what Instagram’s filters look like now, intensity sliders would give us all much more customisation options. Do it Instateam, please!

Instagram is available from iTunes for free.

7. Snapseed

Snapseed was snapped up by Google a few years back and it now works better than ever AND it’s free! Something about the Snapseed interface brings a more professional touch to photo editing than the likes of Instagram and Afterlight and packs a number of features together under labels like ‘tune image’, ‘details’ and ’tilt shift’. Unlike most other apps on the list, you then need to use a series of gestures to actually tweak your images, swiping from right to left usually changes the intensity of the feature you’re in and then up and down allows you to pick a new feature. This admittedly takes a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it actually feels like a much more intuitive way of interacting with your images than working through a series of different menus.

Snapseed is available from iTunes for free.

8. CameraBag

It might not top everyone’s top apps list, but when it comes to picking great filters CameraBag will always be one of my favourites because the choice is just so huge. Not only are there 40+ filters to choose from, but once you’ve picked one you can make all kinds of different changes to how it looks, like tweaking the contrast from within the filter itself. This might sound a little confusing, but if you’re looking for ways to really tailor an image to EXACTLY how you want it, then CameraBag is a great option. If you can’t be bothered to mess about quite so much, there are plenty of ways to alter purely the intensity of each filter too and, of course, you’ll find all of the basic photo editing features you’d expect from this kind of app.

Camerabag is available from iTunes for £1.49.

Go back to our first post to see which our top 4 photo apps of all time were.

Main image via madewithfaded.com.