Best iPhone Camera Apps

Starzee said:
Procreate, SketchClub, iColorama, Affinity Photo... I think my priorities differ from yours! :lmao:
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Nice list. Must be, I seem to get on without those, I do have Affinity Photo, I only use it for HDR merge when I am into that occasionally, great app though, as long as you don’t find the interface a turn off.
 
myphotoyear said:
I thought this was a reasonable write up, the chosen apps were you know, deserving but will obviously come down to personal preference after a while. They include Halide, ProCamera, Lightroom, VSCO and Darkroom. What apps do you think they missed or would have made good runners up?

https://petapixel.com/2021/05/14/the-best-iphone-camera-apps/
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Hah, I just finished writing up some comments about camera apps in psmoore's thread about Camera+. I like Halide well enough, but I don't find it really stands out from the rest of the pack for me (the pack being ProCamera, ProCam, Chromatica, CameraPixels, Moment Pro, Camera-M, Lightroom, ProShot, and probably some others I've forgotten at the moment). And despite the great blog posts the Halide devs have written up about iPhone internals, DNGs, and other topics, I haven't found that I get better DNGs from it than from ProCamera or some others, although that could easily be due to me rather than Halide.

Darkroom is an excellent editing app, but I prefer ACDSee Pro for two reasons: 1) You can selectively brush on any adjustment. 2) It has a 5-band tonal adjustment that adds mid-gray to the usual whites, blacks, highlights, shadows adjustments. The free Ultralight is also an excellent app that has this 5-band adjustment, although it doesn't have the brush-on adjustments of ACDSee Pro.

I don't do film looks very often these days, but when I do, I prefer RNI Films to VSCO. RNI Films doesn't offer as may looks as VSCO, but those it has are more distinct from each other. Too many of the VSCO offerings seem like only minor variations of others.

Lightroom certainly deserves to be on the list, not because it's free but because it's an excellent raw developer and includes an excellent camera app as well (particularly the HDR DNG mode).
 
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myphotoyear said:
I do have Affinity Photo, I only use it for HDR merge when I am into that occasionally
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I'm much the same. I keep meaning to dig further into Affinity Photo because there's clearly a lot of stuff in there, but so far I mainly use it for its focus merge and its stacks. The interface is a bit obtuse (and furry) and definitely takes some getting used to. I originally bought it because it looked to be the closest thing to a Photoshop replacement on the iPad. But the more time I spend editing on the iPad, the less I feel the need for a Photoshp replacement.
 
I use ProCamera, Touch Retouch, Snapseed, Lightroom. I only used Affinity Photo on the PC for my Canon images and didn’t really like it compared to PS and LR so I pay the annual to have those. May have to look at affinity again.
 
Editing apps I use all the time:

Photos, Apple's built-in app, for cropping, basic adjustments, and b/w conversions most of the time.

ACDSee Pro for adjusting light and color.

Snapseed for its Tonal Contrast, Ambiance, Perspective, and Healing tools.

TouchRetouch, when Snapseed's Healing tool isn't enough.

SKRWT, when Snapseed's Perspective tool isn't enough. (And what's with that name? Is it supposed to be pronounced like "square it"? It sure looks like "screw it" to me.)

LIghtroom Mobile for raw developing, noise control, and sharpening. I also use its camera frequently in HDR and Pro modes.
 
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sinnerjohn said:
Sheesh......all these apps. Whatever happened to point the camera and click :rolleyes:
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Oh, I do that, too. :D That's how it all starts. But why stop there? I think the goal is to present what you -- the human -- saw or felt or experienced someplace, not simply what the camera recorded.

But we've had this discussion before, right? I think that what matters is the final image and that it doesn't matter how you got there. If the image is right straight out of the camera, that's fine, but I don't see any special virtue in that. The final image is good or not, however it is made.

So I don't try to frame an shot precisely but leave extra space around it and crop it later in order to avoid inadvertently cutting something off in the rush of shooting. And I'll intentionally underexpose an image in order to make sure I keep detail in the highlights and then correct for the shadows later. And so on and so forth.
 
terse said:
Oh, I do that, too. :D That's how it all starts. But why stop there? I think the goal is to present what you -- the human -- saw or felt or experienced someplace, not simply what the camera recorded.

But we've had this discussion before, right? I think that what matters is the final image and that it doesn't matter how you got there. If the image is right straight out of the camera, that's fine, but I don't see any special virtue in that. The final image is good or not, however it is made.

So I don't try to frame an shot precisely but leave extra space around it and crop it later in order to avoid inadvertently cutting something off in the rush of shooting. And I'll intentionally underexpose an image in order to make sure I keep detail in the highlights and then correct for the shadows later. And so on and so forth.
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Of course, I was being flippant. ;)
 
ImageArt said:
SuperImpose X is still my cutting out tool of choice just because I know it so well. Anybody use anything else?
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I‘ve been using Procreate, the Freehand option, but mostly because I’m already in Procreate. You can tap the image in small steps and get a decent selection. I also like the lasso tool in Infinite Painter, but mostly because it’s fun. I still like SuperImposeX for selections, and masking. I love the gradient mask and the mask by image option.
 
Starzee said:
I‘ve been using Procreate, the Freehand option, but mostly because I’m already in Procreate. You can tap the image in small steps and get a decent selection. I also like the lasso tool in Infinite Painter, but mostly because it’s fun. I still like SuperImposeX for selections, and masking. I love the gradient mask and the mask by image option.
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Oh yes, I certainly use Procreate when I’ve done an outline and I want to fill in sections with different colours. Brilliant for that. I love the select feature where you can just select the items on the layer. Use that extensively.
 
sinnerjohn said:
Looking at this again as its interesting, the original subject was 'Camera apps', I wouldn't say the above are Camera Apps at all but editing apps.
Am I wrong?
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It was my initial thought but when VSCO and Darkroom was mentioned, it sort of took it out of the just Camera apps category for me. And Lightroom is more of an editing tool in my mind than a Camera app.
 
ImageArt said:
It was my initial thought but when VSCO and Darkroom was mentioned, it sort of took it out of the just Camera apps category for me. And Lightroom is more of an editing tool in my mind than a Camera app.
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Hmmm but both VSCO and Lightroom have cameras, do Procreate Sketchclub iColorama etc have cameras?
Not being deliberately argumentative (for a change ;) ) just curious how we, or Petapixel, are defining Camera Apps.
 
sinnerjohn said:
Hmmm but both VSCO and Lightroom have cameras, do Procreate Sketchclub iColorama etc have cameras?
Not being deliberately argumentative (for a change ;) ) just curious how we, or Petapixel, are defining Camera Apps.
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Petapixel's list of apps all have cameras, including Darkroom (didn't know that). But we wandered off topic as usual.
 
sinnerjohn said:
Looking at this again as its interesting, the original subject was 'Camera apps', I wouldn't say the above are Camera Apps at all but editing apps.
Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
Are you being flippant or shall my hobbyhorse gallop through? :lmao:
 
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