Top 8 Photography Apps for your Phone

Just because you don’t have access to an expensive DSLR camera or the most advanced photo editing software doesn’t mean you can’t have great looking photos. Today, with the capabilities of smartphone cameras, the tools for getting amazing photos are in the palm of your hand! The camera on your phone is much more powerful than you think, especially when you pair it with a great app. From camera apps with powerful tools, to editing apps that allow you to be creative with your edits, there are many options available to you at a very low cost (or for free!).

1. Snapseed

Price: Free!

Snapseed is a great photo editing for beginner and advanced users alike. It is perfect for everyday photo edits and takes care of almost all your image editing needs including exposure, colour, cropping, and sharpening. In addition to these basic tools, Snapseed offers users brushes and selective editing tools that will allow you to edit only certain parts of your image and a healing tool that will let you remove unwanted objects from your photo. If you are editing a group of similar photos, this app includes a “Last Edits” option that will save you time by applying the same edits to each photo, allowing you to edit in batches.

2. TouchRetouch

Price: $1.99

TouchRetouch is dedicated to retouching and removing unwanted objects from your photos in seconds! With this app, you can remove distracting objects that are spoiling your image in no time at all. To remove these objects, simply paint over them or select them with the lasso tool, and watch it disappear. The app works by analyzing the pixels around the area you’ve selected and replacing the selected object with pixels from the surrounding area. This tool is not only good for removing entire objects, but is great for removing imperfections in portrait photos!

3. Afterlight 2

Price: $2.99

Afterlight 2 is a great intermediate photo editing app. With a wide range of editing tools and artistic options, this app allows you to move beyond basic image editing. These tools include the common colour, exposure, sharpness, and crop tool, but also includes more advanced options like curves and selective colour. This app also contains a double exposure tool that allows you to create unique combinations of photos, and creative overlay options that allow you to add graphics and text to your image.

4. Adobe Lightroom CC

Price: Free!

Adobe’s Lightroom CC offers uses a collection of powerful editing tools with a simple, easy-to-use interface. This app contains curves, colour mix, and split tones, which offer incredible control over colour and exposure, as well as a healing tool and the ability to apply edits selectively to certain parts of an image.

One of Adobe Lightroom CC’s greatest strengths is the ability to install and apply presets to your photos. Whether you want to save your own previous edits as a preset to use on future photos or install ones you downloaded from someone else, Lightroom presets make your photo editing process even easier. You can store an unlimited number of presets within the app, and then apply them to your photos for flawless edits in one click! If you already use Lightroom on your desktop computer, this is sure to be your favourite mobile photo editing app!

5. Enlight

Price: $3.99

Enlight is an all-in-one photo editing app with creative and artistic tools. With this app, you can personalize your photos using brushes, design elements, text, borders, frames, and more! Some of these creative options include turning your photo into a sketch or drawing or arranging your photos in a collage. Enlight also contains a mask tool so you can apply these effects to certain parts of your photos and blend the different effects into your photos seamlessly. If you are looking for an all-inclusive photo editing app with a focus on creativity, this is the one for you!

6. AfterFocus

Price: $0.99

AfterFocus is a photo editing app that does only one key thing, but it does it very well! AfterFocus allows you to imitate the shallow depth of field effect that can typically only be achieved with a larger camera and a multi-element lens. This app is extremely user friendly, and to achieve this effect, all you have to do is mark your image as to where the foreground and background are, and the app will keep your main subject in focus and blur out the background.

7. ProCamera

Price: $5.99

ProCamera gives you a DSLR-like experience through the camera in your smartphone! With a clean and simple interface, you can easily adjust settings like ISO, shutter speed, and exposure. The advanced white balance setting lets you fine tune the colour tint and temperature. With handy setting for shooting in awkward light conditions, an anti-shake setting, you will feel like you are using a high-end DSLR! This app also allows you to shoot in RAW, TIFF, HEIF, and JPEG formats, which further opens up endless possibilities for editing and achieving truly professional-looking photos.

8. Camera+ 2

Price: $2.99

Camera+ 2 is a powerful camera app with an integrated photo editing suite. In the camera portion of the app, you will find manual camera controls including shutter speed, ISO, white balance and focus. With these tools users are able to do things like separate focus and exposure points, making it easy to focus on one area of the image, but expose for a different part. The app also includes a range of shooting modes such as macro mode for capturing close-up macro photos of insects and flowers, slow shutter mode for taking stunning long exposure photos, and portrait mode. The handy editing suite offers users tools for adjusting exposure, colour, and clarity.

If you are looking for a powerful app to use to take your photos to the next level, any of the ones on this list will be perfect! Using one or a combination of these apps will allow you to get professional quality edits without breaking the bank. Download a couple of these apps and give them a try today!