Sharing pictures that you take is an important use of any mobile phone for many people. Taking pictures is only part of that process though, you may want to edit the pictures a little first before you upload them. Waiting until you get home to transfer, edit, then upload your pictures isn’t everyone’s cup of tea though. A lot of people would prefer to post their pictures as soon as possible, but this means you need to be able to edit them while you’re still on the go. This is where photo editing apps come in.
Directly from your phone, you can apply a whole host of effects, giving you the flexibility to edit your photographs on the go, so they’re ready to post.
Snapseed
Image courtesy of Google, via the Apple App Store.
Google’s Snapseed photo editing app offers a large range of high-quality features while being completely free, even free of microtransactions. Snapseed can edit JPG and RAW file types with any of the 29 tools and filters. You can choose to edit or create your own filters if none of the default ones fit the aesthetic you want. The “Healing” tool can be used to do things like removing someone from a picture while face Pose allows you to correct the pose of portraits through the use of 3D models.
Each of the changes you make are saved in the edit history, so you can change or undo a previous edit if you want.
VSCO
Image courtesy of Visual Supply Company, via the Apple App Store.
VSCO is free to download but requires a £19.99 annual subscription to unlock all of the filters. It offers 10 presets and a few tools to free users as well as the ability to edit RAW images. The full set of more than 200 presents and a broader selection of tools are restricted to paid subscribers, but even with the free tools you have a pretty decent set of options. If you’re only looking for some basic filters and don’t mind reusing the same ones, VSCO is a good tool to go for.
Afterlight
Image courtesy of Afterlight Collective Inc, via the Apple App Store.
Afterlight offers a lot of filters, tools, and adjustments. All of the features are available in the free version, although many of the more advanced features are simply previews that you can’t save without subscribing. There are three subscription options, monthly, annual, and lifetime, costing £2.99, £17.99, and £34.99 respectively. The “light leaks” effect is taken from real 35mm film for the best accuracy, while many other effects are based on real film effects – for maximum impact.
Darkroom
Image courtesy of Bergen Co, via the Apple App Store.
Darkroom makes use of as many iOS integrations as possible to give you the maximum amount of flexibility. It supports RAW images and can accept images that are up to 120-mega pixels. Darkroom never needs to import images due to its integration with the camera roll, this means your edits can be saved to the original image, rather than to a copy, saving you space on your phone/cloud storage. Some tools are free, but to unlock everything you need to subscribe for £3.99 a month, £19.49 a year, or £48.99 for a lifetime subscription to all features.
Mextures
Image courtesy of Merek Davis Com LLC, via the Apple App Store.
Mextures, which costs £1.99, is designed as a layer-based photo editing app, allowing you to stack different effects, and then modify them as you go. There are a range of default filters, but you can save your own stacked effects as well if you prefer. While many filters are default, you can add extra feature packs that are £0.99 or £1.99 each, there are no monthly subscriptions. These add extra filters such as light leaks and dust and allow you to choose to purchase just the extras you want.
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