It’s been said time and time again that the camera on the iPhone is an excellent camera. In fact, it’s become such a popular camera that there’s a whole genre of photography known as ‘iPhoneography’. iPhone photographers not only use the camera and lens built into their iPhone, but also an assortment of apps to edit, enhance, and show off their work. There are so many great apps out there, so we’ve narrowed it down to a few of our favorites.
KitCam
The first app we’re going to take a look at is a fantastic tool for taking your photos. With it, you can adjust exposure, white balance, lenses, and film before you even take the photo. It also features convenient shooting modes like a timer, multi-exposure, time-lapse, and more. You can also view each photo’s histogram and make adjustments to levels, brightness, contrast, and saturation. If you’re looking to take more control over your iPhone’s camera, definitely grab KitCam.
KitCam does offer some nice editing options, but if you want even more, Photoforge2 is an excellent choice that’s bursting with advanced controls. The most notable is the ability to use multiple layers and masks and make advanced adjustments including curves, levels, color balance, channel mixer, white balance, noise reduction, and more. You can also add over 25 different filters and FX and combine different films lenses, filters, and textures.
Complex and advanced controls are great, but sometimes you want something quick and easy, yet awesome — like VSCO CAM. This gem features a sleek design with minimal processing options, but the options are good. There’s a nice variety and all the basics are covered. VSCO CAM is a great app to have in your grab bag of editing tools.
If you’re shooting portraits with your iPhone camera, then Facetune should be your go-to app for touching up blemishes, smoothing out skin, enhancing eyes, and even reshaping. Seriously, Facetune is amazing. Check out the review for a full rundown.
Collages (or “storyboards”) are an excellent way to show off multiple photos at once. They are a great way to tell a story. The App Store is also flooded with apps that help you build collages, but the one I keep coming back to is Fuzel Pro. It has an artistic design, makes it quick and easy to add photos, and gives you control over the layouts of your collages.
After editing your photo to perfection, you may realize that it would make a great poster, sign, or inspirational message. With Photolettering, you can do just that using fonts from world-renowned type foundry House Industries. It’s free with a few fonts and additional fonts are available via in-app purchase. If you’re looking to mix photography with typography, Photolettering is the way to go.
You didn’t think I’d get through an article about photography apps without mentioning Instagram, did you? Although there are a lot of things I would love to see changed about Instagram (especially forced square crops), there’s no denying it’s usefulness as a way to share photos. Yes, there’s a lot of snapshots of pets and kids (my own included) and plates of food, but there is also a lot of amazing photography being shared on Instagram, as well.
So there you have it! iMore’s best apps for iPhone photographers. Did we miss any of your favorites? What apps do you use to shoot, edit, enhance, and show off your photos taking with your iPhone?
The official eBay app for iPhone just got a nice update that brings a UI refresh to the online auction service. The bump up to version 3.0 adds a general refresh to most areas of the app, and improves photos in listings making them now much larger and better looking. Photos also now look larger in search results at the tap of a button, though iOS 6 and above is required for this.
Beyond the visuals, U.S. customers in selected states now have the facility to scan their drivers license for quick and easy eBay registration. Also available to U.S. customers now, along with those of us in the UK is access to the new eBay shopping cart, giving you the option to checkout multiple items at once.
Sellers in Spain will also be happy to know that finally they can sell their wares using the eBay app, as this feature has been turned on in the latest version. Grab it from the App Store now, and be sure to let us know how you’re finding it. Does it make your eBay experience a little better now?
Say the Same Thing is a fun turn-by-turn word game by the band OK Go where you must try to guess the same word as your friend, a random stranger, or a member of the band. It’s refreshingly fun and is sure to get those creative juices flowing.
Here’s how it works; you are not playing against your friend, but rather with your friend, or as I’ll call him/her, your partner (since you can play with strangers). The game begins with you and your partner each saying a word. In round two, you both look at the words from round one, and say a word that is related to both those words. If you say the same word, you win! If you don’t, you repeat using the words from round two.
Look at the two most recent words and say another word that relates the two. The ultimate goal is to say the same word as your partner.
If you and your partner say almost the same thing, you can tap the “This counts!” button to claim that the game should be over. If your partner also hits the button, then the game is over. For example, I played a game where I said “Secretary of State” and my partner said “Secretary of the State.” You may also run into instances where one player spells the word differently.
During the game, you can chat with your partner and put fun stamps and emoticons on words that have been played. Using a stamp costs a banana.
Oh, yes — bananas. There are three ways to spend bananas: use a stamp, say two words at once, and start a game. Yes, you read that right — it costs two bananas to play a game. For more bananas, you must either buy them in increments of 20, 50, 100, or 10,000, ranging from .99 t0 .99, or watch a 30 second ad in exchange for one banana.
I hate this.
I am more than willing to pay for a great game, but having to pay to continue to play (without new content) is very annoying. It bothers me even more because the tutorial never mentions that each game will cost you 2 bananas. Instead, I burned through my bananas by using stamps with no idea that I was giving up games by doing so. Paying to remove ads (.99) doesn’t change things either — you still have to watch ads (or pay) to get more bananas. One 30-second ad only grants half a game, so this further adds to the frustration.
To learn that a game cost 2 bananas, I had to go back to the tutorial, scroll through 13 pages, then tap “more tips.” This is simply a bad user experience.
However, despite this greedy business model, Say the Same Thing is an extremely fun game.
The good
Login with Facebook or Game Center (but not both)
Turn-by-turn game with notification
Chat with your partner
“This counts” for times when answers are basically the same thing
View past games
Stamps are fun
Stylish
Play against random opponents
Play against members of the band OK Go (long wait, though)
Remove ads for .99
The bad
Tutorial is not upfront about the fact that each game you play costs 2 bananas
Even after buying ad-free version, you have to watch ads to get more bananas or buy more bananas
Some users find the tutorial to be confusing
The bottom line
I’ve had a lot of fun and wasted too much time playing Say the Same Thing. It’s a refreshing new word game that actually has the potential to be rather hilarious. I had one game with fellow iMore editor, Ally Kazmucha, that was 32 rounds long and ranged from Star Wars, to soda, to Lindsay Lohan, to ice cream, and to some topics that are too inappropriate to mention here — now that’s some good honest fun!
Hopefully the folks behind Say the Same Thing re-think their business model and, at the very least, increase the number of bananas you earn for watching an ad.
KitCam is a full-featured camera app for the iPhone that gives you full control over settings like exposure, focus, and white balance. It also comes equipped with many different lenses and filters and includes different shooting modes like multi-shot, time-laps, multiple exposure, and more.
I’m just going to come right out and say it — KitCam is awesome and it would take me thousands of words to really dive into everything it can do. Instead, I’ll just touch on the highlights.
My absolute favorite feature of KitCam is that you can manually adjust the exposure and white balance before you even take the photo. These two sliders alone can drastically improve your photos, as is demonstrated in the screenshots above.
KitCam also comes with a slew of lenses that apply various effects to your image and provides a live preview of the final results. These lenses include vignette, tilt shift, pinhole, olga, and more. You can also choose form different film types that act as filters. These are also shown in the live preview. KitCam comes loaded with quite a few lenses and film and also offers more as in-app purchases.
In addition to normal, single-shot mode, KitCam offers many other shooting options. These include HD video recording, timer, stabilizer, night stamp, multi-exposure, multi-shot, and time-lapse.
When taking a photo, you can separate focus from exposure by tapping the screen with two fingers. You’ll get a circle for exposure and a square for focus and tapping them will lock them down.
If after taking a photo you realize you would’ve preferred to use a different lens or roll of film, you can easily switch them out with the editor. The editor also allows you to adjust straightening, attachments, exposure, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation, color mixer, levels, and sharpening.
The good
Live Preview FX
Exposure and white balance compensation controls
Live exposure info on histogram
4×3, 1×1, 3×2, and 16×9 crop ratios
Auto and manual focus modes
Low light boost
Face detection
Built-in composition aides
Stabilizer
Multiple exposures
Multi-shot
Time-lapse
Shot editor including straightening, attachments, exposure, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation, color mixer, levels, and sharpening
Non-destructive editing
Auto archiving
Change lenses and film even after taking the photo
Share to Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, Instagram, and Tumbler
The bad
Most interface elements do not rotate when shooting in landscape orientation
The bottom line
Even with the availability of some great camera apps, I’ve always defaulted back to the built-in Camera app. Not any more! KitCam is just too good not to use. Having full control over exposure and white-balance is the must-have feature for me — everything else is just bonus.
Interested in iPhone, iPad, or Apple and looking to have some great conversations? Got a burning question or frustrating problem you just want help fixing? Already an expert and eager to share your knowledge? Well, all that and more is just waiting for you in the iMore forums.
Here are today’s hot topics:
Be sure to check out our recently added forums for Apple Hardware. Discuss the iMac, Mac Mini, Macbook, etc. here in these forums.
If you already have a Mobile Nations, FaceBook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft Account, simply log in and start posting. Otherwise, register now, and don’t forget to download our free iMore Forums app for iPhone and iPad!
App.net has released Passport, an iPhone app that aims to make it easy to manage your App.net experience. Current users can sign in to manage their profile, find people to follow, and browse ADN apps. You can download apps without leaving Passport by tapping the “App Store” button next to the application’s name on the list, causing its App Store page to pop up and allowing you to purchase and download the app before dismissing it and returning to the app list.
One other notable feature is that Passport allows people to create a free ADN account without an invite. Up until now, anyone looking to create a free account would need to be invited by a paying member. Now that limitation is gone, App.net will be watching to see the impact this has on the service, and they have said that they reserve the right to disable open sign ups at any time.
Something that Passport very intentionally does not let users do is post or send messages. ADN has grown through the use of apps like Netbot and Felix, and users are encouraged to find a way to experience the service that they enjoy, rather than being moved towards an official solution. For anyone that’s looking to give ADN a try, or just wants a good way to manage their account, Passport is available for free on the App Store right now.
Mother’s Day is less than a week away, and you might be stressing about what to do for Mom. Fret no more; we’ve got some great ways you can use your iPhone or iPad to honor Mom, this Sunday. Be it with flowers, cards, scrapbooks, food, or drinks, iMore’s got you covered. Let’s put your favorite device to work and use it to make Mom feel extra special this Mother’s Day.
Cleverbug Cards App
If there’s one thing your mom will be expecting this Mother’s Day, it’s a card. There are many different cards apps available in the App Store, but Cleverbug Cards Apps has grabbed my attention as a great option this Mother’s Day. It has just been updated with a bunch of great new Mother’s Day card options, and not only can you have the printed and delivered straight to your mom, but you can also choose to deliver them electronically via Facebook, Twitter, Email, or SMS for free.
Cleverbug integrates with Facebook so that you can quickly and easily add photos from Facebook to your Card. Just select your mom as the recipient and Cleverbug will automatically add her most popular photos to the card — you can, of course, also swap out the photos if you prefer to add specific ones.
The other common Mother’s Day gift is flowers. Flower Garden and Flowerly are two great iPhone and iPad apps that let you send virtual flowers to Mom via Facebook and email. Flower Garden is a bit more “fun” in that you actually grow the flowers that you’re going to include in your bouquet.
Since not everyone is into that sort of thing, I’m also including Flowerly, an app that simply let’s you choose a bouquet and card and send it on its way.
Both apps are great options for sending Mom a virtual bouquet on Mother’s Day.
There’s a good chance that Mom has spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking meals and baking treats for you and the family. Mother’s Day is the perfect day to return the favor. With Healthy Desserts by Green Kitchen, you’ll find delicious treats to present to your mom. And she’ll really appreciate it when, after she’s done enjoying the delectable dessert, you tell her that it was made with healthy ingredients. Moms love yummy desserts, often feel guilty about eating them.
If you want to go all out and cook an entire meal, check out some of our other favorite cooking apps available in the App Store.
Don’t forget to install the app on Mom’s iPhone and/or iPad as well!
What’s a great meal and dessert without the perfect cocktail to go with it? With Mixologist for iPhone, you can find the recipe to Mom’s favorite drink and mix one up with extra love just for her. If Mom isn’t into alcoholic drinks, there are also some tasty non-alcoholic options as well.
Is Mom a scrapbooker? Then she’s going to love ScrapPad. During your Mother’s Day celebrations be sure to take lots of photos, including of the tiniest details, and use them to created the ultimate scrapbook with ScrapPad – Mother’s Day Photo Journal for iPad. The Mother’s Day kit includes fun clipart and graphics designed just for the day. And the best part? Once you’ve created the digital version of the scrapbook, you can order it to be printed as a physical book that Mom will cherish forever.
Those are my picks for best iPhone and iPad apps for Mother’s Day. With them, you can send Mom a special card, a bouquet of flowers, make her the perfect treat, mix her a delicious drink, and create a scrapbook that she’ll forever love. Any apps I’m missing out on? Any you’d recommend more? Let me know!
Vine is the Harry Potter-esque short moving picture app for iPhone acquired and launched by Twitter. Kevin Michaluk is the founder of Blackberry-focused website CrackBerry, and the chief media officer of Mobile Nations. The universe seemed to have ordained that never the two should meet. But someone found Kevin’s iPhone, charged it, installed Vine, forced it into his BlackBerry Q10-cold, clawed hand, and somehow showed Kevin how to use it.
Turns out he’s pretty damn good at it too. Here’s what he’sbeenup to.
And that just goes to show you, there are still iPhone-only apps so compelling they can get pretty much anyone back on the platform, at least for a while, at least until the novelty wears off, or the app gets ported.
I’m not sure how long Vine stays interesting for him, or for anyone right now. I’ve played with it a bit, but haven’t used it much lately. We’ll see how long Kevin lasts. As much as I just poked fun at the still app-starved other platforms, when (not if) Vine lands on Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone, like Twitter itself, usage will likely skyrocket. Communications thrives when it’s accessible by everyone.
Let me know if you’re using Vine, how much, and what if anything could make it even more useful to you?
Samsung has just released a new commercial for their new flagship phone, the Galaxy S4… and it’s pretty good. I’m not a huge fan of this huge phone in general. I find it too big, too plastic, and too incoherent as a product compared to other offerings on the market. But I do appreciate the sheer amount of technology, hardware and software, Samsung is putting behind the GS4, and the all-in way they do it will probably help get the really good ideas to market faster than they might otherwise.
And that’s exactly what Samsung is showing off here. The sheer size of the Galaxy S4 is evident in the ad, as are features like Drama Mode, which lets you capture a series of images — think multi-exposure sports pics, and the gestures that let you navigate without touching the screen with sticky — in this case tasty rib covered — fingers. Some of the other features, like Hover, which feels like a terrible violation of Fitts’ law, and S Beam, which is like Bump over NFC, are a tad more gimmicky, and more demo-ware than software, but they come off okay in commercials for just that reason.
Samsung’s also packing a one-two punch here: not only are they showing off what they consider to be feature differentiation, they’re doing their best to make Apple and the iPhone look lame by comparison. It’s something they’ve done effectively before, and it’s one of the few weaknesses Apple has in the consumer market. And unlike the nowhere nearly as good Nokia Windows Phone commercial they’re doing it without promoting Apple’s brand.
So how does Apple counter-program assaults on its brand image? Does it make a similar commercial showing the Galaxy S4 not fitting in skinny hipster jean pockets, not working well one handed, harming eyes with vintage Soviet-era interface utilitarianism, and piquing frustration through seemingly random and unfathomable feature sets?
It’d be fun to see that, but Apple’s probably not there yet. Despite their global sales, Samsung is still trailing Apple in the US market. That’s why Samsung has to say Apple isn’t as cool. Apple just has to work incredibly hard to be cool; to show not tell. When and if the rolls switch, however, the “I’m an iPhone… and I’m an Android phone….” commercials might make for an amazing call-back.
Check out the ad above and let me know what you think of it in the comments below. With Samsung targeting Apple’s image, should Apple fight back and how?
Have you seen the Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Apple iPhone 5 drop test video that we posted recently? If so, then chances are that you already know how well the latest flagship smartphone from Samsung fares against the latest iPhone from Apple when it comes to kissing the pavement (spoiler: it doesn’t fare very well at all). But in case our video with panning slow motion replay still wasn’t enough to convince you, then we’ve got something new to show you.
SquareTrade, a company that sells insurance for mobile phones, recently conducted its own Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 drop test — it was part of an even bigger test to find out the so-called “breakability score” of these phones — and yielded some very interesting results.
First, not only did SquareTrade pretty much settle the debate on which device can handle drops better, but it also delivered drop test results that corroborated the results from our own. So what exactly came out of SquareTrade’s tests, anyway? In terms of breakability, which smartphone scored the highest?
Numbers don’t lie
Here’s the answer. When pitted against its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S3, as well as the Apple iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S4 performed poorly in terms of durability and garnered and overall score of 7 out of 10 on the SquareTrade breakability scale. It’s nearly 50% more breakable than the iPhone 5, and it actually scored worse than the S3 which came before it.
This short infographic from SquareTrade, which is titled, “How breakable is the new Samsung Galaxy S4?” says it all.
As the infographic says, “Samsung takes a step backward with the Galaxy S4″ since the older Galaxy S3 turned out better after going through the SquareTrade breakability test. While it did deliver better results in certain parts of the test — such as water resistance — it still failed in the overall test. And this finding is not something that’s limited to just SquareTrade’s test. We’ve seen it happen time and time again, in Samsung Galaxy S4 drop test videos available all over the Internet.
First, take a look at the SquareTrade breakability test video from which all of the above-mentioned information is based.
Then there’s this video from YouTube user GizmoSlips, which tests the Galaxy S4 against the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5.
And of course, don’t forget to check out our own Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 drop test here.
So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is really quite clear. The Galaxy S4 is just a little too breakable for something that ought to be the best of what’s out there right now. And not only does it have a higher breakability level than one of its main competitors — not to mention its very own predecessor — it also seems to scratch easier and also scores worse in terms of grippability.
But in all fairness to Samsung — as well as Corning, which is the company responsible for the Galaxy S4′s Gorilla Glass 3 screen — they can’t really take all of the blame here. It’s just nature at work. And every time a smartphone screen bends or breaks, it’s really mostly due to the the laws of physics.
Gravity, how does it work?
We have a theory that perhaps the reason why the Samsung Galaxy S4 is categorically worse than the iPhone 5 when it comes to drop tests is simply because it is not only bigger but also heavier. It’s both half an inch taller and half an inch wider as well as 20 grams heavier than the iPhone 5. And it’s also a wee bit thicker, which explains why a .50 caliber round from a sniper rifle can easily breeze through its center and make the screen peel right off in (mostly) one piece, as seen in one of the more extreme Galaxy S4 teardowns we found online.
The bottom line is, the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is somehow able to score high on a breakability test shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at all. And if we had to pick the three biggest lessons we’ve learned about this whole thing so far, we’d say these are:
Your “life companion” isn’t at all immune to the laws of nature; so
You shouldn’t bring a Samsung Galaxy S4 to a gun fight; and
If we can all just keep our smartphones in our pockets, that’d be great.
You may now read the detailed findings from SquareTrade’s breakability test in the press release embedded below.
SquareTrade’s Breakability Score Debuts as New Richter Scale for Device Danger – New Samsung S4 Rated a Dangerous 7
New Scorecard Fills Gap Left By Traditional Product Reviews and Calculates Danger in Everyday Situations
SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – SquareTrade®, the top-rated protection plan trusted by millions of happy customers, today announced its Breakability Score™ for the new Samsung Galaxy S®4. The SquareTrade Breakability Score ranks today’s top devices based on how prone they are to break due to accidents. Evaluating key elements such as front and back panel design, edge construction and materials, size, weight, friction quotient, water resistance and grip-ability, SquareTrade’s Breakability Score fills in the missing gap left by traditional device reviews: it tests devices in everyday danger situations brought on by our lifestyles and habits.
“Our Breakability Score creates a new Richter Scale for accidental damage to help consumers assess when, where and how their phones are in danger,” said Ty Shay , CMO at SquareTrade. “It’s been two years since we created the first Drop Test video for the industry and we thought it was time to expand the concept.”
The SquareTrade Breakability Score is based on a number of factors, from physical characteristics to the results of our SquareTrade Drop Test. The higher a device scores on a scale from 1-10, the higher the risk of it breaking due to an accident.
Comparing the Samsung Galaxy S4 to the S3 and Apple’s iPhone®5, the iPhone 5 was the clear winner. SquareTrade’s Breakability Score revealed the following:
While the S4 proved slightly more water resistant than its predecessor the S3, Samsung’s new Galaxy phone actually performed worse in most other categories. Major strikes against the S4 include high breakability during SquareTrade Drop Tests, a slippery back panel, and a wider screen that reduces grip-ability, especially compared to the ultra-slim iPhone 5. Breakability Score: 7
While the Samsung S3 screen is more durable, it is less water resistant than the S4 and its plastic back and wide width decreases its grip-ability. Breakability score: 6.5
The iPhone 5 scored the highest of the three phones tested. While it lost points for its larger size due to more breakable surface area, its excellent grip-ability and low friction coefficient make it far more durable overall. Breakability Score: 5
“Our research and experience shows that even the smallest device characteristics can dramatically affect its breakability: the weight balance of a device can affect the way it spins in free-fall, making it more likely to land on its screen; devices with rubber backs are less likely to slide, and device dimensions can effect how snugly smartphones fit in pant and jeans pockets,” continued Shay. “The likelihood of damage due to these common scenarios has never been higher.”
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