5 Great Digital Photography Apps

Digital photography is one of the most popular pastimes of modern day.
Once upon a time, Photography was a distinct profession. A practitioner of that profession had to have equipment, knowledge, experience and an artistic eye to make photos that rose above the mundane and amateur photos of everyday people.
Enter the smartphone.
It didn’t quite happen overnight, but as the quality of smartphone cameras has improved exponentially, so too have the photos of non-photographers. For the average person this is a boon as it means they are able to easily capture the moments of their life in attractive and professional-looking photographs, and they virtually always have the equipment on hand with which to do so. This trend is so pronounced that we now live in the era of the “Instagram photographer”, or a person who is noted for their photography but doesn’t even own a proper camera. They are able to take stylized and popular photos on a simple iPhone or smartphone camera, and manipulate them using the various tools, apps and tricks that are available on the market today.
While phone photography may never fully supplant the prints we see on gallery walls or in glossy magazines, there’s no denying that the medium is important. Even professional and noted photographers like Stephen Shore and David Alan Harvey use Instagram to show off other facets of their work and creativity, proving that there is some seriousness to phone photography after all.
There are so many ways to take your online photography game to the next level. Here is a round-up of the best apps to make your feed stand out.
Photoshop Touch: It was only a matter of time before the tool of the pros was available on your iPhone. Photoshop touch allows a casual photographer to add a “post-production” step to their uploading process. They can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights and even use layers, which allows amateurs to make their pictures look like those of a pro. The mobile version isn’t quite as functional as the fully-fledged desktop version, but it’s certainly a step up from in-app editing tools.
VSCO Cam: A very popular app, VSCO allows users to add a vintage and classical patina to their photos, as if they’ve been shot on film. A favorite with the many hipsters of Instagram, VSCO is a hashtag in and of itself, as photos taken with the app are often tagged as such. With basic editing software built in, it’s a great option if you like that classic vibe.
Google Photos: For the dedicated phone photographer it can be frustrating to take so many pictures but constantly run out of phone space to accommodate your habit. Google Photos offers unlimited storage, which is a huge help to phone addicts. It has great scrolling, selection and categorization tools, and it’s a less clunky way to store on the cloud compared to a service like Dropbox.
Afterlight: If you like to apply different artful effects to your photos with just the swipe of a finger, Afterlight is for you. With the only drawback being the sheer number of options it has (which take a while to wade through and get used to), you can truly make your photos look like everything from a work of fine art to a torn up relic.
TinType: The selfie is a stalwart of phone photography, and it’s unlikely to decline in popularity any time soon (we love ourselves, after all). TinType is designed to give stylized class to your selfies including sepia, monochrome, or painted color effects. You can also adjust things like eye intensity and depth of field to take your selfie game to the next level.