What iPhone Apps Should You Use?
The iphone is such a powerful device, download the right apps and you can create some inspiring photographs. Don’t get me wrong I am just as big of a gear head as anyone else, but I don’t let lack of equipment stop me from constantly taking pictures. I find myself taking excessive amounts of photos on my iphone. Adding on to nick Fancher’s “Inspiration over gear” post, for me I need to create. Many times I find myself wishing I had my camera with me, then realize my iphone is in my pocket. I have been able to capture a lot of moments in my life that otherwise would have evaded my memory as time passed. With the apps that are available these days and the quality of the iphone, it can be very easy to produce some quite remarkable images. So now to get into detail about what apps I use and how I use them.
I tend to start with Snapseed and use it like I would Camera Raw. Setting my white balance, brightness, ect.. Next step is the Selective Adjustment tool. I think this is one of Snapseeds most powerful tools. Being able to selectively adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation for each color or tone thouruoght the image is very useful. I try to avoid adding contrast in Snapseed due to the apps I open the photo in next will provide the contrast i need. Snapseed’s new Retrolux filters are awesome as well.
Rays is a handy app to have and can add cool sun rays to your image.
Top Camera is good for long exposures due to the fact that instead of a normal long eposure app that lets light in to the sensor till you are over exposed, Top Camera lets you set your exposure and anything that is brighter than middle grey will show through while keeping the set exposure.
Photosynth is a great app for panoramas. I love this App since you are not limited by one direction, and you are free to shoot 360 degrees like you would a Brenizer.
Sunseeker is a great app to know the exact position at what time the sun will be.
Next step is vsco. It is here where I tone the image. I find that vsco tends to add too much contrast with their presets. I manually tone my image and I seem to get better results.
Last and final step is Photoforge. I am truly in love with this app. It is basically a mini photoshop. Photoforge has the ability to add layers with different blending modes and you can change the opacity of each layer. Another impresive feature is the option to use layer masks. It is with this app I blend mextures, ndpatterns, and fine tune the image for completion.
Mextures are free textures that photographer Merek davis has created. Merek has three free packs that I highly recommend checking out and downloading.
NDpatterns is another set of textures I like to use. Neal Dieker created these unique patterns to overlay on your images. Check them out here.
Follow them on instagram to see their impressive work, @merekdavis and @nealdieker.
Some might think that using all of these apps might be a tad excessive. To each their own, if you can create beautiful images then what method or equipment you use accomplish this is rather irrelavent. “THE BEST CAMERA IS THE ONE THAT’S WITH YOU”.-Chase Jarvis
Below are some before and after shots with my iphone.
Feel Free to follow me on instagram as well @thomasingersoll
^shot by Lear Miller^
