5 Awesome iPhone Photo Apps

I love the creative freedom that my iPhone provides. And nowhere is that freedom better expressed than in photography. I’m sure you’re quite familiar with Instagram and the creative filters that go with it, but if you really want to “go pro” with your mobile photography, grab these five iPhone apps — and find plenty more in my new book – The Invisible Sale — where I have an entire chapter devoted to DIY photography tips and tricks.

Photoshop Touch is actually available for both the iOS and Android platforms. When you’re ready for a full-featured version of Photoshop that gives you an enormous range of editing tools, this is the app for you. Like its desktop cousin, you work in layers and can perform sophisticated editing like background removal using Photoshop’s refine tool to help you with difficult outline such as hairlines.  This app is especially useful on tablets, where you have a big enough screen to really edit with ease.

If you’re planning to share a lot of your photographs on Facebook or other social networks you may want to check out GridLens. The app lets you easily create preformatted or custom formatted collages from existing images on your phone. Alternatively you can actually create the collage in real-time by simply clicking on the inside of the grid where you want your image to appear, then taking a picture. Then by simply moving to each of the grids, you can instantly create a great collage and upload directly to your social networks.

Another great tool for adding visual drama, especially if you want to create those artsy, moody black and white photos is Noir Photo. Take any photo, import it to the app and then convert to black and white or other sepia tone. Once you’ve done that the app allows the creation of lighting effects unlike any other app I’ve seen. You can actually place lighting on your subject as though you took the photo with studio lighting in place.

For those of us using older versions of iPhones, we have to settle for AutoStitch. The app lets you take multiple images and then stitch them together to create a single panoramic image that can be saved as a JPEG. The resulting images are clear and can be custom sized and cropped before exporting.

ColorSplash is another great app for creating high impact black and white photos. But where Noir Photo allows the creation of lighting where none existed, ColorSplash lets you selectively color black and white images. To do this you simply import a color photo you’ve taken on your phone and then with you finger you paint over the part of the image you wish to keep in color. The rest of the photo will convert to black and white, resulting in the viewers’ eyes being drawn to the color portion (highlight) of the photo. Here again, the resulting photo looks very difficult to create but with this app, the software is doing all the work for you. In fact, I used ColorSplash to create the photo in this post, which I took last night on my iPhone. To get the effect you see here took me about 5 minutes on an iPhone.

There you go — five great apps that every iPhone photographer should have on their iPhone. Want more? Then pop over to The Invisible Sale where you can order my book and sign up for the newsletter, where I’ll be sharing even more great content creation apps.