Review of the 10 Best Photography Apps for the Android

February 19, 2011 @ 5:00PM

Review of the 10 Best Photography Apps for the Android

Topics
Techniques > Software

Right now, sitting at home you probably have several DSLR cameras stored in a camera bag under your computer. In this fast-paced life, you are likely realizing the majority of pictures you take are with a camera phone. Why? Camera phones make picture taking easy, the images are sufficient size, they are spontaneous and in seconds we can share with friends. Not only are camera phones convenient but the photography apps available for the Android platform create marvelous artist effects all in the palm of your hand. I tested many of the photography apps for the Android and found these to by my favorites.

Vignette
Vignette is a Droid app that gives your digital images a variety of looks characterized by vignettes, over-saturation, colorizing, cropping and framing. Not only can you take a pic using Vignette for an instant effect but you can also import existing pics and apply any of the 62 effects and 20 frame styles. If you’re looking for an app that has funny word balloons, face distortions and stickers, Vignette is not the one. It’s designed for the serious photographer wanting authentic looking old camera effects.

You can download the free version with all the features but the output image resolution is restricted to .3mb or about 640 x 480 pixels maximum. Once you review the free version then you’ll realize the full version for $3.99 is well worth it. The paid version saves the images at your cameras full resolution.

Here are a few of the cool features you can do with Vignette:
-Choose an effect and a frame and save the combination as a favorite.
-save images at full resolution or choose from five others with lower resolution (good for uploading).
-Choose to store location data.
-Double exposures, Continuous shooting, Time lapse and Steady shot.
-Ilford, Velvia, and Portra effects
-Graduated filter effects, tilt-shift for a miniature look.
-Cinematic effects like the1930’s movie look.
-Panorama frames, 5:4 Large format, Square, Grungy frames.
-A digital zoom function that is essentially a cropping function.

Vignette UI

Retro Camera
Take a leap back in time by downloading Retro Camera. It takes the ordinary digital image and gives it that analog look from any of it’s 5 different cameras The Bärbl, The Little Orange Box, Xolaroid 2000, The Pinhole Camera, and The FudgeCan. The UI is fun and easy to learn and when taking pics the camera-back is shown with a viewfinder for composing. Each camera has a toggle for creating B&W images, flash options, Shutter sounds, Timer, Frames, and Focus options.

One downside of Retro Camera is the final image resolution is only 972 pixels and that’s only if you turn “High Resolution ON” in the settings menu. If you use the free version you’ll have to deal with ads and the dreaded accidental ad launch. The paid version ($3.99) is ad free but don’t count on higher resolution or more features, it’s the same.

Unfortunately, when photos are taken they’re not displayed. You have to press the gallery button and wait for about 25 seconds for the image to load. This becomes an inconvenience when you want to show someone the photo or if you want to decide if you like the effect.

PicSay
Imagine you’re a contestant on Survivor and you can bring one app on your phone. That app should not be Angry Birds, but PicSay. PicSay is the most popular photo app for the Android platform. It allows processing of your images with lots of creative choices from the funny effects to more serious post-processing. It’s a hands-on app for processing color, contrast, exposure, vignetting, saturation, temperature and even sharpening and red-eye.

If user reviews are an important test of its worthiness then PicSay is a definite winner with 5 stars for almost every review. This program is full of goodies so don’t let the corny word balloons and stickers dissuade you from digging deeper into what it offers. There is a free version but the paid version for $4.00 has many added features and is worth it.

The paid version has:
Editing in 24-bit color
Cut out parts of one pic and add them to another.
Use your finger to paint with different sized soft and hard edged brushes, with Undo.
Colorize B&W pics using the Pop Colors effect
Color correct, Sharpen and repair red-eye
Apply vignettes, cross process, sepia toning, duotone, LOMO and B&W
Easily export the final image to your online page or save it to the SD card

PicSay doesn’t capture images but processes pics that already exist on your SD card. It opens with “Get a picture” and allows you to browse your gallery for an image. PicSay’s imports with a maximum size of 1024x768 and saves in that size. Once brought into PicSay, not only can you apply multiple effects but a slider appears along the bottom of the window that allows adjustment of the effect from 0-100%. A very nice feature for changing the intensity of an effect. What’s also nifty is you can add an effect several times to enhance it’s intensity, vignette, for example.

PicSay would be more popular with a few added features. It has the LOMO effect and Cross Processing, but a few more old-camera effects would make it even better. I’d like to see a grunge frame, ability to add scratches to an image, camera leak and pinhole.

FXCamera
FX Camera is a nifty app that has 6 camera choices ToyCamera, Polandroid, Fisheye, SymmetriCam, Warhol, and Normal Camera. Each camera choice has several variations, for example the ToyCamera effect can be B&W, Warm, High Contrast, and a variety of tones, the default is cross-process. It nice that each photo taken is automatically processed and displayed.

What really stands out in FX Camera is the UI is quick and easy with good visual cues. When you’re on the go and you want a quick shot with a really great effects, FX Camera is the easy choice. It’s one of the few apps that all 6 effects are excellent, it’s a shame the resolution is so low 960 x 640 px.

A few areas that could be improved, you can’t turn off the shutter sound, you can’t zoom and you can’t import pics from your SD card and add an effect, and it needs to save with more resolution.

Adobe Photoshop Express
After years using Adobe products and loving them I have to say when I downloaded the Adobe Photoshop Express app I expected so much more. What it does, it does very well, but its features are limited.

Before I cover the bad news, let’s cover the good news. Here’s one, it’s FREE and there are no ads. You can upload your images to Photoshop.com, Facebook or TwitPic. The UI is easy to learn and it has the ability to intensify an effect, like saturation with a slide of the finger across the screen. The crop feature is nice, it offers straighten and flip. It also does a very nice job with basic adjustments like exposure, saturation, contrast, tint, and B&W.

In addition to basic adjustments Adobe added 7 different effects, 3 of those are unique: Pop, Vignette Blur, and Rainbow, but the others are combination of two basic adjustments, for example, contrast and saturation is the “Vibrant” effect. Probably the more unique effect is “Pop” which duplicates the image 4 times with a different tint, a la Warhol style.

Now for the bad news. The edited and saved version of your pic is only 1024 x 768 px. You can’t browse by folders, all photos on your SD card are lumped together. It has limited functions: no sharpening, no red-eye repair, no white balance, no zoom when editing, no artistic effects like pencil sketch, no Faux HDR, and no exif data. The Borders (frame) effects are simply put, elementary.

One additional issue. It’s quite common for this app to give the error: “No pictures on camera” If you have this problem go to Menu>More>settings> then uncheck “Show Camera Photos Only in Phone view.”

Adobe has a good app with basic image editing abilities. I think they could have added more features with their wealth of knowledge on the subject. Perhaps something incredible is in the making for the next version, we’ll see.

JustPictures
JustPictures is an excellent app for displaying your photos on the SD card as well as photos from Picasa, Flickr, Smugmug, Facebook, Photobucket, Windows Live, Tumblr, and Deviant Art. The UI is clean with fullscreen viewing and even exif data when available.

This app loads photos and albums quickly (local and online) and allows an impromptu showing of your work. It’s not unusual for me to chat with someone, talk about an image, then presto open the image on my phone without skipping a beat.

When you link to an account like Flickr, for example, you can be an anonymous viewer or if it’s your account you can login and authorize JustPictures to access private albums. It’s a nice app for showing your pictures without the text or comments distracting from the image. You can also go to any of your albums, add the image to “favorites” then run a slideshow of those favorites. There is even a “batch mode” for selecting numerous images in an album which allows you to send, save or favorite those images.

Quick Pic
Quick Pic is another excellent picture viewer that provides fast high resolution thumbnails not unlike the iphone. It’s an app that makes it easy to zoom, scroll, rotate, share, crop and set the image to wallpaper.

Each folder of images shows a set of 4 images within the folder for quick detection of the folder contents. This has been my go to app rather than the built in gallery viewer that comes with android.

Photaf
Photaf is an app that creates panorama’s easily by using the camera’s orientation sensor. From the menu simply choose “Create Panorama” and the app enters camera mode. In Landscape orientation shoot 9 to 12 images being careful to overlap each image for a 3-D pano. There is a neat icon in the bottom that shows the previous image and a floating box that moves with camera orientation and turns green when overlap is correct.

Although Photaf is a cool program and makes for entertaining show and tell, it’s not going to give you seamless stitching every time. The app gives you a chance to restitch if you desire and as in all pano work, good technique can make a big difference in the final stitching. Try to rotate the camera around an axis that is vertical and passes through the lens rather than swing the camera in an arc with your arms extended.

In the settings menu you can choose higher resolution images and reduce the Field of View. You can upload your pano to Photaf.com or you can do the usual social networking. The app saves the individual images too and that’s where the beauty of this app comes in. While on vacation you can instantly upload a “rough” draft of your panorama and then when home, you can download the individual pics to your computer and stitch them with more sophisticated stitching software. Presto, quick sharing of panos followed with high quality if needed. I’m using the free version, there is a paid version for $3.99 that has a few added features and is ad free.

Picplz
Picplz is a camera and image processing app that has 9 effects to style your photos with vintage, 70’s, black & white, and toy camera. The app is similar to the popular Instagram for the iphone.

What makes Picplz different from the others is how it shares your images. The original image is saved to your SD card, the processed image is uploaded to your Picplz account. Yes, you have to create an account to use the app, then as you take photos they are uploaded to Picplz.com, all done in the background. Others members on Picplz can view photos and “like” them, ultimately raising a photo to the “interesting” page.

PicPlz won’t dazzle you with processing options but if sharing photos on multiple social networks at once is something you like, then PicPlz is worth using. It connects to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare and Dropbox.

Camera360
Camera360 has many effects and many camera functions. The free version is excellent but for more effects the paid version ($3.99 USD) can easily become your camera app of choice. It has some fun, gimmicky stuff but it also fills the need for some seriously artsy photos.

You can save the original photo along with the processed one at full resolution or less. After a photo is taken it’s instantly displayed and you’re given the choice to save, delete or share. While processing a photo, if you press the screen the unprocessed image will be displayed. It a cool way to see what the effect does to the image.

You can turn shutter sounds off, change image resolution, set a timer, use image stabilizer, and control flash all within the app. Drag your finger across the bottom bar on the screen to apply a digital zoom, it’s quick and easy.

It doesn’t take long to learn the UI. There are 6 photo MODES: Effect, Scenery Funny, Tilt-Shift, Colour-shift and Normal. Within each MODE there are effects to choose from. For example, the Effect mode has 10 different effects, such as HDR Simulation, LOMO, Back to 1839, B&W Visual Storm and Night Enchancement. Some of those effects allow you to tap a small icon for more toning effects. One nice part of the UI is that all the effects include thumbnail samples to speed up selection.

Unfortunately, the app does not import images from your SD card, it applies effects to photos as you take them. But what I really like about this app and Vignette is the ability to apply an effect and save it at full resolution.