If you’re an avid iPhone photographer, you know that photo editing is crucial in unleashing the full potential of what your camera has just captured. Online programs can be sketchy (all those pop-up ads?) and impractical, given your photo is on your phone. Plus, there are so many photo editing apps out there that offer the exact same thing. If you have had these problems, I’ve been there too. Through downloading way too many photography apps, I have been able to narrow my app folder to 4 free ones that lets me do everything within my liking. Ever wondered what the best app for photo stitching would be? What about drawing doodles and adding stickers? How do I edit my own photos? Read on to find out.
1. Vscocam
Probably everyone’s favourite photo editing app, Vscocam allows users to navigate it’s simple but aesthetically pleasing interface and add filters and make detailed edits on their photos. This is such a simple-to-use app that it is hard not to love it. Free from the App Store, get it now if you don’t have it already!
For this photo, taken in the HAY Design House in Copenhagen, I used Vsco to turn the image on the left to what you see to the right. Here’s what I did:
Exposure: +5
Temperature: -1
Contrast: -1
Fade: +2
Saturation: +2
Another image taken from Denmark at the Roskilde Cathederal. Very similar adjustments as the last image were made.
2. Aillis
Aillis, or Art is Long, Life is Short, is a comprehensive and personalizable Japanese photo editing app that allows users to add cute “stickers” to their pictures, draw on them with multiple line effects, add borders and filters, and edit and beautify images. Basically, it is an all-in-one app. I did find it hard to navigate at first but after using it more, I have grown to like it more. There are definitely others who can utilize this app much better than I do, but no matter what degree of expertise you have, this app is worth a try.
Tip: having a stylus can be helpful for drawing lines and shapes in this app. Don’t have a stylus? Don’t fret, learn to DIY one with simple materials.
For this photo, I used the line tool in dotted and mixed the colour of the line to match that of the flowers. I used a light brush tip and outlined the flowers with freehand. I’ve definitely underutilized the tools I had to begin with in this photo so I highly recommend you try the app’s impressive retouching features.
3. Photogrid
How could I make a favourite photo editing apps post without mentioning the app that allowed me to create the side-by-side comparisons of these featured pictures? After struggling to find a good photo stitching app that would allow me to seamlessly put two or more photos together, I stumbled across Photogrid and got so much more than that. The app not only allows you to stich photos, it also allows you to retouch, edit, add backgrounds, add filters, and add stickers.
For this incredibly embarrassing photo of myself taken in Denmark that I edited for the purpose of this post (why did I do this to myself), I used the photo stiching capabilities of the app that you have already seen, as well as two of it’s stickers.
4. Adobe Color
This app is meant for you to create colour pallets from photos you have taken but the cute little colour dots are so cute that I couldn’t help but love this app for a reason other than creating colour schemes. Since the app doesn’t let you export the images with the colour dots on them, the only way to save them is to screen shot and crop out the excess later.
For this image, I basically did what the app can do. I played around with which colours I wanted to show up where and placed the dots as well and then screen shotted and cropped the image the create the finished version on the right.
These are my 4 essential photo editing apps, I would love to know what yours are! Comment below to leave me your response.
All opinions are my own