9. Photography Apps That Expand Your Photo Editing and Enhancement Capabilities

You already know that the Camera app can be used to take photos by utilizing the front- and/or rear-facing cameras that are built in to the iPhone or iPad. Then, those photos can be viewed, edited, enhanced, printed, or shared from the Photos app. Or, if you want to expand what’s possible, instead of using the Photos app that comes preinstalled with iOS 7, you can take advantage of Apple’s own iPhoto app (which you learned about in Chapter 7, “Expand Your Photo Editing Toolbox with iPhoto”).

Yet another option is to download a third-party photography app that’s designed specifically for photo editing and image enhancement. These apps typically include tools and features not found in the Photos or iPhoto apps but that can be used to quickly and dramatically improve the appearance of your images, without first having to transfer them to a PC or Mac for editing. This chapter showcases a handful of third-party apps that can be used for photo editing, image enhancement, and sharing, directly from your iPhone or iPad.

Keep in mind that although many of the third-party photo editing and image enhancement apps are compatible with the iPhone and iPad, doing detailed image editing that goes well beyond applying a precreated filter or frame to an entire image is much easier to do when you’re working with an iPad or iPad mini’s larger screen (compared with the iPhone).

The following sections detail five popular and powerful photo editing and image enhancement apps that can be used on both images captured using your iOS mobile device or that are transferred into or stored on your iPhone or iPad. In some cases, these apps also have picture-taking capabilities built in, which can be used instead of the Camera app for snapping photos.

The Adobe Photoshop Touch app ($4.99), however, offers some of the same photo editing and image enhancement capabilities as what was otherwise only possible on a Mac or PC, but allows anyone to use these tools directly on an iPhone or iPad.

What’s great about Adobe Photoshop Touch is that it enables you to edit or enhance specific areas in a photo, as opposed to simply applying a filter or effect to an entire image. If you’re a Photoshop Creative Cloud (Mac or PC) user, you can automatically sync images between your computer and your iPhone or iPad, and edit images on either platform.

When you first launch Adobe Photoshop Touch, be sure to take advantage of the onscreen tutorials to help you get acquainted with this rather detailed and complex app, as well as the specific editing and enhancement tools it offers (see Figure 9-1). Tap on the Begin a Tutorial button, and then select which feature or function you want to learn more about. For example, you can quickly learn how to use layers or selections, add dramatic flair to an image, paint with visual effects, replace individual colors within photos, add artistic frames, clean up the background in an image, or blend multiple images together into one.

As you’re ultimately working with your own images, you can mix and match the app’s built-in effects.

To begin editing your own images, tap on the Create a New Project icon or the Import Image icon, both of which are displayed near the bottom center of the main app screen.

When you use the Create a New Project option, you can start with a blank canvas of any size. Simply enter the desired width and height of the virtual canvas (which is measured in pixels). However, when you import an image, you can load any digital image that’s stored in your iOS mobile device or that’s stored online in Adobe’s Creative Cloud, Google, or Facebook. It’s also possible to import images directly from a standalone digital camera.

After a single image is loaded into the Adobe Photoshop Touch app (see Figure 9-2), all of your editing and image enhancement tools are displayed as icons along the top and in the left and right margins of the screen. Select a tool, and then use your finger or an optional stylus to use that tool on the selected image.

For example, tap on the Adjustments icon (displayed near the top-right corner of the app’s screen) to access a menu that contains a dozen easy-to-use tools for adjusting specific elements of an image, such as saturation, brightness/contrast, temperature, or color balance.

Tap on the Auto Fix option to quickly enhance an image and automatically adjust all of these elements with a single tap. However, if you select one of these tools to work with, a specialized slider displays.

Tap on the fx icon to access 36 different special effect filters that you can instantly apply to an entire image, and then manually adjust the intensity of the filter using onscreen sliders (see Figure 9-3). Another option is to tap on the & icon, which then displays a submenu offering additional photo editing tools that are at your disposal, such as a Crop, Image Size, Rotate, or Lens Flare.

After you’ve used the various editing tools to edit or enhance your image, be sure to save your work in the Adobe Photoshop Touch app. Then, from the app’s main menu screen, tap on the Share icon to upload the image to Adobe Creative Cloud, export the image to your Camera Roll folder (to be stored on your iOS mobile device so it’s accessible using other photography apps, including Photos or iPhoto), or export and share the image via the Messages, Mail, Twitter, or Facebook app.

From the app’s Share menu, it’s also possible to export an image directly to another compatible photography app, such as iPhoto, Shutterfly, or Instagram, or print the image using an AirPrint-compatible printer.

If you’re serious about photo editing and want a powerful collection of tools available to you from your iPhone or iPad that rivals what’s possible using Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud on a Mac or PC, you’ll definitely want to use the Adobe Photoshop Touch app, providing you’re willing to invest the time needed to learn how to use the app and its various features.

This app has a steep learning curve compared with others, but what’s possible using this app goes unrivaled, making it a must-have app for serious hobbyists, as well as semiprofessional and professional photographers.

The Camera mode works very much like the Camera app. The main area of the screen serves as your viewfinder. The large white circle icon is your Shutter button. Tap on the Grid option to superimpose a tic-tac-toe-like grid over the viewfinder to use as you frame and compose your shots.

Use the Camera Selection icon to switch between the front- and rear-facing cameras built in to your iPhone or iPad. Tap on the Self-Timer icon one or more times to activate and then set the self-timer for 3, 7, or 10 seconds. Tap on the Cancel option to exit out of the Camera mode and return to the app’s main menu screen.

When you tap on Afterlight’s Photo Editor icon to begin editing your photos, you’re given the option to access any photo that’s stored on your iPhone or iPad. After you’ve selected an image, icons that represent your image editing tools appear along the bottom of the screen (see Figure 9-4). From left to right, this includes a Revert Image tool, the Adjustments Menu icon, the Filters Menu icon, an Effects Menu icon, a Crop/Rotation Tools Menu icon, and a Frame and Text Menu icon.

Although each of these tools impacts an entire image, after you select a specific tool, you can adjust its intensity using an onscreen slider. As you’ll discover, Afterlight offers dozens of easy-to-use and powerful photo editing and image enhancement tools but does not offer the capability to utilize each tool on specific areas of an image, which is something that Adobe Photoshop Touch offers. You can, however, mix and match photo editing and enhancement tools, plus adjust the intensity of each, which gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility and ability to use your own creativity when working with your images.

After you edit images, you can save them in Small, Medium, or Maximum resolution (which impacts an image’s file size) and then export them to your iOS mobile device’s Camera Roll folder as well as to Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, or other third-party photography apps. You can also share them via email (using the Mail app) or send them as a virtual postcard from within the Afterlight app.

To load an image into this image editing app, launch Photo Editor-, and then tap on the File (folder-shaped) icon that’s displayed in the top-left corner of the screen. Choose an album, and then select one or more images by tapping on their respective thumbnails. When you do this, one at a time, the images appear in the main area of the screen, while a collection of 16 editing and enhancement tool icons appears along the bottom of the screen (see Figure 9-5).

From left to right, these 16 editing and enhancement tools are as follows:

Enhance—Tap on this option to reveal a submenu that allows for one-tap image enhancements related to Hi-Def, Illuminate, or Color Fix.

Effects—With a single tap, apply one of a dozen “Original” effect filters to your entire image. These filters are not adjustable, but you can combine filters to create many unique effects (see Figure 9-6). Tap on the Add Effects button to add a dozen additional filters. (This requires a $1.99 in-app purchase.)

Frames—Choose from a dozen digital frames that can be added as a border around the image you’re editing. You can acquire additional frame sets through in-app purchases.

Stickers—The app comes with a set of 24 virtual stickers that you can place in your images, and then resize and rotate (see Figure 9-7). Additional sticker “packs” are available through in-app purchases.

Focus—Choose what area of the image should be the primary focal point by selecting this tool, and then tapping on a specific area within the image. This autofocuses the image, ensuring that the area you selected becomes the sharpest area of the image. As you go further from the selected point, the image slightly blurs.

Orientation—Tap on this tool to access a submenu that enables you to rotate an image left or right, or flip the image horizontally or vertically.

Crop—Manually crop the image you’re working with and/or set its aspect ratio.

Adjust—Access a submenu that enables you to manually adjust the brightness, contrast, warmth, and/or saturation within the image separately using sliders.

Sharpness—Use a slider to manually adjust the sharpness of an image, enabling you to transform a slightly blurry image into one that’s more in focus. Move the slider to the left to blur an image. This tool applies to the entire image.

Splash—Use this tool to transform a full-color image into black and white, and then to replace the color in only specific areas of the image (if you choose).

Draw—Using your finger, choose a pen thickness and color, and then manually draw on the screen. What you finger-paint on the screen is superimposed over the photo you’re editing.

Text—Add a text-based caption or title to your photo. You can also adjust the text size and font color, and then reposition or rotate the text manually. It’s not, however, possible to change the font.

Redeye—Use this tool to quickly repair red-eye that appears in a photo as a result of using the flash.

Whiten—If your subject is smiling, tap on this tool and paint over the teeth to whiten and brighten his or her smile.

Blemish—Remove an unwanted blemish from a subject’s face. This tool is mainly for editing portraits but can be used to remove small and unwanted objects from an image.

Meme—Add a bold, text-based heading to the top and/or bottom of the image.

When you’re finished editing an image, tap on the Done button. The image is saved and you have the opportunity to share it via AirDrop or using the Message, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram apps. You also can export the image and use it with another app when you utilize the Copy command. Finally, you can print to an AirPrint-compatible printer by tapping on the Print button, which is part of the Share menu that automatically appears when you tap the Done button.

Photo Editor- is an extremely easy-to-use app that makes editing and enhancing digital images a quick process. The capability to mix and match editing and enhancement tools is a huge benefit, although one drawback of this app is that many of the tools must be applied to an entire image, as opposed to just an area within an image.

What’s great about PhotoToaster is that the majority of the available enhancement tools can be painted onto specific areas of an image, which gives you a tremendous level of creative control and flexibility. In addition to the various special effect filters, it’s possible to crop, rotate, or straighten an image; adjust the contrast, brightness, and saturation within an image; plus add an optional and selectable frame or border around the image (there are many to choose from).

When you’ve finished editing an image, tap on the Share icon displayed in the top-right corner of the screen. When the Save To menu appears, you can opt to save the edited version of the image to your iOS mobile device’s Photo Library, email the image, print it using an AirPrint-compatible printer, or upload the image to Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, or Twitter from directly within the app.

PhotoToaster is a powerful app for editing and enhancing photos. It is more versatile than many optional photography apps, but doesn’t offer as much control over individual editing options as the Adobe Photoshop Touch app (which is more complicated to use).

From the main menu, tap on the leftmost Open Images From Menu icon to select the Camera option, or choose an image to edit from your iPhone or iPad’s internal storage (Gallery). It’s also possible to select an image from your online-based Facebook account.

After you’ve selected and displayed an image (see Figure 9-10), tap on the Edits button to access the Autofix, Crop, Straighten, Brightness, and Color tools (see Figure 9-11). Then, to add an optional special effect filter to the image, tap on the Filters button. There are 18 special effect filters to choose from. After a filter is applied to an entire image, it’s possible to use the onscreen slider to manually adjust the intensity of that filter.

Next, select an optional frame or border to superimpose around the outer edge of the image you’re working with by tapping on the Frames button, followed by the frame option of your choosing.

To create image layers, apply virtual stickers or pointers to your image, superimpose attention-getting shapes over your image, draw with your finger directly on an image, or add a variety of other effects, tap on the Extras button, and then choose the effect you want to add.

When you’ve finished editing the image you’re working with, tap on the Share button that’s displayed at the bottom-right corner of the screen. You can then save your image, send it via email, or upload it directly to Twitter or Facebook.

What’s nice about the PicShop HD Photo Editor is the large and easy-to-understand menu buttons, as well as the capability to mix and match enhancement tools and effects to quickly, but dramatically, enhance an image.

Use the Photo Mosaica app (free) to create single mosaic images from an entire album worth of images, or use the Over app ($1.99) to incorporate customized text and/or professionally designed clip art to your images.

If you want to transform a full-color photo into a visually stunning black-and-white image, and then be able to work with the monochromatic shades of gray, black, and white to create vivid effects, the Monokrom Photo Editor app ($0.99) is extremely useful (see Figure 9-14).

Meanwhile, if you want to transform a photo into black and white, but colorize only a specific object or subject within your images, the Color Splash for iPad app ($0.99) makes creating this type of effect easy.

The Pic Stitch app (free) enables you to combine multiple images into one collage image that can be printed, viewed on a computer or iOS mobile device, or shared via any online social networking service. This app offers 232 different collage templates, plus special effect filters that can be added to one or more images within a collage. (Additional filters, frames, borders, and collage templates are available as in-app purchases.) You can also use the InstaStitch app (free) to combine multiple images into eye-catching collages.

Next, from your iPhone or iPad, choose one or more of the photo editing or image enhancement apps that offer the tools you want or need to ultimately give your images the appearance you desire, and that will enable you to achieve your creative vision.

To help you get the most out of the features and functions available to you from the third-party photography apps, consider using them with various iPhone or iPad photography accessories. Check out Chapter 10, “Use Optional Accessories to Improve Your Pictures,” to learn about some of the optional lenses, tripods, lights, and other tools you can use with your iOS mobile device when taking and/or editing photos.