Part of a waterfall on Yanmingshan, Taiwan shot on an Android.
In the photography community, there’s a lot of discussion about iPhone photography and the various apps but surprisingly little about what’s available for Android. With Android’s market share increasing steadily, more and more photographers will be getting their hands on one, so what’s out there in the world of photography-related apps? What follows is in no particular order.
Before we get into it, I want to remind you about Selina Maitreya’s The View From Here. Selina brings 3 decades of portfolio consultancy experience and wisdom to this MP3 series that’s a must-have for anyone either contemplating becoming a working photographer or professionals looking for a little extra inspiration. Normally $199, it’s available at a 50% discount using the code FOSCFI.
Photoshop.com Mobile – The official Photoshop app, this one offers a few basic tools such as brightness, contrast, crop, saturation and more. There are a series of simple filters offering vignettes, sepia tones, soft focus and so forth, as well as the ability to upload directly to Photoshop.com, Facebook and Twitter.
Easy Release – Easy Release is a full featured model release app. It comes bundled with industry standard (Getty Images) model and property release forms in 13 languages. You can enter data and signatures and email yourself a PDF of the release. $9.99
Easy Release
Model Release Pal (beta) – A simpler, more basic release app than Easy Release, it allows unlimited contacts, contract and signature export. Free.
PicSay – PicSay has both a free version and a pro (paid) version. Users can do some color correction, cropping, add text as titles or in word balloons and apply special effects. The pro version also allows red eye correction, cross processing effects and more. This is the app for when you want to have fun.
FxCamera – FxCamera (free) offers users a selection of filters and effects including the likes of toycam, fisheye and polaroid. The filters here give an arty kind of look, perfect for the creative photographer.
FX Camera
PhotoDroidApp – This free app lets you calculate hyperfocal distance, depth of field, sun/moon rise and set times and more.
CameraZoom FX – This paid app offers voice activated timer, geotagging, silent modes, autosave, stabilization, digital zoom. Effects include distort, frame, mirror and more – well over 40 effects in all.
These are just a few of the fun, useful or commonly used apps available. As more and more people move to smartphones, or swithcover to the Android system, expect more apps to be released. I’d personally love to see an Android version of Chase Jarvis’ “Best Camera”. My wife uses that all the time on her iPhone so it’d be great to have it for Android as well. Got any others you recommend? Leave a note in the comments below.
Photoshop
That was the 285th Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.
