If you haven't noticed, ThePlanetD is a very photo heavy website. We use iPhone photography apps that we count on to bring out the best in our photos and we wanted to share a few of our favourites with you.
We've been fortunate enough to be named one of the best travel instagrammers to follow by Yahoo Travel, we've been featured by Pinterest and The Society of American Travel Writers named Dave Best Wildlife photography of 2013.
The Best iPhone Photography Apps for Instagram
Lately we've been focusing on Instagram quite a bit. We love going through our feed every morning to see where our friends and followers are exploring around the world. For us, Instagram is quite different from our other photography. We love saturating colours, using filters and creating an artistic feel to our pictures. It's fun to create and imagine and inspire travel through images.
9 Great iPhone Photography Apps
Much of our Instagram is still taken on our iPhone but we also have some other photography apps on our iPhone that help us out with our DSLR shots as well. Whether you are an iPhone photographer or consistently on your DSLR, here are some of our favourite iPhone photography apps that we use daily to create the perfect shot to capture our mood.
Snapseed
Snapseed has been our “go to” iPhone app since the start. It is an excellent all around photo editing tool that can sharpen and tune images, straighten and crop photos, create drama, texture and even hdr effects to your photos. It's the perfect place to start when looking for a tool to edit iPhone images. Get snapseed now
Fotor
We were introduced to Fotor through Expedia Viewfinder. While working with them, they gave us a link to a great online photo editing tool that does basic editing from cropping, colour correction, smoothing wrinkles on faces, creating collages and adding text. On my desktop I do quite a bit with it, when it comes to my phone, I use it mostly for text. Visit Fotor for more
Text added by Fotor
Pro HDR
For contrasting conditions, we still us ProHDR. It's an excellent photography app because the iPhone doesn't take the best photograph when conditions are high in contrast, but when you use ProHDR, it takes two different photos exposing for light and dark. It then blends the shots together allowing the photograph to show details in the light sky and the dark shadows. Visit iTunes to download Pro HDR
Long Expo
We cannot believe how well this iPhone app works. Long expo allows you to take long exposures with your iphone. If you have a small tripod, you can set up your iPhone, use the timer to take a shot and then set the desired exposure time to capture things like that velvety water cascading over waterfalls. It works it really works! Download Long Expo Slow Shutter
Waterfall taken with iPhone
SkySafari
Sky Safari allows you to look at constellations and where the Milky way is going to be based on your location. You can look up where the stars will be at a certain time of night and plan your photography around that. If you want the milky way to be low in the sky, you can check Sky Safari to see what time it will be low in the horizon and set your alarm to get up when you need to. It's an amazing app for night safari. Sky Safari for apple
Star gazing with aid of sky safari
PS Express
We use this in conjunction with snapseed. Our favourite part of PS Express is the healing brush and the noise reduction. We find that iPhones create a lot of noise in the image when taking photos and PS Express helps us take away the noise. Dark clouds have always been tricky on the iPhone, but with PS Express, we smooth the pixels and dots away. The healing brush allows you to take dust spots or any unwanted items out of the image. PS Express also gives you great control over highlights and shadows. For more visit PS Express by Adobe
PS Express lets you reduce noise in an image
Timelapse Helper
If you like taking timelapse photography, Timelapse helper is a great tool. For example: If you want to finish with 30 seconds of time lapse video,it calculates how far apart your shots need to be taken (the intervals) and how many shots it will take to acheive that length of time lapse. You can punch in your numbers and it does the math for you! Get Timelapse helper here.
Sun Seeker
Sun seeker shows you where the sun will be at any time of day. It has a 3D augmented reality that shows you how shadows will fall and where the sun will be. So if you want to come back for a sunset shot of the Taj Mahal, Sun Seeker will help you decide on the perfect time to achieve your desired look. See more about the Sunseeker 3D Augmented viewer on iTunes
Knowing when the sun rises with sunseeker
Stuck on Earth
Stuck on Earth was created by Trey Radcliff. It crowd sources people's photographs with GPS coordtinates. So if you want to take a photo of for example The Grand Canyon, you can search for your location on his app, and look at all the photos that are taken from all the different gps co of that location. That way you can decide what angle or view you want to show off. As someone endorsed on the app…. “It is the ultimate scouting tool.” You can find download links at StuckonEarthapp.com
Note: This app is only available on iPad but we wanted to include it.
Best Iphone photography apps
So make sure to follow us on Instagram!
Say hello to let us know you're there so we can see your photos too!
Most of these apps are free or very reasonable, so get them now! Do you have any app suggestions that you can't live without for your iPhone?
David Mike says
For the iPhone photography, it’s really so important to use the quality apps. On other hands you don’t catch the good picture. Many many thanks for sharing with us the great article.
Josh says
Love the advice! You should really take a look at this app for places to visit, because it beats that stuck on earth thing by tons. It’s called Stand Here and can be found in the iTunes app store. Stand Here is awesome, seriously something you guys should look into!
Amber says
Heading out to Lombok Indonesia today with my new iPhone 6. First trip with it, so I downloaded a few of these to try out. Thanks!
Mian says
Thanks for the Apps, specially for newbies like me in this field. can you please recommend some average editing software too? Thanks
Tom Bartel says
Thanks for these Dave. I’ve been using Snapseed a little, and am looking forward to trying out Pro HDR and Fotor. According to the reviews, though, Long Expo hasn’t been updated yet and is crashing IOS 8. Guess I’ll wait for that one.
Dave and Deb says
Thanks for the heads up Tom, we haven’t had a problem with Long Expo, yet, but probably now that you’ve told us, the next time we use it, it will crash:) Thanks for letting us know!
Patrick Johnson says
beautiful photos and the information about photography apps is really nice…There are plenty of Photography apps which would make sure that whatever images you have marked can be edited properly. These apps provides many features like red-eye, various effects like Unicolor, Vintage, defaults etc or let one use borders or stickers.
Tina says
Thanks for sharing those useful apps., The photo of PS Express is stunning… All of them are beautiful..
Jen Seligmann says
I’m always after some new photo apps for my iPhone so I found this post very helpful. I currently use Snapseed and Camera+ which I love because it has so many easy to use features that enhance your photos without making them look too much like they have been worked on. Thanks for sharing these, I’ll be busy downloading and playing around with them over the next few days!
Shelley says
Thanks for sharing – I’m going to definitely give these aps a go! Love your photos!
Ben says
The post is amazing. Thanks for these great tips.
Dave and Deb says
Thanks, glad we could help!
Amanda says
Great list, guys! I use quite a few of these apps myself on my iPhone (I don’t know how I ever survived pre-Snapseed!), but I appreciate the tip on PS Express! Going to check that out right now!
Dave and Deb says
Super, you are going to love PS Express. It cleans up a lot of the little things than can be so annoying in an iPhone photo. I use it for noise mostly, but Dave plays around with a few things in it. Have fun.
Casey @ A Cruising Couple says
Awesome tips! We love love love snapseed and don’t know how we ever really survived without it, but it’s always great to learn a few more handy go-tos during difficult photography situations. Amazing what iphones can do, isn’t it?!
Dave and Deb says
It is amazing isn’t it? Sometimes we just go around snapping shots with the phone instead of pulling out the DSLR. It’s so convenient and the photos turn out so great.
Ramon says
Great post. I love the apps you mention. I also highly recommend Mextures. Really unique in its approach to photo editing. Like Photoshop it works with layers and blending.
Dave and Deb says
Thanks for the tip. I had never heard of Mextures, so I’ll definitely check it out.
Londoner Kate says
This is great. I have a few speckles stuck in my iPhone lens which show up on every photo. I guess I buy that app or learn to live with the specks!
Dave and Deb says
I had specks on my old iPhone. I got it in just in time before my warranty expired. If you are still under warranty, bring it in. I think it’s a common problem.
We Travel Together says
Thank you for sharing your experience with iphone apps 🙂
Glamourous Traveller says
Thanks so much for these! I’ve always been envious of all the amazing photos travellers have taken just using their phones and now I know some of their secrets! I’ve used Snapseed and it’s pretty intuitive which is great for a technology dinosaur like me, hopefully the others are just as easy. (Downloading Long Expo and Pro HDR right now)
Dave and Deb says
So glad we could give you some ideas on how to take better iPhone photos. Yes indeed, there are many little tricks and tips to create amazing photos. We’ve barely scratched the surface, but these are certainly a great start. Let us know how you like Long Expo and Pro HDR. Cheers!
Dave and Deb says
Awesome, glad we could help you out!
Cory Lee says
Great suggestions! I’ve never heard of many of these, but will definitely be downloading them soon. Another great one that I like is Camera+. It’s a few dollars I think, but has awesome filters and editing options. Keep up the great photography! 🙂
Dave and Deb says
Great addition Cory. We’ve used Camera+ as well and it is an excellent app. We haven’t used it in a while, but I’ll have to go back and check it out again. Cheers!
Emily says
I’m a big advocate of SnapSeed, so I will have to try out the other apps you’ve mentioned – thanks!
Samantha says
I love Pro HDR and Snapsneed! I have an Android and I have to say that there are a few iPhone photo editing apps which I really wish they made for Android. Those two are the only ones I’ve really fallen in love with. I just downloaded Adobo Photoshop Express (similar to the PS Express app). I love that picture of the kayak on the lake!
Andrea Anastasiou says
Great article! And I absolutely love the shot you guys took the the Pro HDR app – where was that?
I’ll definitely be downloading some of these apps!
Dave and Deb says
Hi Andrea, that shot was taken in Ontario at Timberwolf Lodge. It’s a fly in fishing lodge way up North.