iPhone users are, by definition, beautiful, talented, creative types, so it seems fitting that we take achingly cool photos with our humble handset. You know, for those days when we forget our old-school Pentax SLRs or Lomo cameras. Read on to explore a range of free and cheap apps to hipster-up your photos.
Hipstamatic (£1.19)
The grass is always greener on the other side – which is why, even though we have megapixels coming out of our ears and digital photos have never been such high quality, we crave the flawed, washed-out photos of yore. Hipstamatic kicks it old school with an array of traditional camera lens, flash and ‘film’ options providing a range of deliciously retro effects (pictured right). The basic version comes with limited options, but you can purchase more via the Hipstamart. Even the interface is tailored to meet your vintage needs – you’ll have to wait for the transistors to warm up and for your prints. iTunes link
Photoshop.com Mobile (free)
Sometimes that beautiful shot of an Irn-Bru vending machine you spent hours framing while your other half impatiently tapped their foot doesn’t come out quite as well as you hoped. Never fear, you can crop, straighten or rotate using the Photoshop app. As if that wasn’t enough, you can go further by tweaking the exposure, contrast and saturation, as well as getting a bit artier by turning the photo black and white, making it a romantic, soft-focus vending machine or applying effects like sketch, rainbow or blur. It’s almost as though you’re a real life photographer! All you need now is a portfolio website and you can start raking in the cash. (sketch and border effects pictured right) iTunes link
Satromizer (£1.79)
Photoshop not arty enough for you? Never fear, Satromizer takes it further. Named after Jon Satrom, a Chicago-based artist who uses glitchy photography in his artwork, this app makes your photos seem broken in a good way. Take one perfectly ordinary shot, multi-touch some multiple-exposure-style glitches in and voila! Abstract, arty photos to show off to your friends, without all that pesky dark-room work (pictured right). iTunes link
TiltShift (£0.59)
As you might have guessed from the name, the TiltShift app gives your photos the effect of tilt-shift photography – also known as selelctive focus, it can give a photographed scene the effect of being miniature. Pulling it off with a real camera is pretty tricky but the app is straightforward enough to use. Control the blur with the slider at the bottom of the screen, and you can reposition and shape the guide to your heart’s content, making good use of multi-touch (pictured left). iTunes link
CameraBag (£1.19)
CameraBag, another one for you retro-fanatics, gives you a range of old-school camera options in your iPhone. Take a photo and you can make it look as though it was taken with a Polaroid camera, a fish-eye lens or a Helga snapper. If that’s not your thing, you can apply aging effects, colour effects (colourcross effect pictured right) or borders to customise it ’til you reckon your Shoreditch friends would approve. It’s not a million miles away from Hipstamatic or some of the effects available in the Photoshop app, but we’re big fans of the CameraBag interface, which is really simple and clean. iTunes link
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