Posts Tagged
photography
This article was originally posted in November 2011. This week, Instagram was finally released on Android; some people love it, but others are unimpressed. We’ll have a full review for you soon, but in the meantime, if you were underwhelmed, you might like to check out the alternatives…
Photo-sharing is a booming market on mobile platforms, with all manner of services popping up almost on a weekly basis. Many such apps, especially on Android, are perhaps the ripples from the splash created by the iPhone photo-sharing titan Instagram. The good news is that Instagram plan an Android release in the future. However, until we see what they have to offer us Android users, there is still a huge interest in sharing pictures effectively.
This round-up aims to present an overview of arguably the best photo-sharing platforms available on Android. Now, this includes apps that focus most heavily on pictures, rather than the far larger social networks such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter which serve a wider purpose. These apps are more dedicated to sharing pictures, and make it as easy as possible to do so from your mobile phone. This round-up also doesn’t include purely photo-editing apps; apps like Pixlr-o-matic and BeFunky are very cool, but there is less focus on sharing and do not provide the same kind of platform to share pictures on.
Here you’ll see some big names, some new names, and some names you might not have heard of… until now. Read on for some truly excellent photo-sharing apps you’ll want to check out! (more…)
One of the major draws to iOS devices is Instagram, the wildly popular free photo app that allows you to snap a picture, apply a retro filter, and share it on social networks. iPhone users have enjoyed this platform-exclusive luxury for a long time while Android fans haven’t had anything with quite the same usability, charm or community.
Most app makers’ attempts to create something similar have been met with lukewarm responses, but there’s now a strong contender that could be just what Android users have been waiting for. It’s called Lightbox.
In this digital age, people rely more on their smart phones to take pictures than a regular camera. Part of the smart phone’s appeal is being able to capture and share moments in pictures right away with a touch of a button. It’s probably why there are quite a number of photo sharing apps in the Market.
But what about editing? Surely not all photos taken with a smart phone comes out perfectly. In fact, far from it. A mid-range digital camera is more capable of taking excellent shots compared to a phone, no matter how impressive its hardware is.
A while back, my fellow writer Paul Wilks wrote about photo sharing apps for Android. This roundup, however, will focus more on photo editing. Here are my top 10 picks:
A while back I wrote a guide about making time lapse videos with your Android. There, I showed you the basics of time lapse, and gave a small review of two apps: Tina Time Lapse and TimeLapse, both very capable applications. Lapse It would have been on my list, but at that time it was built for the Adobe AIR Platform, which my phone doesn’t support.
Lapse It has since been redesigned from the ground up as a fully native app. This means it’s faster and more robust than any previous version. Naturally I had to give it a try, and in this article I’ll give you my thoughts.
Most photos taken with phone cameras are grainy, blurry, washed out, dark or just plain boring. It’s sad, because they don’t have to be. People usually blame the quality of their cameras for the quality of their shots, but that’s actually not very important when it comes to getting a good picture.
So how does one get good pictures out of a phone camera? It’s really not about the megapixels. Let’s forget about the technical specifications of our cameras for a few minutes and check out some simple things we can do to improve our photography, keeping in mind certain scenarios we regularly come across in our daily lives. The real lesson here to be learned here is to adapt. Think about how your shots could be imporved before shooting them and you’ll be taking great pictures in no time.
Snapr is a cool mobile photo-sharing platform. Recently included in our recent round up of the best photo-sharing apps on the Android Market, Snapr deserves a closer look.
The app lets you take and share pictures both on the Snapr platform and via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare, so it has a really strong social element to it. It’s easy to use, features a superb user interface and is completely free to download. Read on for more information about this exciting and intuitive photography app…
(more…)
Sharing photos from your mobile is becoming more and more popular. Whether it’s holiday snaps, embarrassing pictures from a night out, or just random shots, everyone seems to be snapping away and uploading it to their favorite social networking site.
Facebook’s growth has been practically exponential since its conception, and over three billion photos are uploaded to it every month. Some storage figures Facebook released claimed that they have over 1.5 petabytes (that’s 1500 terabytes, or 1.5 million gigabytes) of photo storage… and that was back in October 2008.
Minus is a new alternative for photo sharing on Android, to sit with Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. With Minus you can also share documents, videos and files. You can sign up for an account free via the Minus website and then just sign in to start sharing.
The question is: will this contend with Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr? It’s impossible to review Minus solely as an application as the service itself really needs some explaining as well, so read on for my thoughts about both. (more…)
We’ve covered a lot of Android photography apps, from cameras to editors to social photography apps. I want to know how many of you actually use more than the stock camera, though. Do you add filters and frames and special effects, or do you not even crop your pictures before sticking them on Twitter?
Vote in the poll, and let us know what you do in the comments below!
BeFunky is a photo editing app that lets you apply various effects and frames on your pictures. While there are quite a few apps that do the same, I’ve found myself using BeFunky most of the time.
You’re Android handset comes with a built-in camera application that is fine for taking the odd shot. I’m not sure whether this is specific to my HTC Sense phone, but my stock camera app has options to change photo saturation, brightness, and other variables. There’s also the option to add some very basic filters like sepia and negative. This is a nice set of features that my iPad 2 (and, presumably, an iPhone) doesn’t have and, especially if your phone has a nice five or eight megapixel shooter on it, can be helpful in taking some valuable shots you can look back on.
Cisco’s recent decision to kill off the Flip video camera family also demonstrates that smartphone cameras are becoming the tool of choice for most people’s photo and video capture needs, so these options are becoming increasingly important.
The quote, “the best camera is the one that’s with you”, is tossed around a lot and, although I can’t seem to find its origin, I certainly know it’s true. Everyday moments can be captured with relative ease and with quality to compete with most point-and-shoot cameras. However, these cameras are smart and not like their dumb-phone counterparts. (more…)
