It's safe to say there's no shortage of photo-editing apps for smartphone photographers out there. Whatever your creative soul needs, there's a good chance someone has already crafted an app to fulfill it. At the same time, because of the endless options out there, it can be difficult to choose the app that's perfect for you.
We do not dare say we've found that specific smartphone app that you've been looking for. Instead, we'd like to introduce you to a bunch of apps that you've probably never heard of that will definitely help you think outside the box. Whether you want to cartoonize your pictures or turn them into a time-lapse, you'll find something that will suit your needs.
Your Smartphone Photography Revolution
1. Geló
Available on: iOS
Price: Free
Does playing with color gels, various geometric shapes, and gradients sound like your idea of expressing yourself through photography? Geló's 32-color palette will help you customize your photos and enhance their impact.
2. Paper Camera
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: From $2.49
Paper Camera allows you to turn your pictures into a painting, cartoon, paper sketch, or comic book. Some of the effects available on the app are halftone, noir, and neon. Let your imagination run wild and let others see your world through a new lens.
Paper Camera is perfect for those with a passion for art, comics, and cartoon effects.
3. Clone Camera Pro
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: $1.99
Take any single object on your photo, clone it, and add it to the original picture for a ghost-image effect with Clone Camera Pro. You can load up to six photos from your gallery and the app will combine them into one, placing your object in different positions in the final picture.
The app also offers a self-timer, several filters, and a tutorial to help you learn how to create the ghost-image effect. You can instantly share your results.
Download Clone Camera Pro on iOS
Download Clone Camera Pro on Android
4. Snapseed
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
Snapseed is a professional photo editor by Google that any smartphone photography enthusiast will be (more than) satisfied with.
The features offered are extremely diverse: healing tool, brushes, numerous filters, frames, HDR effects, structural and perspective edits, vignette, lens blur, and focus enhancement. This app supports both JPG and RAW files for editing.
5. Photo Editor by Aviary [No Longer Available]
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
Photo Editor is yet another option for those ready to start editing like a pro. Enhance and stylize your smartphone photos using filters, overlays, vignettes, a focus tool, a sharpening tool, a blemish removal tool, and even a teeth-whitening tool. You can also crop, rotate, straighten, contrast, and brighten your pictures using this app.
In addition, you can draw your own photo captions and doodle on your photos. You can sync your images to Adobe Creative Cloud and access tools and filters from any device you're using. Share your edited pictures on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Download Photo Editor on iOS
Download Photo Editor on Android
6. Ampergram
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: $0.99
Overlay your Instagram pictures with type using Ampergram. You can use your own photos or one of the Ampergram community's collection.
To contribute to that collection, tag photos of letters in Instagram using #ampergram, as well as hashtags with just letters or numbers (e.g. #A). Learn about Instagram typography by cropping in on a single letter you want to use.
7. Lifecake
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
Lifecake will help you document and share your child's progress by creating a timeline of photos and slideshows. To add to the timeline you can pull images from Dropbox, Facebook, Picasa, and Instagram. Then you can organize the timeline a number of ways so you can see your child at any age and compare their growth stages from birth to present day.
You can make your child's timeline available for all family members to view on their smartphones or computers. With Lifecake's premium account you can export the images to a hardcover book.
Download Lifecake on Android [Broken URL Removed]
8. Rakuga Cute
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
Probably the cutest app on this list, Rakuga Cute is a photo decoration app designed in Asia. The app includes tools for rolling stamps, framing, text with a variety of pen types, pastels, neons patterns, and shading. It also has a "beauty mode." So if you enjoy "beautifying" your pictures using filters, collages, and mosaics, this app has plenty to offer you.
9. LINE Camera
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
Another popular decoration app on our list is LINE Camera. The app offers more than 100 different kinds of frames and rich fonts, plus thousands of stamps. You can create your own stamps using your own photos and text with the app's customizable filters. Similar to Rakuga Cute, LINE Camera also comes with a number of "beautifying" tools.
With an updated version of the app, you can enjoy video recording with fun animal stickers as overlays.
Honorable Mentions
The following photo-editing apps might not be new to you. However, they're definitely worth mentioning as they continue to surprise users with new tricks and ways to improve smartphone photography.
10. Prisma
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
This is not the first time Prisma made it onto the pages of MakeUseOf. We've even called it "the app of the year" before, and for a good reason. This app turns your photos into images that look like they've been painted by famous artists like Van Gogh, Levitan, Picasso, and others. Choose your favorite style and enjoy seeing your pictures come alive.
11. Boomerang
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
This app has lately become extremely popular among Instagram lovers. Use Boomerang from Instagram to create mini videos that loop back and forth, then share them with friends on the network.
The app shoots 10 photos at a time, then stitches them together to make a looping video. You can also save the end result to your camera gallery to share later on Facebook or Instagram.
12. Hyperlapse
https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/7251228/type/dlg/sid/UUmuoUeUpU43873/https://vimeo.com/104409950
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free
Concluding our list is another photo-editing app from Instagram: Hyperlapse. Create beautiful and smooth time-lapse videos using this app's automatic stabilization. You can then enhance them with cinematic effects.
Speed it up by 12x to add a little extra to your time-lapse video. The results are shareable on both Facebook and Instagram.
Time to Try Them Out!
This list is just a small collection of the various apps out there that you can use to turn your pictures into art. Before you go on exploring the ones that piqued your curiosity, we'd like to ask you a few questions.
What kind of features are you looking for in a photo-editing app? What are some of your favorite smartphone photo-editing apps? Share your thoughts and opinions with us in the comments below!