D-Photo USA (2019-07-08)

PHOTOGRAPHY APPS

D-Photo rounds up a fresh bunch of photography apps, both new and classic,

to ensure that you are getting the most out of your smartphone photography

MEXTURES

Mextures is another app that leans into its strengths instead of trying to be all things to

all photographers: if you’re looking for textures, you can’t go past it.

As texture-overlay apps go, Mextures pretty much sets the standard. Most apps will

allow you to clumsily dump a preset texture over the top of an image and that’s about it;

Mextures gives you the kind of refinement controls that a photographer craves. You can

add light leaks, emulsion, textures, gradients, scratches, stains, and more. In addition,

the effects can be stacked in blended layers with adjustable transparency, rotation, and

any other tweak you might need.

Mextures is currently only available on iOS and costs $3.49 — very reasonable for what

you get.

Whether you use it for family snaps, online promotion,

or even as your primary photographic device,

smartphone photography plays a role in almost

everyone’s digital life. As it’s such a ubiquitous practice,

there is now a seemingly countless number of apps that

play different roles in the photographic process — to

varying degrees of success.

D-Photo profiles a handful of the most useful

photography apps to make sure that your smartphone

is a creative photographic powerhouse.

CAMERA+ 2

The biggest limitation to native photography functions on the iPhone is a lack

of control, and camera-replacement apps are the solution. The long-reigning

champ of this category, the original Camera+ app, has now been replaced by a

superior sequel.

What Camera+ did so well was give photographers access to all the manual

control functions they could possibly want. Camera+ 2 does just the same, only

more simply and better. Take things off auto and you can completely control

exposure, shutter speed, and ISO settings, as well as have the ability to save

photos in RAW format. If you’re familiar with the Camera+ interface, you’ll be right

at home in Camera+ 2; it just does everything faster and with greater attention

to detail.

Camera+ 2 is only available for iOS and costs $4.99 for the initial purchase —

once you start shooting with it, you’ll never go back to the native camera app.

PHOTOGRAPHY APP-RECIATION

VSCO: PHOTO AND VIDEO EDITOR

There are plenty of all-in-one photo-editing apps out there, and most bite off more

than they can chew, offering a broad range of middling tools and excelling at nothing in

particular. VSCO is an app that wisely plays to its strength, and that strength is filters.

The Visual Supply Company is well known for its excellent film-imitating Lightroom

presets, and VSCO is the company’s mobile equivalent. Although the app’s filter

selections don’t ape specific film stocks, they do provide the same beautiful filmic

effects: moody, vibrant, underexposed, classic. There’s something for all occasions, and

a more satisfying array than the baked-in Instagram options.

Available for both iOS and Android, VSCO is free to download, but there is a charge to

expand your library of filter options.