Day 30: Happy Snaps

Some straight up recommendations today: I often get asked how I make photos on my iPhone look really cool. The answer to this, is that I stalk the every move of the brilliant @MrMelanin, taking everything interesting he says or finds and claiming it as my own personal brilliant discovery without a morsel of shame. On that note, let me tell you about some brilliant iPhone apps I've discovered.

The iPhone camera is rubbish - which is why if you're not using at least one camera app, you're missing out. People pay a small fortune for shit cameras, so why not just pimp out the one you have on your phone? By using some of the wonderfully simple programs below you'll be quickly whipping up all sorts of magic photos and - surprisingly - turning the ability to take photos on your phone into a fairly engaging and fun activity to pass the time.

I considered a top 5 on this one, but it feels a little excessive - so here you have my top three essential iPhone Camera apps. Buy em all: It'll set you back less than four quid, and for the number of gawking idiots you'll be impressing on facebook it'll work out at each vapid grin costing less than a penny.

Tilt Shift Generator

Incredibly little application that lets you play around with a variety of sliders to change the way the image looks, creating an overall 'toy camera' feel. Even without any tweaking you'll find the app brings the rather dull pallette of the iPhone camera to life quite nicely. Having said that, the examples i've included are just my personal taste, and there's scope to create really interesting washed out, paler imagery.

Unlike many of the other similar apps you'll find however, the custom tweakable nature of the blur position, spread,shape and intensity make the process of tweaking a photo feel handcrafted, and there's a lot of joy to be had in taking previously dull photos from your phone and turning them into something really visually engaging.

The above might sound techy, but one of the best features of the app is its traditionally minimalistic Japanese style; slick, intuitive, and wonderfully minimalist. As well as taking photos from scratch with it, you've also got the ability to touch up photos you've taken using the normal iPhone camera; I have a lot of fun from time to time just playing around images to see what I can create - the hands-on nature and creative control you get make it feel really satisfying.

After you've had a fiddle about, you can then either save a copy of the tweaked image to your phone, email it, or post it directly to twitter through the app. Lovely.


QuadCamera

Made by the same guys as TiltShiftGen, this little beauty lets you take cool little animation style shots. Simple, sure - but it's still brilliant if like me you always fancied a film camera that did it but could never justify the cost. There's a whole bunch of fun tweaks to take advantage of here, which let you choose the total number of shots to be taken in sequence as well as the time interval between each snap. Whilst not as satisfyingly tweaky as TiltShift, you've also got a nice selection of non-gimmicky image styles to be applied too.

It's hardly groundbreaking, but it's without a doubt the most immediately fun camera app on the iPhone - hand it to someone to have a play and you're guaranteed to entertain them for a good few minutes. I also really like the way the hurried snapshots are often handled badly by the shoddy iphone camera - it usually creates these wonderfully blurry dreamscape style narratives punctuated by brief moments of clarity. But then again, I'm a pretentious prick at times.


It's worth noting for both of the above apps that the support for these is excellent - they seem to be continually adding functionality and improvements to both these apps at no additional cost; QuadCamera in particular is likely to soon have a .gif export function, allowing you to literally make tiny animations using your phone. Awesome.


Hipstamatic

A totally different kettle of fish to the previous two apps, this one's a lot less minimalist - if anything there's slightly too much faff to glug through before it lets you actually take photos. There is however, something absolutely delicious about the entire package; letting you switch between lenses with a flick of your thumb, recreating a traditionally minimal viewfinder window on the iPhone screen - which literally flashes when using the entirely processed effect - there's something wonderfully tactile about the entire experience; almost as if you actually have a camera in your hands.

It's my personal favourite of all of the polaroid-style iPhone apps, coming with three different virtual lenses which create very cool looking photos without any need for tweaking. My love for this app is a little odd - it even has the nerve to include optional additional purchases within the app itself, letting you buy further virtual lenses and effects to unlock the application's full potential. But it's all just so darn charming that even the virtual shop bits they've integrated into the app just make you feel like you're playing a brilliant videogame about taking polaroid photos.

Overall, it's a slick package that creates swish looking polaroid-esque snaps - which is all you need to know. Hipstamatic is a pretty accurate name - there's something irritatingly and knowingly 'cool' about the whole thing, but despite this having a quick play around with it always leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy inside.


So there you have it - get snapping.