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Recently, I love taking photos using my new iPhone 4S. Since I am new to this world, and there are tons of iPhone photo editing apps out there, I wonder what the best iPhone apps are for editing photos taken by an iPhone? I just want to edit my iPhone photo on my iPhone rather than importing them into my computer and edit them then sync back to my iPhone.
note: sorry, I didn't state my question clearly. I have rewritten my question already.
I like two apps, one a camera app, the other an editing app:
My favorite full featured editing tool is Snapseed. This allows you to take images from your Camera roll and edit with impressive control. It features selective adjust, allowing you to touch where you generally want edits, and offers edits like brightneess, contrast, whitebalance, and saturation. It also includes sharpening control, and of course a bunch of filter effects. My favorite is a finely controlled tilt-shift effect that is fun.
Camera+: not an editing app per se, but a fantastic camera app that has some editing function. It has many features not found on the native app, including a pseudo-stabilizer function that works well. Camera+ includes many fun filters and effects. However, photo 'editing' is really limited to crop, as it resorts to 'scenes' rather than white balance, brightness, etc. Probably the best feature is that it has its own photo storage, independent of the Camera Roll, so that you can choose which images to save to the camera, and therefore the new iCloud PhotoStream.
Adobe Photoshop Express: this is a fairly limited app, but with some nice 'before and after' features, and before Snapseed was my goto app for rotating images. Its free, so you get what you pay for. It will charge you for more features (as will the others) and also encourages you to get an Adobe account for photosharing. (no thanks)
I use the following iPhone apps to edit my pics:
100 Cameras in 1 - This app is very simple and does not allow editing per se but the application of filters. These filters are arranged in groups like "zen", "serenity", "anxious", "daring", and so on, and the filters in them reflect the moods described. You can then save the file back to the camera roll or share with Facebook/Twitter/Flickr/Smugmug/Dropbox/Instagram/etc
Snapseed - I don't know why I never got this one before, but it was just given away free for a day as part of Apple's "12 Days" promotion. As the poster before me states - it allows for lots of adjustments and borders and faux tilt-shift, etc. You control the intensity of the effects and filters with a simple swipe of the finger. You can then save or share it with all the usual places.
Photoshop Express - A nice free app with some good filters and borders. Slightly less than Snapseed but nice nevertheless. I actually used this to create images that I later made my 2011 Christmas Cards from!
Autostitch - Very cool app which allows you to take a whole series of photos which it then stitches together to make a panorama, or whatever shape image it can! I also have the Panorama 360 app which does a similar job and although it does a decent job, I prefer Autostitch for the way it works.
Color Effects - A nice app, which allows you to choose selective colour in your photos. I used it to great effect with a butterfly on a plant. Using this app I made the whole background black & white, leaving the butterfly itself in colour.
Instagram - Nearly forgot this one! The ultimate in photo sharing. Again, can take pics itself or use from your camera roll. Has some great filters and effects, not to mention its own whole community and sharing service behind it. It can also post your pics directly to Facebook/Flickr/Twitter/Tumblr/Foursquare/etc etc... And it's free!
And just for fun
PocketChris - A handy on-Phone guide to photography. Covers Exposure, Subjects, Depth of Field, White Balance, etc. A nice guide. There is a Basics version which (which I have) is free. The full version has more in it.
Camera+ gets all the attention, but it is not really a photo editor, and is overhyped. Photoshop Express is very, very slow. Snapseed is a unique photo editor, and recommended, but it is still slow.
I would recommend Process above all else, if you like the Aperture or Lightroom (desktop) mentality of non-destructive photo editing. It's the most performant of these recommendations, allowing real time editing and saving to the camera roll in an instant. It also puts presets up front, letting you create your own look and apply it to other photos. Plus you get an iPad and an iPhone app in one.
