Give your smartphone photography a boost

With Apple’s iPhone 7 and Google’s new Pixel phones putting such an emphasis on powerful camera technology, smartphone photography is more robust than ever. And while phones typically have great built-in photography apps, many other options can be easier or expand your range.

ProCamera is an excellent option for iOS devices. Using this app feels like raising a single-lens reflex camera to your eye: The first thing you see is a view through the camera lens, superimposed with many controls and information like the exposure and whether the flash is activated.

With a few taps on the screen, you can display a grid to help compose a shot properly and a guide to warn if your composition is tilted. You can also control the white balance and the ISO setting and bring up a live histogram that shows how saturated the colours in the final photo will be. There are quick-access buttons to shoot in video, photo, high dynamic range or other modes and there’s even a bar code scanner option.

Most impressive is ProCamera’s anti-shake feature, which waits for you to stop moving before it activates the shutter.

Because of its complexity, ProCamera takes awhile to get used to, and the exact features depend on which iPhone you have. The app costs $5 (Rs 341) and some features, like a low-light mode to help shoot better pictures at night, are upgrades that cost a few dollars each. It’s definitely worth it.

On Android, one equivalent to ProCamera is Camera FV-5. This app also feels like using a single-lens reflex camera, with similar manual control. Camera FV-5 includes features like a live histogram, burst-mode shooting, exposure bracketing and time-lapse imagery. It also offers choices over the kind of files it saves to your device, and has a comprehensive settings page.

Unlike some other Android camera apps, Camera FV-5 has a professional-looking and easy-to-use interface. It costs $4 (Rs 273).

To edit that perfect portrait or landscape photo, Adobe’s software is the choice of professional photographers. There is a version for mobile devices too — Adobe Photoshop Fix — which lets you heal an image’s blemishes, adjust shadow intensity, fix the contrast or add effects like vignetting. There is also a powerful liquefy tool that can distort the image in a smooth way to pull off some shape-modifying effects.

Mastering the features of Photoshop Fix so your final images don’t look too artificial will take time. Its interface is sometimes confusing, and I have found myself getting lost in its menus and submenus, but the app has built-in help and, best of all, is free for both iOS and Android.

For those who find Photoshop too complex, Darkroom Photo Editor is a slightly simpler alternative for iOS. This free app offers speedy edits before sharing that selfie on social media (note that more advanced editing features like colour curve correction cost $2 or Rs 136 and up each).

On Android, the free Fotor Photo Editor app is roughly equivalent to Darkroom in terms of image-editing features, and it comes with an elegant, minimal interface. It is also available for iOS devices.

Polaroid, once a huge name in instant photography, is also on the try-it list. The company is now trying to teach the smartphone generation how to take photos with its Polaroid University app. This app starts with photography basics like how to compose a good shot. It also has videos on how to achieve more complicated goals, like slow-motion video or low-light photography.

While the app is free, a year’s subscription to the full video content costs $20 (Rs 1,365). The app is iOS-only for now, though an Android edition is in the works.