Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

I’ll keep this short: Camera+ is probably the best all-around camera app you’re gonna find in the App Store. I’m sure this is old news to a lot of you, but if you’ve never used it you should definitely give it a look.

I used to have apps like ToyCamera, Lomo Camera, and numerous others on my iPhone but Camera+ has replaced them all! Those other apps are great for certain things, but this one is basically the Swiss Army Knife of camera apps. All the retro filters and other functions like flash, crop, flip, and borders are awesome, but honestly the thing I like best is that Camera+ doesn’t automatically add every crappy pic I take to that stupid Photostream. My understanding is that the ability to delete items from Photostream will be getting easier in a future iOS update… currently you have to turn Photostream off and then back on in order to delete individual pics… but frankly I’d rather just not have every dadgum photo added to this thing. Yeah, I said DADGUM.

Ok, enough bitching about Photostream. The Camera+ features I use most often are the Flash filter which just brightens pics up, and I’m also a big fan of the FX Effects selections which range from black & white to depth of field to all kinds of Lomo-ish looks. Additional filters are available with an in-app purchase.

Numerous borders are also included, some of which allow you to add a caption. This is cool, but it would be even cooler if Camera+ would let you add a caption or speech bubble to any photo without having to use a specific frame.

Something else I have to complain about is that starting up Camera+ when there’s a hot photo op takes a little longer than I’d like. The other day Kim Kardashian was picking her nose about 10 feet away from me… she was practically up to her second knuckle and I missed it because it took a few seconds too long to get Camera+ going! Ok that’s a total lie but you know what I mean.

Overall this app is awesome and easily worth $1.99.

XLCamera (0.99$) by Maksym Tsanko

Available on iPhone & iPod Touch

According XLCamera, you can enjoy better “pictures at low light with much better quality.” This sets off alarm bells immediately. I’m skeptical of any app that claims to boost your iPhone camera’s picture taking ability. Does XLCamera live up to it’s hype, or does it fall short like dozens of other photo apps?

Let’s look at technique behind XLCamera’s photo enhancement. XLCamera uses two-step process to brighten and enhance dark images. There’s a ‘torch’ function that toggles your camera flash to stay on. An additional a built in slider adjusts images by tweaking with color saturation and hues. The slider doesn’t make images magically brighter, but increase the warmness and blurs the sharp edges associated with flash night-photography.

This photo editing power-combination works fine in small, enclosed rooms. The flash is enough to illuminate the area and allow the magic to take effect. I would even cautiously say that XLCamera performs well in these situations. In the test photos below, you can see that XLCamera did a fairly good job with my dark piano room. The combination of the flashlight and the color adjustment produced warmer pictures than using the stock iPhone camera alone.

From left to right: Standard no flash, flash only regular iPhone camera, flash and adjustment with XLCamera

XLCamera has the misfortune of being plagued by cheap banner ads- a pet peeve of mine. To make things worse, the app’s description is misleading, not mentioning an ‘extra’ $0.99 required for video capture, which works with the same results as the photo function. Don’t forget the $0.99 no-ads upgrade, in case you actually like taking pictures without a flashing dating site banner taking up 10% of your screen. Occasionally, I’ll click on an ad when I mean to take a photo or adjust a slider, sending my iPhone to a random website and me into a fit of horrible rage.

XLCamera works under certain conditions, but doesn’t live up to it’s promises. No app will make the iPhone camera comparable to upper-end digitals and SLR/DSLR cameras, but XLCamera does a fairly good job of brightening enclosed, dark rooms. However, this simple photo app is plagued by poor execution and design, giving me reservations about recommending it to others. Purchase XLCamera at your own risk if you can benefit from the app’s specific strengths. Otherwise, steer clear.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

I just made the leap back to Mac after about 13 years of suffering with PCs! Thank you, thank you… please hold your applause. One of the first things I did after firing up my shiny new MacBook Pro was to go hunting for apps to install (yes, PC users, Apple also has an App Store just for Mac users), and I grabbed PhotoSync right away because I’m constantly moving photos off my iPhone to use on my desktop computer. In the past I’ve always relied on WifiPhoto to do this job but I wanted to see what, if anything, PhotoSync could do better.

Bottom line? PhotoSync does *almost* everything better, and it does way more! I still plan to use WifiPhoto for getting screenshots off my iPhone (I’ll explain why later) but if you’ve got a Mac (or PC) with PhotoSync installed and an iPhone or iPad with PhotoSync installed, the whole thing is just ridiculously easy. The desktop app isn’t mandatory, but it’s free so hey why not.

So far I’ve only moved photos back and forth between my iPhone 4 and MacBook… that’s right kids, file transfer here swings both ways… but you can also send your photos to other iDevices, to Dropbox, to a whole bunch of social places like Facebook, Picasa, and Flickr, and you can even go with FTP if you’re a SuperNerd.

So why am I still using WifiPhoto to move screenshots to my Mac? WELL… because WifiPhoto, unsophisticated as it may be, automatically converts screenshots from PNG to JPG format, and I like that. If PhotoSync could make that happen, or at least give a file type option, then I’d probably just delete WifiPhoto entirely.

Also, I was able to transfer videos from iPhone to Mac, but trying to send a video back to my iPhone appeared to work but I couldn’t find the video in my camera roll. Not a big deal since I don’t see myself ever needing to do this, but if I screwed something up I couldn’t tell you what I did wrong.

Still, PhotoSync seems to do everything else right. It’s great for backing up your pics & movies, transferring photos to your device, and if you’re one of those people who shares everything with everyone it can help you do that, too.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

If you wanna make your holiday pics look all Christmas-ey without laying out any cash, Christmas Cam might be what you’re looking for! It comes with 12 photo templates that include, among other things, a santa hat, a very Frosty-looking snowman, and numerous Christmas-themed decorations.

Multitouch gestures let you rotate, resize, and flip the elements you’re adding to your pics and overall it’s all done pretty well. There are some kind of annoying shortcomings, though, like if you flip anything that says “Merry Christmas” on it, the words get flipped too so you wind up with a backwards samtsirhC yrreM, and if you want everyone in your pic to be wearing a santa hat… well… sorry, you’re screwed unless you want to add a hat, save the pic, then load it and add another, etc.

Christmas Cam is designed to handle portrait-oriented photos but doesn’t really cooperate with landscape pics. If you can get past that and the other small nuisances, this app is actually pretty decent. The 12 photo templates that are included are all nice and festive, and you can upgrade to the “pro” version for 32 templates ‘n things.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

I’ll just come out and say it: don’t waste your time with this “greeting card” app. And if the paid version is as incompetent as the “free” version which won’t let you email your Christmas cards unless you pay, don’t waste your time with that one either.

I normally don’t go out of my way to slam apps that stink; in fact, I usually don’t even bother reviewing them at all. But I’m kind of offended that I wasted 5 minutes of my life in finding out that (a) upgrading is required to get any use out of this app at all, and (b) the handling of images and decorative elements is so horrendously bad that trying to make a decent greeting card at all is more or less an exercise in futility. I’m going to repeat that for the developer: the handling of images and decorative elements is horrendously bad. No resize, no rotate. There are photo frames but you can’t stick a photo in them. Ugh.

The one thing this greeting card app does right is that it tells you right from the start that upgrading is required to send anything… and that’s your cue to delete it!

If you want to send Christmas cards from your iPhone or iPad, use Christmas C@rds.

Available on iPhone & iPod Touch

There’s probably a billion slideshow apps in the App Store, but this is the first one I’ve ever tried. With that said… this one’s pretty good! From the first time I opened the app I probably could have made the video below in about five minutes if I hadn’t been screwing around and tinkering with all the tools it offers for fancying up photo slideshows.

Slideshow+ lets you import photos from your camera roll, Facebook, Flickr, or Picasa and you can add tunes from the Music app (formerly known as the iPod). It’s super easy to get things started and slap together a quick video, but doing things like moving photos around and adding title slides is more difficult.

This slideshow uses Slideshow+’s Classic Theme with random transitions throughout

I tried to add a title slide to my video above but it just didn’t work, and I also had some problems with moving photos around using the drag and drop function. You can also move photos left or right, one spot at a time, but if you’re dealing with a lot of photos that can be kind of a pain in the ass.

Another problem I came across was importing photos from my camera roll. Bringing in pics from Facebook was super easy because I could select a bunch and import them with one tap, but for some reason I could only bring in one photo at a time from the camera roll.

What Slideshow+ does exactly right, however, is the way it syncs your photos to the length of the song you’re using. In my Terry the Dawg video above, the photos begin and end with the song and everything in between is timed accordingly, and making that happen only took a couple of taps.

There are lots of other things that Slideshow+ does right as well… transitions between photos, themes that determine how the slideshow plays out, and other timing options. I just hope the bugginess in the title slides and drag-and-drop gets fixed! Oh yeah, and importing from the camera roll needs to improve, too.

It’s a pretty good app right now, but it could be great.

From Socusoft:

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I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical of Video Star before I tried it out, but when I finally found time to play around with it, my kids and I ended up having a blast. In fact, I shot a music video of Radiohead’s epic song “Creep” which I planned to share with my readers, but I regrettably deleted the video by mistake.

Here is how it works. First, you simply select a song from your iPod library and then record yourself or a friend lip synching the song and then start fooling around with all the special effects. There are literally hundreds of different special effects that can be applied during a recording session including special color filters (Tron, Night Vision, X-Ray, Blueprint, Cartoon, Chalkboard, Light Tunnel, Sketch), panel modifications (Multi-Panel, Mirror Image, Kaleidoscope), camera speed (Stop Motion, Blur, Strobe Light) and frames (Metal Frame, Grunge Frame, Emo Frame). Not only are there far too many preset special effects to list, but Video Star also lets you mix and match different special effects to create your own customized effect. How about a multi-panel, bug eyed, stop motion effect? There’s an app for that.

Once the video is recorded, Video Star allows you to publish it to YouTube. If you are the shy type, you could instead send it to your email or your iTunes account.

Video Star is not for everyone. For example, as a 34 year-old lawyer you probably will not see me using this app to make my own fan-made music videos to upload to YouTube. My children, on the other hand, do not have that same sense of self-righteous pride that comes with my jaded age. Within the confines of a childlike innocence is where this app shines. Throw out your dignity and self-respect and make something as god-awful as that Rebecca Black video, upload it to YouTube and then maybe you too can become the country’s punch-line for a month or so. But hey, I bet you Rebecca Black is having the last laugh all the way to the bank.

I’m giving this a 4.5 out of 5.0 because I would like to see the developer add the ability to save the finished video directly to your video library. In addition, it might be nice to have the option of recording a video without necessarily having to make a music video. This application could easily stand alone as a mere video editing tool with the added ability of making music videos. Now, I understand that part of marketing is setting yourself apart from the others, hence the niche market of fan-made music videos, but it would be a lot of fun to be able to use the editing tools included with Video Star without having to worry about having a montage in the background. Despite these small flaws, I would recommend you check Video Star out if you have kids as it costs less than a 12 ounce coke.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

I don’t know why… but for some reason I like investigating quirky little apps like this one. Jane Stickies is basically a photo captioner that offers six different female cartoon heads that serve as the source for your speech bubbles. Now why would you want a random cartoon lady to narrate your photos? Beats me! But that’s what Jane Stickies does.

The thing about Jane Stickies that interested me most is the ability to make your own icon to replace the cartoon heads, and it works but the solution is far from elegant. You can load a photo and either erase everything around your subject or cut it out with a marquee tool, but both options are clumsy and not very well executed.

The biggest disappointment, however, is that you can’t put a speech bubble on a photo by itself! An icon of some kind is required which I think is a big mistake. Maybe I don’t want cartoon ladies on my photos, and maybe I don’t feel like making my own icon. Maybe I just want to put a speech bubble over the head of someone who’s in my photo.

Jane Stickies isn’t horrible, but right now I think I’d pass on this one.

Available on iPhone & iPod Touch

There are plenty of photo apps that let you get artsy with your pics by isolating patches of color, but most of them cost money! Color Splurge is free and it’s a pretty decent tool if your only goal is to do the black-and-white-and-color thing.

If you take a look at the Awkward Family Photo below, you can see how Color Splurge works… it turns your photo black and white, and then you simply paint the color back in. There’s also an option to do the opposite (start with color and then paint it out), and the Colorize function lets you paint in monochrome.

Color Splurge isn’t what I’d call fancy or polished, but it’s functional enough with adjustable brush sizes, an undo button, and a button that reverts your image to its original state. Uh, be careful not to hit that one accidentally! Zooming and panning around the image is a little clunky but it can be done with multitouch pinch and drag gestures.

There are tons of photography apps that do a lot more than this one, but if this is all you need then go for it! It does what it promises.

Sweet! Slideshows are fun

In October of last year I was gushing about how cool WiFiPhoto is and how it’s the reason that I’ll never have to email a photo from my iPhone to my comp again. I still use it all the time, and I still love it enough to point out that it’s gotten even better than when I first got my greasy fingers on it!

Here’s the major stuff that’s changed over the past six months:

- Now you can adjust the quality of the images you’re transferring off the iPhone
- A slideshow mode has been added in case you’re more interested in showing off your pics rather than downloading them
- Landscape images are automatically rotated
- Option available to use cellular data network if wifi isn’t available

WiFiPhoto may not qualify as a “must have” app for absolutely every single iPhone user, but if you snap a lot of pics or do a lot of screenshots it’s incredibly useful to have around.

iTunes Link – WiFiPhoto
Version 1.2

To start off, BowShot isn’t a game.  Some of you might have come here thinking that BowShot is a game of timing and skill, but you would be wrong.  You don’t shoot a little bow and arrow at balloons or fake ducks as the name might suggest.  No, we are actually pronouncing bow, as in bow wow wow, not bow, as in projectile weaponry.  Turns out though, this was a good move on Fj Ideas Co’s part because I’m not a big fan of those games.

BowShot is in fact a wonderful photography app that helps you take pictures of your dog.  I’m assuming you could use it to take pictures of other animals as well, but I only tested it on my dog, Ava.  The basic idea here is that it makes a strange sound, getting the attention of the dog and then snaps a picture.  It works like a freakin charm.  There is a slide bar in the settings that can adjust the time between sound and shutter.  This feature helps if your dog has a very slow reaction time or an extremely short attention span.  There are 40 crazy/annoying sounds to choose from and you can set five of those as favorites on the camera screen.  Ava’s personal favorites seemed to be the “squeaky toy” and the “baby scream”.  It even allows you to record your own crazy/annoying sound and use that to grab your poor dog’s attention.

*Excellent Idea Alert!*  Fj Ideas Co. should add a timer in the BowShot options screen.  This would allow you to set your iPhone/iPod down somewhere inconspicuous, set the sound and then walk away.  It would not only scare the crap out of your dog, but your friends and family as well.  Think of their faces!  They would have to change the name of the app to “BooShot”!  (sorry…)

A lot of polish went into this app.  It has a pleasant interface, intuitive buttons and excellent help documentation.  In the hands of a capable iPhone or iPod photographer, this could be the key to those perfect shots.  Or at least, shots where the dog is looking at the camera.

iTunes Link – BowShot
Version 1.0.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3GS OS 3.1.2

Awesomer makes your photos awesomer.

iTunes Link : Awesomer

On deck: Crazy Pirate Slots (Games)

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Thank you Erik!

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