But with PhotoToaster, my shot of a beautiful but dimly lit wisteria vine crawling up five stories of a building became infused with light. You can't fix an underexposed shot in Instagram, for example. I often brighten up a photo with PhotoToaster before importing it to Instagram. You can apply preset filters such as "Tuneup," ''Pro," ''Happy" and "Chill." You can also tap a button and have more precise control over exposure, color temperature, light and other settings. I love the ease of flipping through filters on Instagram until I see one that makes my photo pop, but sometimes I want a little more control over the specific effects. Full version costs $1.99 and gives you more choices and control. PhotoToaster by East Coast Pixels, Inc. Its "Helga Viking Lens" gave the yellow dust filtering through the streets a romantic feel, and its "John S" lens transformed crumbling ivy-covered pre-war buildings with a retro-cool blue. In Lebanon, in fact, I ended up taking most of my pictures with Hipstamatic because of how it gave life to street scenes that would have looked gritty otherwise. Once you get a sense of which virtual lens works best under which conditions, you can create stunning photos. But I was able to catch on after a friend gave me a tutorial. The app is not very intuitive, the settings are hard to keep track of and the accompanying guide isn't very helpful. Instead, you choose different virtual lenses, flashes and film beforehand, and you can't change the setting after you take the shot. Unlike most filtering apps, you don't adjust a photo after you've taken it. I had a hard time figuring Hipstamatic out, but it's worth making the effort. $1.99 for basic features, with 99-cent add-ons to give you more imaging options. The effect makes houses high on a mountaintop and a courtyard fountain stand out in my images. Some of my favorite iPhone pictures during my trip to Lebanon were taken with this app. You can also adjust the saturation, brightness and contrast. You can also determine how much darkening around the corners you want to produce a vignette effect. You can control where and how much blurring to produce. I prefer TiltShift Generator because it gives you more control. Instagram has that feature (it's the droplet icon when you are taking or editing a picture). Tilt shift is a camera effect that blurs the edges of a picture, creating an optical illusion that makes everything in the photo look miniature. Free for basic features, 99 cents for higher resolution and album upload. Plenty of examples - and inspiration - can be found on .Īnother one is TiltShift Generator by Arts & Mobile. It's a great way to capture a panoramic landscape such as mountain views, beaches or bridges. But I found that in the right setting - such as Roman ruins by the sea in Byblos, near Beirut, or my sister's beach wedding - the results can be breathtaking. It takes a bit of practice, and it's not an app I would use every day. You can share the panorama on Facebook, Twitter or. Then it stitches those images together to create a sphere-like panorama that viewers can scroll around in and zoom in and out. The app guides you as you stand in one place and capture photos in all directions. My favorite among the ones I tried, Photosynth lets you take 360-degree panoramic photos that become interactive on a smartphone or computer screen. For iOS only (Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). Of the dozen or so I tested, here is one I find myself using over and over again: I've had a chance to test a wide range of Instagram alternatives during choice picture-taking opportunities over the past few months, including my sister's wedding in Hawaii in December and a trip to Lebanon this month. But Instagram has a limited range of filters and camera effects, and it isn't always easy to edit pictures with it. With Instagram, I can make my photos look better by using one of the app's 17 pre-set filters to adjust lighting, color and other things. I've been hooked on taking photos on my iPhone and sharing them using Instagram since I bought my first iPhone last fall. While it's wildly popular and the target of Facebook's $1 billion takeover deal, Instagram isn't the only camera app worth having. BEIRUT, Lebanon - I'm one of the millions of smartphone owners addicted to Instagram, the free camera app that makes tweaking and sharing photos miraculously easy.
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