Best apps for pro and amateur photographers

With over 54,000 photos estimated to be taken every second around the world, the visual footprint we are creating for ourselves at this moment in time is mind blowing. 

There are estimated to be 6.8 billion smart phone users globally, so combining the users with the numbers of images being taken the likelihood is a high proportion of the photos will be taken on a smart phone.

Many people love to have a play at editing and manipulating their images and with the huge array of apps on offer the ability to create high quality images are at everyone’s fingertips.
​
The question that I get asked a lot is what apps do I use for my own personal photos and what apps I use in my business, so I thought I would create this blog with some of the top apps that I would recommend, along with some apps that my professional photographers friends use.  

Snapseed
Snapseed is totally free and there are no ads.  It is a great app for editing your iphone images.  It is really user friendly with lots of self explanatory icons to use, and it's a case of selecting the areas you want to change, such as brightness or saturation, and slide the slider up or down accordingly.  There are also loads of YouTube tutorials online to take you through the processes if you're unsure where to start. It's all very clever - the portrait mode will smooth the skin and whiten the eyes and it all can be adjusted to your taste!

​PhotoPills
This app comes with a small price tag - but this app is amazing for those who are interested in outdoor/landscape and night sky photography, and are looking to get a bit more into it! There is lots to learn on the app but there are loads of YouTube videos (Episode 1:Getting Started) explaining how it all works. 
PhotoPills is very much about the planning for the shoot, as much as the shoot itself.  It will tell you the best time of day to shoot for set ups like golden hour, along with your camera settings - so this app is primarily for those with a DSLR.  For night time shooting this is great as it will tell you when a meteor shower is due along with star trails and the camera settings you should be looking at.  It is very techy, but for those into photography this comes highly recommended.

​Sun Surveyor Lite
Planning a photo shoot and when to take pictures is so important as this will set the tone and feel for your images.  Sun Surveyor is a great app as it tells you exactly where the sun is setting and rising. So, if you want to time your family walk so that the sun is starting to set just as you get to the crest of the hill for some fun silhouette shots, then this is the app for you!

​Apple Photo
On iphone this is where all your photos are automatically saved and it has a great editing feature built it.  Click on Edit and you can adjust the highlights, shadows, brightness etc of your images, along with a number of filters.  The filters in my opinion aren't the best, but some work out quite well! 

​Photo Timer+
There are loads of varieties of this app available on the App Store and this is the one I use.  This app helps to get you in the picture, so you can set this up with a delay of however many seconds you need, adjust the number of images it takes, plus adjust the interval between each picture being taken.  This is great to use when you want to be part of the picture, just prop the phone up, set the timer and get in the shot!

Collageable 
This is a fun app to use to when you want to arrange your images together in a collage.  The app is free and also has editing functions as well, such as face detection for smoothing skin and sorting out red eye etc.  It also has it's own camera so can be a one stop shop from start to finish.

​I would love to hear what apps you would recommend for anything photography based – feel free to message below!