Chapter 4. Filters, Effects, and Recipes

iPhone photography is often about instant gratification. You snap a photo, and a split second later, you’re staring at the image in the palm of your hand. That’s a thrill, but it’s nothing next to the rush you’ll get from grabbing that photo on your iPhone and then tapping here, swiping there, and transforming your image with the sort of deliciously blurred background that professionals get with their expensive single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras and lenses. You can achieve that sort of look, and many comparable ones, with just your iPhone camera and a well-stocked camera bag of iPhone photography apps. Instant gratification, indeed.

If there’s a prototypical iPhone photography app, it’s an app designed to do one thing and do it very, very well. That’s a fair description of many of the apps discussed in this chapter. These apps don’t aim to be Swiss Army knives; they tackle one task, such as applying filters or generating panoramas, and that’s it. For many iPhoneography fans, these apps (along with the retro camera apps discussed in Chapter 5) are really the heart of iPhone photography—the much-loved tools used to transform your photos.

You’ll want to turn to these apps in these situations:

• You want a big change. With many of these apps, you can transform a run-of-the-mill image into one with its own look and feel.

• You’re after a particular look. If you’re a fan of a particular photographic technique, whether it’s a blurred background or a panorama, there’s likely an app for that.

• You’re looking for speed. Many of these apps, especially those with prefab filters, produce their effects quickly.

Though there’s a fair amount of overlap among these apps, they can be divided into these rough categories:

• Filters Filters are ready-made effects for your photos. When using filter apps, you don’t have to fool with separate adjustments for color, saturation, and other image characteristics to achieve a particular look. That’s the job of the filter, and it’s already been done for you. Apply a filter, and your image is suddenly transformed to look like it was snapped in a fog or with an X-ray machine.

• Advanced effects and techniques These apps are designed to re-create effects and techniques from professional photographic tools and processes, as well as desktop imaging programs, such as blurred backgrounds, double exposures, and panoramas.