The Ultimate iPhone Photography Guide: Editing, Effects, Sharing and Loads of Tips
The quality of the cameras on the new wave of smartphones is astounding. We are reaching the point where they can serve as a viable alternative to a dedicated digital camera. The iPhone may not feature the best camera in terms of megapixel count, but it is capable of capturing some great shots. The more you know about how it works, the better your results will be.
The iPhone’s Camera
The original iPhone had a fairly basic 1.92 MP camera and it was retained in the iPhone 3G. When the iPhone 3GS was released, the camera hardware was significantly improved to 3 MP with autofocus. The iPhone 4 took the camera to new heights with a 5 MP sensor, an LED flash and the capability to capture HD video footage at a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and 30 frames per second. No doubt the iPhone 5 will feature an even more impressive camera.
To get the most from your iPhone camera you should understand how it works and how best to use it. You’ll also want to consider the wealth of photography apps on offer for pre and post-processing and for sharing your creations.
Help, Tips and Hints
In order to get the best results from your iPhone camera you’ll want to experiment with settings and subjects. Some of these articles will offer advice on how to get the effects you want and how to go about delving into the camera settings and tweaking them. Inevitably some of your photos won’t turn out the way you want and so there’s a guide on deleting photos from your iPhone too.
- How to Take Great Photos with Your iPhone 4
- Guide to Panoramic Photography on the iPhone
- Guide to HDR Photography on the iPhone
- How to Take Better iPhone Pictures
- How to Delete Photos from Your iPhone
Photo Editing Apps
Photography on the iPhone is one of the niches to benefit the most from the explosion in apps. You’ll find a wide array of versatile photo editing applications in the App Store. There are apps for serious photographers and apps for casual users looking for a bit of fun.
Some of the functionality you can access directly on your smartphone now is on a par with the computer based photo editing packages of recent years. You can find a number of great apps that allow you to take photos and apply different effects or filters to them.
- Top Ten iPhone Camera Apps
- Vintage Photo Effects with Hipstamatic
- Improve Your iPhone Camera with Camera Plus Pro
- Awesome Artistic Effects with Paper Camera
- Apply Filters and Share Photos with Instagram
- Get a Retro Feel with the Vignette iPhone App
- Share Panoramic Shots with Photosynth
- Transform Your iPhone into Text with WordFoto
- A Wealth of Effects with 100 Cameras in 1
- TiltShift Generator for iPhone
- The Lomo Camera iPhone App
- A Fresh Approach to Photo Editing with Photo Toaster
- Enhance Your Photos with Camera Bag
- Tiffen’s Photo fx App for iPhone
- Create Striking Images with ColorSplash
- Photo Manipulation with Photo Forge 2
Sharing Photos
The growth in social networking has also made it easier than ever before to share your photos with the world, or just your friends and family if you prefer. There are plenty of apps serving your picture sharing needs as well. Many photo editing apps offer an integrated sharing option with all of the major social networking sites. You can also share photos directly via messages and emails or back them up on your PC or Mac. There are even social networks dedicated to photography where you can post your latest snaps and discuss them with other photographers.
- How to Transfer Pictures from the iPhone to the PC
- How to Transfer Photos from iPhone to Mac
- How to Email Pictures from Your iPhone
- How to Send Photos via MMS
- Guide to Transferring iPhone Photos to a Thumb Drive
- Sharing and Backing Up Photos with Corel’s Slingshot
- Share Your Snaps on Flickr
- Mobli: A Social Network for Photography
- How to Upload Photos from iPhone to Facebook
- Sharing on Photobucket with the Snapbucket App
- More Social Networking for Photography with Photovine
- Pixamid Lets Your Share Photos with Selected Friends
- Send Your Photos as Postcards
- Share Your Photos with Another iPhone Via Bluetooth
More Useful Apps and Tips
We’ll round off this iPhone photography guide with a few extra app round ups and tips that didn’t quite fit into the previous sections. Learn how to create photo albums, find out about the best apps for viewing photos and organizing them into galleries, find tips on how to prevent iPhoto from automatically starting up and lots more.
- How to Create Photo Albums on an iPhone
- Great iPhone Apps for Location Photographers
- Disable iPhoto from Opening Every Time Your iPhone Connects
- Create New Albums with PhotoAlbum+
- Best Photo Album Apps for the iPhone
- Create Photo Stories with Diptic
- Apps to Speed Up Your iPhone Camera
- Zoom In to Photos with the Full-Res iPhone App
- Guide to Hiding Photos on Your iPhone
- How to Retrieve Deleted iPhone Photos
Leave a comment and let us know about your favorite iPhone camera app or share some of your own tips about how to get the best results when using the camera on your iPhone.