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5 must-have apps for the Android photographer

Lauren Crabbe | Published: Mar 8, 2013 at 15:43:02 UTC

Android's Google Play store has thousands of photography apps to choose from. While some of them are a little too silly for practical application, many provide features that go above and beyond the capabilities of the native Android camera app. Here, we've rounded up a few of Android's best apps for capturing and editing images. We looked at each app's overall rating in the Google Play store as well as its practical application and functionality.

Best apps for Android

1. Camera Zoom FX; $2.99

Manual capture features combined with filters and editing tools make Camera Zoom FX a must-have for the Android photographer looking to combine filters to create unique effects. Camera Zoom FX’s filters include retro toy camera, frames, vignettes, fisheye, mirror, tilt-shift and light leak effects.

Camera Zoom FX offers a wide array of vintage filters.

2. Paper Camera; $1.99

For mobile photographers who want to make more artsy images, Paper Camera features automatic filters that turn snapshots into cartoons, sketches and halftone images.

Shoot and edit with Paper Camera to make your photos sketchy.

3. ProCapture; Free or $3.99

A live histogram in the capture screen and manual controls makes this app stand out. Unlike Camera Zoom FX, ProCapture focuses on the less-gimmicky aspects of mobile photography—with focus and scene shooting modes instead of filters and after-effects.

ProCapture's live histogram helps users expose their shot.

4. Photo Editor by Aviary; Free (also available for iOS)

Flickr users are familiar with Aviary’s editing tools. Photographers looking to do a few extra edits after they upload their photos to the image sharing service use Aviary to fix lighting add filters.

Photo Editor by Aviary allows users to choose from its 12 lo-fi filters.

5. Snapseed; Free (also available for iOS)

Nik Software’s mobile app was originally launched on the iOS platform in 2011 before the editing powerhouse was purchased by Google. Since then, Snapseed has been released for Android and is now available for free from both iOS and Android operating systems.

Snapseed's U Point technology allows for easy selective adjustments.

Share your favorites! Android photographers: What apps do you find yourself using every day? Let us know by sharing a comment below.

Comments

Total comments: 13

Another Shout Out for Camera FV-5 . Its really terrific. If you're not happy with the settings which the camera software is applying to images, its really easy to adjust to your liking - sharpness, contrast, saturation as well as brightness and compression ratio - as mentioned you can increase JPG quality upto 100% or use loseless PNG for raw quality.

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Thanks dpreview for keeping a promise. Looking forward to more.

Does anybody have experience with the Android Remote Control App for Android for the Sony NEX-6 ? How well does it work?

Is it possible to to shoot on your NEX 6, continuously transfer the images to the tablet, so you have the latest pic available seconds after you shot it for critical review ? Then when you commute back home you can review your images and delete the bad ones, so when arriving in the studio you can import in Lightroom only the keepers ?

Any comments very appreciated?

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If you shoot raw, Photo Mate is a must have in your tablet to develop your photos far from your desktop.

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Thanks for this comment. Was looking for it since ever. I was confused about how they expressed working with RAW on the developer website. Can you zoom in 100 % on a RAW file, or is it just the jpeg preview of the RAW file? I want to be able to compare critical focus. Is it possible to compare two of the same hots side by side for critical focus as in Select / Candidate in Lightroom ?

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Well, I would've thought a light meter app would be kinda handy (if not already available FOC).

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When it comes to serious camera apps (serious as in "not gimmicky"), my weapon of choice is Shot Control by StarvingMind as I find its UI really friendly and easy to use and because you can access the camera's manual settings in a blink.

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Camera FV-5 saves images as lossless PNG with a background queue to allow fast recovery, shot-to-shot. Adjustments include EV, ISO and a stack of other things which make a control-freak photographer, like me, very happy...

I also use Pro HDR Camera and CameraPro. The latter for taking videos beyond the 4GB file length limitation.

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At least on my (low-end) LG Lucid, FV-5's ISO setting doesn't function. I can set it however I want, but it'll use auto-ISO regardless. All of my other apps with ISO setting — Android's Camera app, Camera360, Vignette, and RetroCamera — do adjust the ISO, so I know it can be done on my unit.

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I also use Pro HDR Camera and CameraPro. The latter for taking videos beyond the 4GB file length limitation.

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