Tag Archives: enhancement feature

Those Magical, One Tap iPhone Photo Enhancement Apps

Many articles have been written about why cell phone photography is becoming more popular than using a purpose built camera. Generally, the articles lean towards cell phones are always handy, while a camera is a extra bit of hardware to carry. I agree with my phone camera always being handy compared to my camera. But, I see social sharing creating the need to touch up photos a bit prior to posting anytime/anywhere being a big part of phone photography.

01 iPhone enhanced

The above is far from what the original quick snapshot was (below). Using a couple different apps, the resulting image has a completely different atmosphere about it. I have written here about many apps and their feature sets to get a image updated for different effect. Most of the iPhone photo apps have a central feature they lean on when marketing the app. A sort of ‘one tap’ photo fix feature. Use the one feature and your photos will be made ‘better’. I don’t use a single app as a do-it-all solution, rather different apps for different results. But, how do the app’s with a leading enhancement tool do when a single photo is left to their one button? Every app offers additional tuning, but here we will just import a common iPhone photo and tap the one button. Starting with our original store front snap:

02 iPhone original

First up, Instaflash. “Patented LCE (Lighting and Contrast Enhancement) from ACD Systems International Inc. It adds natural-looking illumination to the dark areas of your photos while still preserving contrast and detail using advanced image processing algorithms from ACDSee.”

03 iPhone Instaflash

Next, Dynamic Light: Known for it’s HDR effect “Dynamic Light gives you the best and most vibrant HDR-like look on any mobile platform. And this is all accomplished from just a single image using only a single dial.”

04 iPhone Dynamic Light

Camera+ with it’s Clarity feature: “We partnered with professional photographer, Lisa Bettany, to bring you a slew of stunningly beautiful effects. With a single tap, you can transform a soulless pic into a work of art. There are dozens of 1-touch effects for you to experiment with so that you can get the perfect result every time. ”

05 iPhone Camera Plus

Perfectly Clear Automatic Photo Correction: “Perfectly Clear for iPhone & iPad – Intelligent Image Correction. Our lab-quality corrections make sure your photos are perfect… with just 1 click! ”

06 iPhone Perfectly Clear

There are many other app for the iPhone that allow for quick photo editing on-the-go. These are just the top players that let it be well known they have a single click enhancement for you. Others may offer a ‘magic wand’ but they are multiple clicks in and at that point in time you might as well be doing fine tuning on your own.

Which of the above short list is best? Sorry, but to each their own. I don’t mean that ‘per person’, I mean it more ‘per photo’. While having so many options will clutter up a few app folders on my iPhone, depending on the desired end result, the starting quick tap can be different. After all, every photo will tell a different story depending on the story teller.