Camera plus 6.2

One of the 50 best iPhone apps of 2011, Camera+ has grown to unimaginable heights. In its three-year journey it has transitioned from a simple filter / effects toy to a one-stop-shop for shooting and editing on-the-go when the DSLR is too hard to carry.

It’s not easy getting hold of a photo editor that does this much for this little money. Some would say it’s a bit overcooked, while others are thirsty for even more features. All in all, everyone seems pretty satisfied with tap tap tap’s little baby, but let’s see how it stacks against our rating system.

You'll get lost in it (the good way)

When you take Camera+ for its first spin the app launches to a view of the world around you with the option to quickly snap a photo using various one-touch options, including focus, exposure, timer, burst more, flash, etc. The placement of the cog-wheel settings button is not ideal, but it slightly tilted nature indicates it’s a sidekick to the shutter button. Pretty smart, huh?

The gallery view, also known as the Lightbox, uses film-style graphics to lay out your photos and lets you select which ones you want to edit. Again, the placement of some options and settings around here is counter intuitive, but they’re not impossible to figure out and you’ll get used to everything pretty fast. One other thing we’d like to stress is that tap tap tap chose a cumbersome italic font for the text in the app. It’s actually pretty hard to read.

For a developer whose knowledge of photography is pretty vast, it’s surprising how the same level of attention to detail has not been applied to the UI. Don’t get us wrong. It’s well designed, but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The clarity filter alone is worth the buy

If you’re the artistic type, you’ll get a lot out of Camera+. Before you start shooting you can tweak a few basic photography settings, such as Live Exposure (ISO) and image quality. During the shooting session the gear button next to the shutter brings out crop options, a stabilizer function (which actually produces visible results), a timer and a burst mode.

The burst mode feature is notably very flawed, at least in this version of the application. You’re better off using this in Apple’s own Camera app. The burst mode implemented by tap tap tap is so slow, it will continue to take pictures long after you’ve lifted your finger off the shutter.

One cool feature is the ability to take photos with the Flash enabled at all times.There’s also a way to have your iPhone decide whether or not the Flash button should be on or not, depending on your surroundings. Furthermore, there’s an option to manually adjust focus and keep it there regardless of how you move the phone about, and the extensive set of filters and effects will keep you stuck to the phone’s screen for hours, if you’re serious about your photography.

The app has also gained a new feature recently that enables those that aren’t worried about storage space to capture and save pictures in the highest quality possible. In this manner, you’ll be able to store pictures in the TIFF format, with lossless compression. Dubbed “Pro,” you will find this feature in the “Quality” area of the settings area. While this may not be your go-to solution every time you shoot a picture, you can use it whenever you want to take advantage of everything the iPhone camera has to offer.

While Camera+ comes with support for iOS 7, various features will only be available for iOS 8 users, such as the manual camera controls, the macro mode, and even the Photos extension.

The Lab is easily one of the best things you’ll find inside Camera+ if you’re into fine tuning, while amateurs will most likely fall in love with the Clarity function in Scenes. Eeven the worst lit image comes to life through this single feature.

Add to watchlist:

RetroHDRFiltersCollageCamera

• Photo Editor by Aviary 3.6.1
• Photo Grid 3.9.2
• Camu 2.5
• Camera Awesome 1.1.12
• Instagram 6.2.1
• HDR for Free 1.6
• POMELO 1.5.1
• Picturelife 3.1.2