The 5 Best iPhone Camera Apps (So Far)

Next to email, web browsing and text messaging, the best thing about the iPhone 4 is the camera. (I'd even put it above the iPod and voice calling functions.) It really has invigorated my "real" photography and has me thinking all the time about making something creative with photos in ways I never have before.

My latest posts on Man of the House detail what I think are the five best camera and/or photography apps on the iPhone right now. A few months ago the list would have been different, and I'm sure in a month or two it will be different again.

Camera+
Camera + is the best picture taking application on the iPhone (that isn't made by Apple). It's got lots of features but doesn't get in the way of getting to taking pictures quickly. A steal at $0.99.

TiltShift Generator
Since I've written this piece, other apps have incorporated "tilt shift" functionality (namely Instagram), but this one is still one of my favorites. Blurring the focus on elements of an image can make your iPhone's camera look like you've got a thousand dollar lens on it.

Plastic Bullet Camera
The best app for making your iPhone's camera look like a crappy camera is Plastic Bullet. Like the the crappy plastic cameras it's very random, and often very awesome. And i's made by people who make insanely expensive professional video cameras, and it shows.

ToonPaint
ToonPaint turns your photo into an illustration. Even though I wrote about this app on Modern Day Dad already I had to include it in the top five. It's still lots of fun to use.

Instagram
I look at Instagram every day, and it's getting to the point where if I take a cool picture, I'm more likely to post it to Instagram than Facebook. I couldn't have imagined that would be true six months ago. It's got a great community, fun filters to put on your photos and lots of inspiring images to look at. And if you're on Instagram too look me up. I'm "thechrisford" in Instagram.

iPhone App of the Week: ToonPAINT for iPhone

ToonPAINT is the most fun I've had with a photography iPhone app in a long time. It seems like every photo app I download (which, admittedly is a lot) just takes a picture you've taken with your iPhone and turns it into something that looks like you took it with a crappy camera from the 1970s. It was fun for a while, but honestly I'm bored with it. These apps made more sense when the iPhone camera wasn't that great, but now that the camera has been vastly improved in the iPhone 4, there isn't a need anymore to make your photos look even more hip worse.

ToonPAINT on the other hand takes your image and creates

a monochrome line drawing of it, which you can then color-in. The initial image can be adjusted for the edges, black level and gray level, and sometimes you'll just want to stop there. But if you want to color your photo, you can choose colors from a standard color-picker, the colors you've already chosen, or colors from the original image. The whole thing is really well thought out and very easy to use.

Check out some of the pictures I made above - a few are from images that weren't that great as photos, but suddenly become interesting in ToonPAINT. My kids in particular got a big kick out of using the app. They have used a similar app from Lego that turns a picture into a sort of "Lego" image, but the instant cartoon you get with ToonPAINT looks much cooler.

ToonPAINT is $1.99 (a steal!) in the iOS App Store.