Too Many Photo Apps

January 2, 2013 11:25 AM

Help me delete redundant iOs photography apps. I own too many, and it's confusing.

iOs photo apps are so featured-up that it's tough to track overlap. Here are the apps I own...can you tell me if any are obsolete due to the same features being built into other (hopefully superior) apps - which I either own already or can buy? I'd like to wind up with as few apps as possible.

Here's what I've got:
AutoStitch Panorama
Camera+
Canopy
CropForFree
FX Photo Studio
Hueless
Imgupr
Instagram
Koredoko
Photogene
PhotoStudio
PiconHand (Picasa web albums)
ProCamera
Snapseed
and SoftBox Pro for iPad (which I love and am keeping!

For starters, I'm figuring CropForFree must be superceded by at least one or two of the others I own.....?

posted by Quisp Lover to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Snapseed can both edit (crop, tune, etc) and apply filters, and comes highly rated. I'd suggest just using it and Instagram.

(Android person here, but the Snapseed app is incredibly similar)
posted by deezil at 11:45 AM on January 2, 2013

I don't know all of those, but Autostitch Panorama, Camera+ and Snapseed are all relatively discrete in terms of features.

Autostitch - very good (IMO) pano stitching.
Camera+ - more fully featured capture, decent but lightweight post-processing
Snapseed - fairly powerful post-processing (no surprise from Nik Software)

Imgupr - Imgur upload on the go. Is it for Reddit? Alien Blue for Reddit, I believe that has image upload built in, but obviously that's

Instagram - if you use it, there's no replacement.

Don't know the others, but I'd be surprised if CropForFree had a genuine use that the others can't fulfil.
posted by Magnakai at 11:54 AM on January 2, 2013

"Don't know the others, but I'd be surprised if CropForFree had a genuine use that the others can't fulfil."

That's my vibe, as well, but who knows?

It'd be great to keep all on hand, and efficiently choose whatever's best for the task at hand. Unfortunately, I just don't have time/energy to attain and retain that sort of knowledge. And so when I need to do something to a photo, I stare slack-jawed at my photo apps folder with no freaking idea what to use, and start opening them up in flurries until there's no memory left and everything starts crashing. :)
posted by Quisp Lover at 12:02 PM on January 2, 2013

I should also note that I'm not bought into the whole Instagram culture. I keep the app around for the remote possibility I'd want to apply a vintage filter.....though I have the dim feeling that some of these other apps offer similar.
posted by Quisp Lover at 12:04 PM on January 2, 2013

Also, forgot to mention, I just bought "Over", on 50% off sale. It's not a competitor to these other apps, as it does one specific thing: adds typography to photos (with great elegance and flexibility).
posted by Quisp Lover at 12:06 PM on January 2, 2013

I have quite a few photography apps for my phone and the one I use the most is afterglow. It has crop abilities, all kinds of editing, as well as a multitude of filters. I also have camera+ which is useful, but hoenstly, not nearly as great as afterglow.
posted by ruhroh at 12:17 PM on January 2, 2013

I've tried and deleted heaps of iOs photography apps, and these days just use Camera+ and Snapseed. I shoot in Camera+, then edit (crop and tune) in Snapseed, then go back to Camera+ if I want to apply filters.
posted by hot soup girl at 12:43 PM on January 2, 2013

Do you remember why you installed any of them in the first place?

For my part, I primarily use the built in iOS app to actually take pictures because it is accessible from the lock screen. I try to compose my photos they way I want them before I take them. If I need to crop, I use the cropping tool built into the iOS 6 Photo app. If I need basic image enhancement, I'll try the built in automatic image enhancement in the Photo app.

For panoramas, I use Autostitch or the built in IOS Camera app pano feature.

For document and whiteboard images, I use Camscanner+ to correct distortion, adjust for uneven exposure and assemble PDFs.

If I need more editing ability, I generally try a couple apps, but most likely, I will do it on my computer.
posted by Good Brain at 1:08 PM on January 2, 2013

I had the same problem and set up a new folder - whenever I used an app I moved it into that folder. After a couple of months I deleted everything else. I now just have Snapseed and iPhoto (for editing) and Flickr and Instagram (for sharing). I just use the ios camera for taking photos - although I did like camera+ and am sometimes tempted to go back to that.
posted by Gilgongo at 4:53 PM on January 2, 2013