Photography

Photography, image search and more on apps this week

ProShot

ProShot by Rise Up Games started out a while back as a fully featured camera app for Windows Phone back in 2012. It launched on iOS in 2014 and is now available on Android as well (for devices running 5.1 and up). On compatible phones, it gives you access to full manual control, editable presets, and on Android, RAW support (assuming your phone fully supports the camera2 API. Check the link above for the full feature listing for each platform.

Windows Phone:

iOS:

Android:

Download QR-Code

ProShot

Developer: Rise Up Games

Price: $4.99

Image Searcher

Looking for that Gif to send to a chat app? Or an image? Why bother searching and then downloading it when you can do it directly from the media share feature in the chat app? Your preferred chat app doesn’t have such a feature? Try Image Searcher. Just remember, don’t set a default while trying to share an image and it’s all good.

Android:

Google Drive on Windows Phone

Sure, Google doesn’t really bother supporting Windows Phone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use certain apps. If you are a Google Drive user, check out the unofficial drive client.. Check out the full review on All About Windows Phone.

Windows Phone:

Polarr

What started out as a browser based photography app has now evolved into a free iOS app (with in app purchases, of course). It’s pretty feature rich and allows you to create and save your own presets as well.

iOS:

Participate & Join Nokia’s photography team in New Zealand!

Is photography your passion or hobby? Then check out this latest contest from Nokia & Burton. All you need to do is to submit your photos, taken on any device, and send it to them via their contest website. The theme for the photo is Low Light Urban City or Street Style photography. The Last date for submission is 10th July, so go get clicking!

Check out the details in the email we received from the folks at Nokia Connects:

We wanted to get in touch to let you know about an awesome competition Nokia and Burton are running as we’d love to get you and your community involved!

We’ve partnered with Talenthouse and Dazed & Confused Magazine to give three aspiring photographers the chance to join Nokia’s official AAA team at the 2013 Burton High Fives event in New Zealand. The final winners work will be featured in the September 2013 print issue of the UK’s most influential style magazine, Dazed & Confused.

We’re inviting aspiring photographers across the globe to share a new appreciation of their surroundings by submitting a photo inspired by ‘urban city and street style’, captured in ‘low light’ conditions. 50 finalists will then be chosen to receive the new Nokia Lumia 925 on trial and challenged to upload their low light photos, captured on the device, to their Talenthouse portfolios.

The closing date for entry to the competition is July 10th 2013, so you still have plenty of time to get creative and take part – visit the website for full competition details and more information about how to enter.

Image credit: givaga / 123RF Stock Photo

Fast Camera: Shoot at 800 photos per minute!

Have you ever imagined a camera that can capture photos at the rate of 13 snaps per second? Yes. It is possible!

All you need is an app called Fast Camera on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. You will not miss a single event when you launch Fast Camera. As soon as you launch the application, the camera will start capturing snaps for you tirelessly until you press the stop button again. The snaps will be numbered automatically and the number of snaps generated will be displayed on the lower left corner of the application. Oh, and it is saved automatically into the camera roll, so you don’t have to worry about that either.

Fast Camera enables photo capture at the rate of 800 photos per minute on the iPhone 4S and 720 photos per minute on the iPad 2.

You can start or review the snaps captured once again and select, view, delete and save files. You can also set the delay between snaps for Time Lapse Photography. You can set picture snap quality to the maximum of 8 MP (on the iPhone 4S of course). While taking photos you can shift from front to rear camera. It is also possible to switch between landscape and portrait while capturing snaps. You can set either flash or having continuous light. After setting Autofocus, exposure and white balance controls, snaps can be initiated.

The best part is the instantaneous snap function. You will not have a clue of what is happening except the ticker sound that is produced at each snap. You can capture snaps at higher speeds if you use a lower photo resolution.

This app is very useful if you would like to narrate a story by using a series of photos. You will not miss the exact moment that you want to capture as your camera will be capturing more than 10 snaps per second. Live action of kids when they are playing can be captured precisely. By just selecting the required features of the application, you will be able to record snaps in an effortless manner. You will be able to review all the captured photos. You can save snaps which are worth saving. Both amateur and advanced photographers can utilize this feature. As you will not miss shot at even one tenth of a second, you can easily bind your favorite snapshot through your camera.

Fast Camera is a really innovative application that will entertain picture lovers. The moments we spend with family members, friends and colleagues can be captured by using Fast Camera option. If you are using the application for the very first time, you should go through all the options present in the application.

Fast Camera costs $0.99 and is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad running iOS 4.0 and above. Get it from the App Store, here.

GroupShot for iPhone: Fix it once you’re done clicking

Most of us will be familiar with this scenario – you gather with a group of friends/family/colleagues for an event/occasion. During this event, everyone poses for the obligatory group shot. But wait, someone just got distracted and an otherwise perfect photo has that one black spot!

Ever wish you could juxtapose that one part of the photo from another to get the perfect shot? Say hello to GroupShot.

GroupShot is an application which helps you get that flawless group photo.

On entering the application, there are 2 options for creating the picture – take new photo or choose from library. Since I did not have people around me at the time (especially for a group shot), I chose the second option. A message popped up asking to enable location services on the phone, otherwise the application can’t read from your camera roll library!

Select ‘Yes’ and you will be taken to the Location Services which is under the Settings on the iPhone.
Once I enabled Locations Services on the phone for GroupShot, I went back to the message and selected ‘No’ option. Then I clicked on the ‘Choose from Library’ option from the main screen. This goes to your photo library. I wanted to experiment with the demo pictures supplied with the application so I selected the ‘GroupShot Demo Album’.Here I found 8 picture – 4 group shots of 2 families. One group was in a garden environment and the other on the beach. I chose the beach shots by selecting the pictures and clicking Done. You can choose any set of photos as the set that you want to work with at that time.

The application loaded the 4 photos with some icons on top. The ‘New’ button takes you back to the main menu to shoot a new picture or start over. The arrow icons were for editing a step backward & step forward. The 3rd icon was for sharing – you can save the photo, share it on Facebook, Twitter and also email the picture. The 4th icon was for selecting the best photo in the set to work with. I chose to work with the default photo loaded (as seen above) so I skipped back to the editing screen.

In the default picture, the boy was looking down and not into the camera. If you want to change the image, say, make the boy’s face to look ahead into the shot, you just select that are by rubbing your finger on his face. Note: you need not be very precise in the selection, it will take some tries.
The selection created a yellow mask on the face and the other 3 photos on the side zoomed to show the boy’s face. You can now choose which face to replace in the original shot. I selected the bottom last picture of the boy smiling into the camera by clicking on it. The application starts to change the picture by ‘performing magic’. This might seem like a funny message, but it does perform magic!

Voila! The boy’s face was replaced in the default picture and I could not detect any faults. Of course, with real-time pictures, you would have to be very precise in the selection!

Positives: Great tool to get those picture-perfect group shots.
Negatives: The picture is saved in a low resolution. Location services needs to be enabled!

GroupShot is available for iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running iOS 4.0 or later. And at $0.99 cents, it isn’t a bad deal! You can download it from the App Store, here.

This is a Guest Post by Teja Nishant. You can find her on twitter, @desinor, and on her blog www.tejanishant.com.

Slow Shutter Cam App – Blurring Your Pictures on Purpose

Ever thought of an app that can simulate control over exposure and shutter speed of your iPhone camera? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. With the Slow Shutter Cam App, you can capture up to thirty seconds of frame of movement making it the perfect tool for capturing motion pictures such as streams of light emitted from cars during night or a waterfall.

Manufactured by Cogitap Software, who create apps for iPhone, this slow shutter cam app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch (fourth generation), iPad 2 wi-fi and iPad 2 wi-fi-3G, it requires iOS 4.0 or later. This app is priced at approximately $2.00 at the iTunes store.

This is indeed an awesome app for it has seven shutter speeds and can be operated in three modes. You can select the shutter speed and release it to get the shot. Compensation for low-light situations can be done using slow shutter effect and long exposures. The capture mode is selected after tapping the capture settings button that is located at the left end of the tool bar.

The automatic mode features automatic exposure compensation so that the picture is always fully exposed irrespective of the shutter speed at normal light conditions. This is equivalent to the shutter priority mode on the DSLR. In the case of low light conditions, the manual mode allows the camera to accumulate every photon hitting it. If you ever thought that the picture is over exposed, compensation can be done using the exposure control option.

You can ‘paint’ with light, show car light trails and fireworks or can capture any moving light with the light trial mode unlike shooting with the DSLR being tied to specific grid settings in order to obtain good results. Additionally the light trial mode has some features too. It gives real-time live preview and has a smart exposure. Also the sensitivity levels can be selected.

The freeze control that is available in the automatic and light trail modes makes you to put more or less emphasis on the first or last frame of a capture session. This control is displayed by choosing the edit option after the picture has been taken.

Available with a self timer function, this app is not compatible with iPhone 3G, however its support is expected to come soon.

Some of the popular features for this app are –

• Front camera support
• Auto-save option
• Torch support
• Unlimited exposure time
• Exposure lock option from shot to shot
• Ability to show/hide preview.

Also, one can prevent adding ambient audio to it and prevent it from locking. Some disadvantages include the lack of sharing photos across social networks and it lacks stabilizing feature. Also, the phone should not be held steady else the image gets blurred. But version 2.0 is in the make and we hope it will get even better response than its previous ones.

You can download the app from the App Store, here. It’s available for iPhone, iPod touch (4th Gen) and the iPad 2 running iOS 4.0 or later. It’s currently on sale for $0.99, so get it while you can! The sale is on for 24 hours!