Get App-y: Crop, tint, colorize and share your life with these photo apps

This column was published Dec. 7, 2010, in The Oklahoman. Find it at NewsOK.com.

Everywhere I go, people are enjoying the hundreds, if not thousands, of mobile photo applications, whether they’re using them to take pictures or edit them, or both.

If you have an iPhone, Android-compatible phone, iPad or iPod Touch, there’s probably an app for you to join the craze just in time to create your own Christmas card.

Here are some I like, and I’ll share more in the coming weeks.

Crop for Free (free, Thinking Drone): This app does exactly what it says: It will crop your photo, and you can rotate it to get the image you want out of the one you took.

Photogene: ($1.99, Omer Shoor): I love this one. Sharpen, straighten, crop, blur, add borders, add conversation bubbles with text and more with this all-inclusive app.

Adobe Photoshop Express (free, Adobe Systems): Called PS Express for short, this app is a mobile photo-editing version from the people who have the gold standard photo-editing program, Photoshop. You can make basic edits, add a few additional techniques and share online.

Color Splash: (99 cents, Pocket Pixels): A friend has posted neat photos using this program. It turns your photo into black and white, and then you can choose to add splashes of color back to it. I think I might need the tutorials to figure it out, but they are available, and the effects that I have seen are worth the time.

And when you’re through editing your photos, try uploading them via apps such as Flickr (free, Yahoo), DailyBoothApp (free, DailyBooth) or Instagram (free, Burbn) and sharing them with friends or strangers.

Stay tuned for more to come in this column. While you’re waiting, check out Hipstamatic for taking pictures and SwankoLab for editing them (both $1.99 from Synthetic Infatuation) on your own. These popular apps are among those that let you create some unusual effects.

YOUR TURN

If you have a favorite photo app, please e-mail the name of it to me at lbrinkman@opubco.com, and I’ll check it out. Find more online at blog.newsok.com/get-appy.

~ Lillie-Beth Brinkman, Assistant Features Editor

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