The era of mobile consumers is at its peak. Having the right apps installed on your phone is the equivalent to going camping and taking a map and a GPS with you. And even these tools have been digitized with the various navigation apps available for download. In this day and age, a photographer’s arsenal is not only the equipment he takes with him but also his resourcefulness with the mobile tools that are now at his everyday disposal. In this article, we will introduce some of the most useful apps for photographers, and recommend the 15 best photography apps that will save you time, help you strategically plan your shots, and keep your gear safe and sound.
Google Earth is a grand classic for photographers when it comes to choosing an app that lets you scout locations. Whether you’re looking for great city scenery to capture a moment of the urban lifestyle or simply taking your camera with you to experience living up in the mountains, Google Earth is your must-have app for location scouting. Straightforward and easy to use, it’s safe to say that competing with Google’s eyes on our planet will be a tough order – to say the least!
Moreover, Google Earth isn’t just an app just to view street pictures and landscapes – its complex software actually allows you to research the world in comprehensive detail. Even though their project already covers the entire planet, Google continues developing and maintaining its massive database for the good of their fellow men.
Platform: Available on iOS and Android.
Price: Free.
Snapseed is a sophisticated photographer’s tool that has proven itself to be a “must-have” amongst users that spend countless hours photo-editing on their phones. With a loyal user base backed by close to a million reviews on app stores, as well as high ratings (4.4 Stars on iTunes and 4.5 Stars on Google Play), it surpasses the majority of photo-editing apps available to photographers. Some users even claim they will never go back to using Photoshop after using it.
What makes it great? Top-shelf filters, a wide range of brushes, easy cropping, color balance, and tuning features. It is unquestionably one of the best photo editing apps for photographers in both iPhone and Android systems.
Platform: Available on iOS and Android.
Price: Free.
If you work with cameras for a living or as a hobby, then you know that any photographer’s nightmare would be to have your equipment stolen. With this mind, the developers of Lenstag came up with an idea to centralize and maintain a database of all serial numbers related to photo gear. Although the app isn’t a magic solution to getting your gear back, Lenstag will notify you if your equipment photos have shown up online, making it much easier to catch the thief and retrieve your stuff. The only requirement for you to start using it is to upload a picture of your camera, lenses and any other accessories you want to record in the app, thus proving your ownership. The simplicity in this app makes it one of our favorites free apps for photographers.
Platform: Available on iOS and Android.
Price: Free. Pro version is $29/year or $3.99/month.
Copyright infringement is especially frustrating when you’ve put so much time and effort into making the best of your photographs and someone just takes them without your permission. You might have even been okay with the person using your pictures, but since he or she hasn’t asked you in the first place, your emotions are boiling. Now, thanks to Watermark X, a free popular app that allows you to mark your photos with relevant copyright information, you can protect your artwork from bad actors. Moreover, not only is it suitable for protecting you from people who want to use your work without attribution, but you can also use some of its image-editing features, all of which come for free in the one week trial. All in all, this would make it one of the best apps for photographers in iOS.
Platform: Available on iOS.
Price: One-week free trial. Pro $39.99 or unlock specific features.
Whether you are an amateur or professional photographer, by now you should already know what it takes to get your perfect shot, especially if you are shooting long exposures or using ND filters. Shutter speed, exposure, and aperture are crucial parameters to calculate before you plan your shot. By utilizing this app’s built-in timers, you will take impeccable shots and eliminate any potential errors in calculating exposures by yourself.
Platform: Available on iOS.
Price: Free.
We all know that weather conditions can make or mar your photographic creations. Yr.No, an app developed by the Norwegian Meteoritical Institute and NRK, aims to warn you of impending bad weather, by accommodating and maintaining over ten million locations for accurate weather forecast updates. It used by photographers worldwide to predict the best time possible for a photo shoot and it’s especially useful for landscape and any other type of outdoor shooting. Be sure to check this app out next time you are doing a shoot. And one more thing – just because the forecasts are coming from Norway doesn’t mean you need to speak the language. The app comes in English and is free to use!
Platform: Available for iOS and Android.
Price: Free.
The days of scanners are coming to an end and with the world moving to all kinds of electronic formats, Google’s PhotoScan app found itself a great time to come in and start scanning people’s photographs the proper way. Say, you might have an old picture laying around somewhere and you want to have it digitized without losing quality. Simply launch the app, take pictures of your print from various angles and there you go. PhotoScan has processed that for you. Perfection guaranteed! The quality and sharpness will be far better than the majority of apps that do photo scanning.
Platform: Available for iOS and Android.
Price: Free.
A photographer that works with light equipment faces a lot of tough choices when it comes to positioning lights, and even worse, forgetting how well it worked in previous shoots. The Skylights app aims to solve that by allowing you to create diagrams and store all of your setups on your phone. Not only can you create them yourself, but you are also able to browse through other people’s diagrams to get ideas and inspiration. A photographer’s dream come true in one app, this makes it one of the best apps for photographers to have in their iOS devices.
Platform: Available for iOS.Price:
Price:Free. Optional in-app purchase to remove ads for $3.99.
Calculating maths and data related to distances clearly is not every photographer’s cup of tea, especially if you didn’t like doing it back in school. This is where the Hyperfocal DOF app comes to the rescue, by calculating hyperfocal distances for more than 1600 camera models. For those who don’t know, the hyperfocal distance is the closest distance at which your lens can be focused while keeping the objects at the most desirable distance for your camera. With this in mind, you can now focus on your passion and not equations. All you need to do is launch the app, enter the aperture and the focal length, and the app will do the rest.
Platform: Available on iOS and Android.
Price: Free.
Cleaner to remove duplicate Photos
Ever get fed up with your phone being swarmed by duplicate photos? Frustrated with never having enough storage space? With Cleaner for Duplicate Photos, you will locate the biggest space eaters on your phone, be it photographs or videos, and erase them in a matter of a few clicks. Not only will you find the duplicate and biggest photos but the app also locates any similar photos, making it far easier for you to delete them when you know which ones you want to keep.
Platform: Available on iOS.
Price: Free.
Flickr is a mobile app that connects one of the largest communities of photographers. If you are looking to get inspired, share your work and keep it safe in the cloud, this will be your go-to app. With the ability to upload up to 1TB of photos at no charge, you can create your own groups, find people to subscribe to and even show off your camera’s specs. Without a doubt, this makes Flickr the best social network for photo enthusiasts.
Platform: Available for iOS and Android.
Price: Free.
Sure, you might have already got used to using iTunes for photo and file transfers. However, as many users argue, the whole process of synchronizing your files is overcomplicated. If you are a Mac user, then that might be a little easier for you, but if you try to do that on any other operating system, you will feel the same hassle many people do. Save yourself time and headache with the WiFi Photo Transfer app by simply dragging out the photographs you need and storing them on your machine in just a few clicks.
Platform: Available on iOS.
Price: Free.
While you have most likely tried plenty of weather apps on your phone already, Dark Sky isn’t just your simple summary of the daily forecast type of app. What it offers is accurate, to-the-minute notifications regarding changes in weather condition. By aggregating data from multiple sources, Dark Sky determines the highest probability for a truthful change in the climate. As a photographer, seeing a notification that says “Rain starting in 8 minutes” can save you both time and worry.
Platform: Available on iOS and Android
Price: $3.99 in iOS. $2.99 in Android (2-week free trial)
PIXEO is your guide to the world’s best photo locations. Not only does it show photographs that have been taken in a place but it will also provide you with directions and reviews by other photographers that visited this location. Then you can decide whether it’s worth coming over. The app comes with a free trial, which is definitely worth a shot, and then you either pay $0.99 per month or $9.99 per year. Potentially, you can save a lot of time if you are traveling and looking for good spots to shoot.
The app comes with a free trial, which is definitely worth a shot, and then you either pay $0.99 per month or $9.99 per year. Potentially, you can save a lot of time if you are traveling and looking for good spots to shoot.
Platform: Available on iOS.
Price: Free trial. $0.99 per month or $9.99 per year.
We might have said this already about other apps, but PeakFinder is definitely a must-have app when you take your camera with you out in the mountains. PeakFinder is your mobile scout that provides you with a 360° panoramic view of mountains as well as their names. This is the top-of-the-line product out of all the outdoor apps we tried out. Backed by thousands of positive reviews across app stores, the only downside to it is that it goes for $4.99. In any case, we haven’t found any free alternative that can compete with the amount of effort put in by the developers of the PeakFinder AR.
Platform: Available on iOS and Android.
Price: $4.99
What is your favorite app for photographers?
While there’s certainly a lot more mobile software that can serve your needs, in this article we outlined the best 15 photography apps we would recommend for you. These will help you plan your environment right and predict anything that could potentially go wrong in your photo shoots. What’s most convenient about these apps is you don’t even need to have any special equipment to use them – just your mobile phone and you. Don’t hesitate to leave your opinions below – chances are high you have at least one of these app installed on your phone already – and even if you don’t, we’d love to hear which of them worked for you.
