Hasta La Ideas

Three new applications aim to enhance mobile photography

A slew of photo applications for iPhone have rolled out recently, bringing a bit of competition to the Instagram-dominated scene. From professional features to creative image destruction, the following apps continue to expand the capabilities of smart phone photography.

Camera Awesome

Focusing on camera and video, this app brings some professional-level options to your touch screen interface. The slickest feature has to be the adjustable focus and exposure selection, which allows you to set each independently as you compose the shot. While shooting video, Camera Awesome will record the five seconds prior to pressing the record button, a clutch feature for capturing fleeting moments.

Pictures can be taken rapid fire, and the app has hundreds of filters and effects ready for application through the “Awesomize” button. Finished images are then shared across multiple social media channels. Not that it affects the app’s performance, but quirky loading phrases like “alchemizing dragon scales” and “grilling unicorn tears” sure make for an entertaining wait time.

Decim8

The anti-nostalgia attitude of Decim8 turns your photographs into pixelated works of glitch art. This is the third version of Decim8, and the UI has received a complete overhaul, giving you much more control over the final product through customizable presets. Effects can be applied one by one or as a batch effect. Menus and options are accessed through multi-directional gestures, and the focus is found by simply tapping the screen. Since corruption is really the point of Decim8, data is irrecoverable and pixel reconfiguration often renders your images beautifully mangled. Users share photos through social media or Postagram postcards.

Instamatch

Rather than compete with the popular photo app, Instamatch from Tiny Hearts pulls Instagram photos to create a fun memory game. The app recognizes similar objects and arranges them into themes, also allowing you to create your own categories. For example, a food-themed game would present a series of similar dishes that users will have to flip and match. Scores are determined by the number of tiles and the amount of time it takes to complete them. Multiplayer mode supports two people on the iPhone and four on the iPad.