5 Awesome Apps for Photography.

May 3

In this Blog I go through the top 5 mobile phone Apps I use in my Photography, from planning a trip, finding a path to the top of that peak or finding out the best place to get that epic sunrise or sunset, plus a few to help with camera settings. They are no particular order.

Clear Outside

The first one here is Clear Outside, this App does an excellent job at giving you all the elements that can effect your photography that is weather related and it is location specific, so you can save a photo location in the locations tab and save it to your list for later use. This is the list of information given.

Sunrise and sunset times

Great for planning the timing of your next shoot and predictable.

Cloud Cover

As its name suggests this gives you a percentage of cloud cover as a whole and then breaks this down to Low, mid and high cover percentages. This can determine the type of photo that you might be able to catch, you are not going to be able to get cloud shadows on the hills without clouds!

Visability and Fog

If you’re after a moody misty photo this section of the app is going to help, just don’t expect it to be right all the time.

Rain and Wind

This is the percentage chance of rain and wind speed and direction

Frost

Temperature, Feels like temperature, Dew point and Humidity.

These all do a pretty accurate job.

Summary - A great weather App, but much more precise than Met Office or BBC weather apps, use them all for comparison.

Price - FREE!!

Photopills

Although Photopills is second on my list, this App is an absolute must for any photographer out there. It contains so much information and does so much that it is impossible to cover everything in this App, but you need it NOW.

It really is the all in one App for Photographers, the Swiss army knife photography App.

It has three menus.

My Stuff. Within this tab you can access plans, create points of interest, change your settings (this is where you set your camera model as well as well as various other setting that the App uses to compile its results), and a section that covers where you backup all your app info.

Pills. This contains the planning tab which is where you search and set up your photo locations, the sun and moon set and rise times as well as their position in the sky. The exposure tab where you can get the correct setting when using an ND filter for example. The DoF tab where you can find your depth of field and hyperlocal distance using a setting you enter i..e. focal length, aperature and subject distance.The FoV tab, the DoF table and Hyperfocal table tabs.

Academy. This a really useful tab as it more or less an info menu. In here there is a user guide, video tutorials and how to articles, all of which are super helpful as this is a feature packed App that takes time to learn. There are also Team, shop, feedback and rate the App tabs as well as a glossary tab.

Price- £9.99, but worth every penny.

OS Maps

This one is a simpler to explain, and basically it is all 607 Ordinance Survey maps of Great Britain on your phone.

There is a free version available, but to get full access I suggest going for the premium subscription, this option is based on either per month or annual subscription which can be cancelled at any time, planning a hike is easy and as a bonus the subscription option allows it to be used on your tablet and computer.

If you need to go off the beaten track to get that epic shot, you will need this app, just make sure you have a battery pack to keep your mobile juiced up, or have a paper OS map as backup, you don’t want to get lost out there.

instant access to 607 maps of Great Britain to view, print, or download to your phone.

Print out your own routes and maps to take with you so you are never stuck without a map.

For inspiration on the go, use OS Maps AR Viewer to pan across the landscape.

Subscription costs are as follows:

OS Maps Premium Monthly Subscription - £2.99 / month

OS Maps Premium Annual Subscription - £23.99 / year

Snapseed

Snapseed is a mobile phone photo editing App, and a pretty powerful one to boot.

It is ideal for editing your phone pics ready for a quick turnaround to place on Instagram or social platform without having to get home, edit the photo on your computer and then post, and it is so easy to use and best of all it is FREE.

It broken down into three sections

Looks

To state the obvious this is where you start the editing by creating a certain look to your photo, you can stick with the out of phone look or choose from various presets.

Tools

This is where you can do all the regular edits like cropping, rotating, white balance, and ‘tuning’ the image which is altering the brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights etc and then it has some effects tools like vintage, drama, grainy film to name a few, some work well, some not so well depending on your photo, but there is huge scope here.

Export

Basically choose where and how you want to save your finished edit.

This a must have App, not just because it is free but because it gets you in the editing frame of mind, and could even help you out ‘in the field’ to fine tune your compositions. For example, before you get out your main camera, take a photo of the image you are after, open it up in snapseed and use the crop tool to define a certain spot in the image, it may give you a different perspective on the shot you are after and it is very quick and easy to do.

Price - FREE!!!

Magicseaweed

You’re probably thinking that I have lost it now, why have what is regarded as a surfing App, for photography.

The answer is pretty simple really, after all what would be the point of aiming to get that fantastic seascape photo where you are after big waves full of drama, and you get to your location to find the waves are more like a ripple. Magicseaweed forecasts waves, wind and swell therefore giving you an idea of wave height, wind direction and in some instances links through to local webcams. It includes low and high tide times and how high those tides are, so that cluster of rocks you are after in the foreground won’t be covered by a high tide. It also includes sunrise and sunset times with the last light time.

All you do is use the search tool on the main page using either a ebbed map or find the place name near to your desired photo location and that’s it. If nothing else it gives you an idea of what to expect so you can time your visit, and used in conjunction with other weather Apps produces a good overall picture of what to expect, your desired location might not be directly available so choose the one nearest to it.

As always some local knowledge will help, so look on social networks for people in that area and ask them. The worst that can happen is that they don’t reply, or you might get an invaluable nugget of local info that could save the day.