Earlier today, and at Larry’s suggestion (he kept telling me about these awesome apps!) I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS. With him walking me through the process, it was nothing short of simple! The first jailbreak app I loaded, “Categories”, came HIGHLY recommended. It lets you create folders of organized app icons. The result is a far more organized iPhone home screen and the ability to launch apps in a far more finger-friendly manner than scrolling through 8 different screens usually requires. As I organized the folders I was a bit surprised which folder had the most apps… that folder… “Camera”.

Fact is, there are a host of apps that take the iPhone’s camera to new heights. Here are some of Larry’s and my favorites.

Auto Stitch

Larry – with its new features (cropping, resolution options) there’s little doubt that Auto Stitch is the premier panoramic maker for the iPhone OS.  It stitches photos together in a smooth and somewhat speedy fashion and once it’s done it’s next to possible to tell where the images have been merged, most of the time.

Dan – Auto Stitch is one remarkable photo app. The ability to snap a number of images in rapid succession and then, with a few taps of the screen, have it create a panorama blew me away the first time I saw it. Since that first panorama I find myself coming back to Auto Stitch over and over again. The addition of a cropping feature makes it an even better app than ever before. A definite “must-have”. The app Pano is also great for creating panoramas but Auto Stitch makes is far easier and quicker. As a result it is my panorama app of choice.

Camera Zoom

Larry – this is one of those “should have been included on the iPhone from the starts apps.”  Does it do anything truly exciting or revolutionary?  Nope.  It simply zooms.  But the fact that the iPhone is incapable of a function which is pretty much common place on every other cell phone on the market makes this a must have add on.  Zooming is easy and although you do sacrifice a little quality when using it it’s nothing terrible.  I also like the ability to snap a picture by pressing anywhere on the screen.

Dan – Agreed! Nice functionality, should be included in the Camaera app natively and is worth adding to your camera app collection if you use your iPhone camera fairly often.

PixRemix

Larry – When I wrote my review of PixRemix I said it was one of those apps that makes you go WOW!  And it still makes me do so.  With three different types of slideshow possibilities I’m finding more and more uses for it every day.  My favorite is to use a panoramic image I made with Auto Stitch to make a zoom and pan show in PixRemix.

Dan – Larry emailed me a few days ago. It was a short message… “Buy This”. I did and am super impressed. By far the best feature is the Pan and Zoom functionality. After playing around with it I discovered that you can do a great deal with it by zooming in and out on the image repeatedly, taking a run of the mill image and making it something truly special.

Photogene

Larry – It’s saved me countless times.  I’ve taken a picture and want to e-mail it to someone directly from my phone right then.  But the picture needs editing.  It’s too dark, or it needs some cropping to be just right.  With Photogene I can make all the necessary changes right on the phone and save both the original and edited image right to my camera roll.

Dan – Most of the apps in our list are one or two trick ponies. Not Photogene. Photogene is a great one-stop photo editing app. I find that it is helpful on its own but comes in especially handy when use in conjunction with many of the other apps in the list. The cropping functionality comes in quite handy but, as apps like Auto Stitch add cropping into their apps it becomes less important to have a separate app for cropping.

Color Splash

Larry – I use Color Splash to make somewhat blah looking photos pop.  Let’s face it, the iPhone’s camera isn’t great.  Removing color from part of an image really makes the colored places shine.

Dan – ColorSplash and Juxtaposer come from the same developer and are just pain fun. Being able to take a color image, convert it into a black and white image and then add color back into one or two specific locations creates some truly eye-catching.

Juxtaposer

Larry – Plain old fun.  I don’t use it often but when I do it’s I generally end up making an image that keeps me laughing for a long time.

Dan – Juxtaposer was the first image-tinkering app I used and I still love it. The concept i simple- take parts from two pictures and put them together to create something new. For example, I can take my dog Maisy and put her on the moon or, as I did during his irthday dinner, take my father-in-law’s head and put it atop someone who can’t be a day under 106 years old. Creating a good “Juxtaposed” image from two separate images can take some time but is well worth the result.

The iPhone’s camera is a great aspect of the handset and these apps take it to new heights. Sure it would be great if much of this functionality were included in the native camera app but, with most of these costing a few dollars each at most, it is worth adding many or all of them to your device.

Have we missed a camera app you love? Let us know.