I love my iPhone – as an artist, a business owner and a traveler, it’s the perfect accessory and I don’t know what I did without it. With that said, the whole Instagram generation of photographers kind of cracks me up.
“Here’s a cup of coffee. It’s cooler than yours because I cropped it to a square and applied a retro filter to it. I’m an artist and my Facebook/Twitter feed proves it.”
There’s no shortage of Instagram-type apps, and, I’ll admit it, I do have a couple on my phone. This week Smug Mug released their new photography app for iPhone, Camera Awesome. Since it was free and I’m a Smug Mug Pro member, I decided to give it a whirl. Of all of the iPhone photography apps I’ve seen this one has the most options. Users can either “awesomize” their images, adjust the sharpness, temperature, vibrance and contrast or apply any number of filters, textures, frames and effects. The only catch… while a few of the textures and filters are free, all of the good ones will cost you 99 cents. When you purchase one of them, Sumg Mug says you’ll get 8 or 9 like it, but I haven’t been able to figure that one out yet. Smug Mug has also added a bit of their quirky personality to the app with funny quips like “adding magic mushrooms” and “sautéing unicorn tears” when it saves and exports your image.
It’s a gloomy, rainy Friday here in Chicago, so I decided to test this new app, using my birthday orchid as my model.
And, since no apartment photo shoot is ever complete without at least one shot of Essie… Have a good weekend, everyone!
Jenn Winter 
Beautiful photos – thanks for sharing:)
I have to say, I’m impressed with the quality of the images from the iPhone. I resisted the whole iPod, iPhone, iPad craze for a long time, but finally surrendered and bought an iPad last fall. I find that most of the hype is accurate and I love it. I’m leaning heavily toward an iPhone when it’s time to replace my current smartphone.
Anyway, these are amazing images. I love the detail and the sharpness. The color versions have very nice saturation, and the contrast is very nice as well. The SmugMug app does a nice job with creativity as well.
I’m curious, does the iPhone allow an control over aperture settings, or is that pretty much out of your hands? I was wondering about the ability to control DoF.
I believe that there are a few apps that claim you can control aperture settings (Camera+ being one of them) but I wasn’t thrilled with it. The iPhone does allow you to control the exposure somewhat, by touching the part of the image to set the meter by. I still have the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S is said to have a much better camera.