5 iOS apps for manual photo creation

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

These programs will help you adjust shutter speed, ISO and white balance.

Manual, or professional, mode allows you to influence exposure during shooting: change the white balance, focus, shutter speed and light sensitivity of the sensor. With the help of such settings, you can make the photo lighter, take a frame with traces of the headlights of passing cars or correct the automatic error. Manual mode is available on many Android devices, and iPhone owners are left with downloading external applications or using non-obvious functions.

1. Native camera application

You can influence the exposure without setting anything. There are a couple of life hacks:

• Focus lock. If you tap on an area of the frame in the viewfinder, the camera will focus on it. But if you apply a long press, then the focus will be locked - you can change angles without changing the sharpness.
• Exposure compensation. If you hold your finger on the sun icon near the focus square, then the frame can be lightened or darkened by moving the icon up or down.

You can also overlay a grid over the viewfinder, and on the latest iPhones, take portraits and photos in Smart HDR mode to enhance highlights and shadows. Smart HDR is enabled in the camera settings.

2. VSCO

Application with advanced manual shooting mode. Here are some of the features that come in handy:

• Shooting in RAW. Such images contain more information and can be carefully post-processed in editors without deterioration in quality.
• A dynamic grid with a horizon line. The built-in gyroscope will indicate the wrong angle with red lines in the viewfinder.
• Brightness adjustment. Exposure compensation to brighten or darken a frame.
• Adjusts the white balance. It will help to make the colors of the frame warmer or colder, as well as compensate for the yellow tints, which the standard color correction of the iPhone camera sins.
• Manual focus. Focusing VSCO helps you lock in sharpness with a simple slider.
• ISO setting. Sensitivity can be adjusted in the range from 32 to 3,072 ISO, but there is little benefit from this: exposure compensation works more correctly.

Also VSCO has its own filters. The app is available for free.

3. ProShot

This app costs $ 9.99 and offers several features that VSCO does not have.

• Adjust the aspect ratio of the frame. You can not be limited to 16: 9 and 4: 3 and independently set the aspect ratio of the photo.
• Aperture adjustment. Changes programmatically, but can affect the amount of light in the frame and the depth of field.
• Shooting portraits. If you have an iPhone 7 Plus or newer, manual bokeh is available.
• Shooting video. Also, manual settings, such as frame rate, are available when creating videos.

4. Camera + 2

This app for 299 rubles will cope with manual shooting no worse than the previous ones, and will also help you take an impressive photo of a waterfall or a night highway with passing cars. You can use the Slow Shutter mode for this.

5. Halide

This app boasts a laconic design inspired by Apple's legacy. It's not as fancy as ProShot, and not as social media like VSCO. At the same time, you can also control exposure settings, shoot in RAW ‑ formats and take photos with long exposure.

Halide will be especially interesting for iPhone XR owners: the portrait mode in the application will help you photograph objects and pets with bokeh. Recall that the algorithms of the standard iPhone XR application are sharpened only for recognizing human faces when shooting portraits.

The app will cost 459 rubles.