If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture with the\r\nright effects is worth a million. And those million words could translate to\r\nsocial media shares… which could turn into business. That’s right: From a standard\r\nphoto to viral sharing, all thanks to a few photo effects.
But how do you apply those effects? You turn to your Android\r\ndevice and the Google\r\nPlay Store. There, you’ll find plenty of tools that can give those\r\nphotos just the right look you need to make your product, company, or service\r\neven more likely to go viral.
Be careful, though: This category is a minefield of bad apps\r\nthat either don’t do what they claim or that are filled with so many ads they\r\nmake the app useless. To help you winnow out the bad ones, I picked five of my favorites.\r\nLet’s dive in and see what apps are the best and what they can do for you.
Note: This gallery is\r\nalso available as an article.
The one thing you must remember with this app is\r\nthat as the name implies, it’s all about paper sketches–so that’s the type of\r\neffects you can expect. However, Paper Camera does them better than most other\r\napps. Paper Camera isn’t free. But the low price of .99 cents is worth every\r\npiece of pseudo copper you lay down.
Once you’re done working with your photo, you can save it to\r\nyour collections or even share it through the standard Android sharing\r\nmechanism. You can use this app without an account, but if you sign in with an\r\nAdobe ID you’ll get additional features (such as real-time syncing). You can\r\nalso sign up for a free trial. I have found working with\r\nLightroom without signing in to be all I need.
Some users will really appreciate one feature in particular.\r\nBecause you can add text to the images, you can insert your company name and\r\nadjust the transparency to create an easy watermark. Cupslice is free and\r\nserves as a great way to learn how image editing can happen on a mobile device.
From within its advanced controls, Fotor allows you to edit\r\nthe vignette, shadows, highlights, temperature, tint, RGB, and curve of the image.\r\nYou can rotate, crop, add frames and stickers, pixelate, and even alter the image\r\nfocus, giving it a somewhat tilt-shift look. The Fotor interface is easy to\r\nlearn. There are no ads to this app, but you can purchase in-app effects,\r\nfonts, frames, stickers, and collages.
Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic, The New Stack, and Linux New Media. He's covered a variety of topics for over twenty years and is an avid promoter of open source. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website jackwallen.com.
