Eight photo apps you should try on Windows Phone 8. II

Camera 360, the ease of a well-designed interface

And in this headline I point out the greatest virtue of an application with an excellent graphic design and usability The ultimate goal is to create a photo -journal on my device, which shows me my pictures on a calendar and allows me to easily share them.

So the first step is to take the photo, being able to choose a few small camera settings (exposure, flash, initial filter and size) for the capture.

Now, in the calendar, I can select the image to recapture it or modify it by applying a small, but complete, collection of filters.

Simplicity with a positive user experience, effective and very pleasant.

Fotor, retouching lives not only from filters

Like almost all analysis programs, the first step is to choose between taking a picture (with either camera) or using one of the library.

From this point on I can let the program itself optimize the image for me, which does it quite well, being able to crop to the desired size, rotate it, put a frame on it that still looks tacky to me and the effects and touch-ups.

The first group “ FX effects ” is, of course, a collection of effects (but it should be noted that they are very well chosen); then I can edit the basic parameters of the capture such as brightness, contrast, saturation or focus; Finally, the “tilt-shift” effects, which is a blur very similar to playing with the depth of field

Fhotoroom, the social network as an objective

It is certainly very difficult to differentiate and improve existing applications. And for this reason, only those that have a special “taste” can be chosen by users.

Thus Fhotorom has focused on the photo sharing aspect.

It certainly doesn't stand out either for the number or the quality of its filter library, but it does allow small and simple adjustments in each of them. Instead, its ability to connect to social networks to share photos is what makes it remarkable.

Allowing social actions such as valuation actions, favorites management, wall of published photographs, etc.

However don't forget the help to capture the image, so we can take burst, timed, time-lapse photographs , adjusted for macro, landscape or portrait photography.

ProShot, total camera control

This application is in another league and has a radically different goal from all the previous ones reviewed, and that is to give you manual control of all the parameters of use of the camera of your smartphone.

Don't expect the quality or the versatility of a SLR camera (not even compared to an entry-level model), but you can get much better shots (artistically speaking) than automatic mode how the phone works default.

So, in pure manual mode – there are more semi-automatic ones – you can control the size of the shot, in pixels, focus manually, adjust ISO, set white balance and temperature, the ubiquitous mode flash operation, and viewfinder setting.

The latter can make the visor look like a fighter HUD, including a more than useful artificial horizon and the histogram of the photometer.

But there's even more: I can change the speed, the digital zoom (better not to use it), the exposure and the shooting mode (burst, time lapse, etc.).

In fact, of all the applications that I have been testing for weeks to document this analysis, this has been the only one that I have boughtfor my personal use.