Eight photo apps you should try on Windows Phone 8

Many, very similar and of very good quality

The truth is that the sample set that I used to carry out the report is rather small by necessity. Since the number of applications published in the Store does not stop growing continuously, and at some point I had to stop installing and testing, to be able to write this article.

Not all of them are oriented to offer the same possibilities, but most have a wide library of filters, and special effects that - supposedly and depending on the taste of the photographer - will improve the quality, beauty or impact of our images. images.

Nokia Creative Studio

A simple application offered by Nokia, which allows us to select a photo from our libraries - or take it - apply a filter to it (from among a very sparse library) and make small tweaks to color, sharpness, clarity, or intensity.

Very basic, but very fast. And that allows, like all, to share the result by any of the dissemination mechanisms that we have registered on the phone.

Super Photo, crazy effects

Here we find many effects, and many more if you buy the paid version, and that in the demo I installed, they appear with a padlock that prevents me from using them.

"You still have a lot of filters, 3D effects, combo effects, photo frames, a thing called boken which is a bit surreal, background textures, patterns and brushes. In addition, in each of the effects, you have certain configuration capabilities."

It's funny that this retouching program must be connected to the internet, since all the work of applying the desired effect is actually done by on a server and, when finished, download it to your mobile.

"As a small handicap, you can only share directly via facebook. But from the image library, where you have saved the result, you can now do a normal share by all means."

Photo Studio, small photographic laboratory

Here we are before a program that offers us photo manipulation capabilities, well beyond a gallery of predefined effects.

Starting with the control image, we can modify and manipulate the color levels, saturation, hue, brightness, and contrast. Correct red-eye, posterize or change the color palette.

Add effects like noise, blur, sharpen, or perform warp effects like pincer or sphere.

"And, finally, it allows us to draw with pencil on top of the photo, add a color filter, or a gradient or a vignette. In addition to the typical nonsense of framing our photo or adding a speech bubble."

In the free trial version, saving the resulting image is disabled.

Lomogram, the spirit of Lomo cameras

Following the spirit of those Russian cameras and the way of taking pictures, we find ourselves with a simple application, with a nice user interface user, and designed to obtain good results in a very short space of time.

Thus, once the photograph that we are going to retouch has been selected or taken, we can rotate and crop it to the size that seems most appropriate to us.

The next thing we can do is choose, from a gallery of effects, the modification that makes the photo more interesting.

But there is even more, since there is another gallery of effects but these are applied to what would be the physical negative of the photo . So I can age the image by adding a negative stain, scratches or spatter.

Finally, we can frame the photo and, as in all other applications, share it through different means. But the latter is done automatically, which is a step further in the social use of the software since everything you capture and modify will reach everyone who follows you directly.

I think for now you have to play for a while with the capabilities of these first four applications that we have reviewed. And in the next chapter, which is in the oven, we'll round up the eight photo apps you should try on your Windows Phone 8.