“Icelanta”, one of my most liked and personal favorite photos on Instagram. (via http://statigr.am)Instagram is easily my favorite iPhone app right now and I’m certainly not alone. It’s a fun, simple way to take and share great photos and the massive community that has developed around mobile photography is what keeps us all improving. As happy as I was to read the Mashable article yesterday about Instagram coming to Android, I was much more excited to see the bonus segment with interviews from 15 of the app’s most prominent photographers.
Don’t get me wrong, expanding the Instagram community beyond the iPhone is pretty big news, but what makes that bonus segment so great has little to do with the app itself. It’s about taking better, more interesting and more artistic pictures. While Instagram has some great filters and effects, there are hundreds of photo editing apps available. Beyond that there are specialty lenses, creative hacks and centuries worth of photo history to learn from. While I highly recommend reading all the interviews, I took note of the Instagram filters and external apps that each photographer mentioned.
- Mike Kus (@mikekus)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird
External Apps: TiltShiftGen - Malachy Sherlock (@fashion)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird, Walden and Brannan
External Apps: Camera+, TiltShiftGen and Swankolab - Chi Vo (@looking_glass)
Favorite Filters: N/A
External Apps: Camera+, PicFx, TiltshiftGen, Noir Photo and Pro HDR - Carli Kiene (@inkedfingers)
Favorite Filters: Brannan
External Apps: (none listed) - Kristen (@poeticaesthetic)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird
External Apps: Filterstorm - Kristine Herryanto (@babysmurf)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird
External Apps: Camera+, Filterstorm, Cross Process, ShakeItPhoto and Hipstamatic - Cole Rise (@colerise)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird and Sutro
External Apps: CrossProcess and Camera+ - Dan Rubn (@danrubin)
Favorite Filters: Brannan
External Apps: Filterstorm, CrossProcess, Lo-Mob, iDarkroom, Touch Retouch and Camera+ - Lauren Randolph (@laurenlemon)
Favorite Filters: Brannan and Hefe
External Apps: Camera+ and PhotoForge - Christy Hydeck (@chrysti)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird, Inkwell and Toaster
External Apps: PicFx, Swankolab, PictureShow, iQuikDoF, qbro, PostalPix, LensFlare and Iris Photo Suite - Josh Johnson (@joshjohnson)
Favorite Filters: X Pro II
External Apps: qbro and Filterstorm - Nir Leshem (@nirl)
Favorite Filters: Gotham
External Apps: Pro HDR, Camera+, Filterstorm and Iris Photo Suite - Jennifer Jeffrey (@jenniferjeffrey)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird and Brannan
External Apps: Camera+ - Jussi Ulkuniemi (@skwii)
Favorite Filters: Apollo
External Apps: (none listed) - Brandy Byrd (@bbyrd)
Favorite Filters: Earlybird (exclusively)
External Apps: None.
In case you weren’t paying attention, only 2 favorite filters were mentioned above more than once: Earlybird (8x) and Brannan (5x). On the external apps side, Camera + (8x) was the most popular, followed by Filterstorm (5x), TiltShiftGen (3x) and 2 mentions each for Swankolab, PicFx, Pro HDR, qbro and Iris Photo Suite. I personally like to try out several Instagram filters before I post an image but I tend to lean pretty heavily on Hefe and X Pro II. I also love playing with photos in different apps. I’ve probably tried out at least a dozen or so and after reading that article I’m going to need some more iTunes credits. My trusty standbys are TiltShiftGen and Camera +. If I’m feeling particularly creative or have some spare time, I also like to tinker with my photos in Pinhole Cam, Diptic, Hipstamatic and Dynamic Light. Are you an instaholic? I’d love to hear what filters, apps and techniques you use in the comments. Be sure to add your instagram handle and a link to one of your favorite personal photos would be great too!
Yea, dude. I check instagram more often than I check twitter now. My go to app is definitely camera +, but it’s easy to go overboard with. A good tip is to dial down the effect with the slider. A couple other apps I enjoy are FingerFocus and SlowShutter. Finger focus is neat because you can paint the area you want to be in focus, rather than using the simple radial or line tools in the instagram app. Then I’ll occasionally craft a few images together with PicFrame, which is similar to Diptic. My favorite filters are probably Rise, Brannan, and Walden.
@kenseals on the igram
Hi Jason,
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