Apple picker Do you like to take pictures with your iPhone and are you tired of the eternally recolored pictures on social networks like Instagram? And how about trying to start taking photos in black and white, for example? Is this too retro for you? But retro is back in vogue and such a well-photographed reportage on the street in the style of famous documentarian photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson… Or maybe a series of portraits in style TinType, that could be the real inspiration not only for you, but also for your fans. Don't you believe? Take a look into Tomáš Tesař's digital photography kitchen.
Tips for eight great applications specifically for black and white photography, with which not only I work most often, but also many of my colleagues - iPhone photographers at home and abroad. Forget about color, erase hundreds of oversaturated liters from your head and return for a moment to the beauty of seeing life around you in black and white.
Specifically in iPhone photography, especially abroad, lately I have been encountering experimentation with black and white creations more and more often. At the same time, many authors achieve great results. For all of them, I would recommend you, for example, a great promoter of the iPhoneography genre Richard Koci Hernandez. From female authors, for example Lydianoir.
But back to the apps. I have selected eight of them for you, although the offer is much richer. However, you will find only a few of the truly BEST ones. Some of the ones I have chosen for you today are used exclusively for photography, some for editing. Some are universal. Try them, enjoy them and most of all, be creative! If you're as passionate about iPhone photography as I am, send a selection of your best shots to our editors, we'll be happy to publish them!
(Editor's note: the competition will be announced in a separate article.)
Application for taking black and white pictures
MPro
Quick start application. The ideal helper for snapshots and street photography. It doesn't take long to save photos in uncompressed TIFF format either. The picture will automatically "fall" into the iPhone gallery - Camera Roll. You have four basic control buttons on the display, plus a fifth, which is traditionally the camera shutter. When you open a "raw" photo, saved in TIFF format during photography, you will receive a file that is almost 5 MB in unzipped form, while you get a 91 x 68 cm image at 72 DPI when unzipped. And when converting to print 300 DPI, you get a surface size of approx. 22 x 16 cm. All this with the iPhone 4, the penultimate and last generation 4S and 5 give even better results! Recently, the application received an update and its creator, Japanese developer Toshihiko Tambo, is constantly improving it.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/mpro/id540292572?mt=8″]
Hueless
It is a direct rival to MPro. What I like about this app is the quick response in focusing and the response during exposure setting. It has slightly fewer features than the MPro competitor, but that's what makes it attractive to some photographers. It has a slightly worse menu layout, but you will find a reliable tool for quick and immediate recording of what you see "right now". After the last update, it can also boast the possibility of recording in lossless TIFF format.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/hueless/id507463048?mt=8″]
Hipstamatic
Today, it's already a cult application that the whole world knows. And those iPhone photographers who haven't come across it yet can't consider themselves an experienced creator. But seriously. Some will probably ask why Hipstamatic. It's nothing new and it's really well known. Simply because they are undoubtedly among the best. And even in the genre of black and white photography. Because if you use its films and lenses specifically for black and white images, you can get a lot of great shots! Including the mentioned TinType style in the portrait photo, which this application is proud of. In addition, a completely new photo social network is now connected to it OGGL, which is a very interesting project. And completely different from the media-washed Instagram.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/hipstamatic/id342115564?mt=8″]
StreetMate
It will especially please those iPhone photographers who like to see the world in black and white and don't want to go through many functions, such as dozens of filters, frames, adjusting the exposure or distorting the image. Just don't expect that from this application! If its creators were ever inspired by anything, it was the motto: "There is strength in simplicity". But don't look for it in the App Store at this time, because its creators are preparing a completely new version! It is now in beta testing. Personally, I'm really looking forward to the re-launch, I'm sure it won't be long.
[button color=red link=http://getnotified.streetmateapp.com/ target=““]StreetMate[/button]
SimplyB&W
The original author of this photo application was the developer Brian Kennedy aka Mr. Bware, who announced some time ago that he was quitting for professional reasons and "going into iOS retirement". But because he was sorry to freeze the development completely, he finally agreed with the active developer FOTOSYN, which has a number of high-quality and popular photo applications to its credit. For example Bleach Bypass or recently listed Geló. The return of Simply B&W is great news for those who like simplicity and quality.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/simplyb-w/id601916620?mt=8″]
Application for editing black and white images
Perfect B&W
The novelty introduced a few days ago has excellently "tuned" filters that you can select for editing in the basic menu. You will find a total of 18 of them, and each of them can be modified and changed. And that both fundamentally and with very subtle deviations. You can also influence a number of other functions. Traditionally, for example, brightness, contrast, drawing in details (or rather sharpening), color filters for black and white photography, blurring, saturation and color of tones, vignetting, but also framing.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/perfect-bw/id625365973?mt=8″]
Noir Photo
Its name alone can tell some of you which direction we will go in creating. Yes, movie fans do. The Noir style in photography was undoubtedly inspired by the film world and the Film Noir genre, which was popular in the first third to the middle of the last century.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/noir-photo/id429484353?mt=8″]
Snapseed
Universal and probably the most used photo editor in the Czech Republic. Its menu includes a separate section for editing black and white photos. You can find it traditionally under the Black and White tab. A great tool for editing as quickly as possible with quality outputs.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/snapseed/id439438619?mt=8″]
Note: All listed editing apps can be used for both iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as iPad and iPad mini.
If you've read this far through the tips, you might want to ask me a question - yes, I'm sure many of you have thought of it right now: "Why should I use a specifically black and white photography app when I can take a photo in color and then convert it to black and white?"
Because each of the two styles – color and black and white photography – requires a slightly different author's approach. As a photographer (of course this applies not only when taking photos with an iPhone) you will always think differently when working "with color" and vice versa with black and white processing. And above all, to perceive the scene, the situation and especially the light differently. Believe it or not, it works!
VSCO & AFTERLIGHT! ✝ nothing else…
Tomáš, thanks for the article :) My credit card will experience a draft again :D The resulting photo of the combination of Snapseed and Hipstamatic is really excellent :-) I'm starting to become a little friends with Hipstamatick, it's probably really worth investing in more films and lenses, isn't it? The only thing that bothers me about it is the resulting quality of the photos, or at least I'm not very successful in taking pictures with it in focus :-/
I definitely recommend B&W Lab. Imitation of the film is priceless. Plus their correlation curve. Plus + Pix (free) and Alt Photo (I think also free)
Somehow you forgot about the excellent Photoforge2, which has direct imitations of old reel films, lenses, flashes and developers in the add-on package