Camera and Portrait innovations for your Smartphone

A short time in the past if you went to a games arcade you could quite happily spend a few dollars having your portrait caricatured by a Camera machine with cutting edge portrait innovations, this would give you some very amusing portrait photography in the form of Water colours, cartoon style and (gasp) even a Michelangelo style. These weren't the best cameras either and you would certainly pay for the privilege of having this throwaway photo mementoe.


And in a very short space of time we have moved dramatically on! As now we have the ability to take, via our Smartphone cameras, any type of portrait in whatever style we want! It's not all gravy though as some phones of course have better cameras than others here's some stats on what are some of the most renowned  cameras on phones are at the moment:

Despite their ailing fortunes Nokia still produces some of the best cameras for phones with all sources agreeing that the Nokia N8 has the best camera ( 12mp Autofocus with a Carl Zeiss camera Lens) 

Everyone expected the iPhone 5 to come out and blow away its predecessors and were slightly disappointed that they had to settle for the iPhone 4s , which was very similar to the 4 , where it is a vast improvement though is on the phone's camera which is now an 8mp autofocus, being a big improvement on the original 5 mp, the camera app opens straight from the lock screen making speedy photography easier and also offers better low-light shots.

Apples biggest and most current rival is the well regarded Samsung Galaxy S II which also sports an 8mp camera which is great for outdoor shots and a very crisp screen to view the photos on.

With all these great cameras you need to do something a bit more special than your bog standard photos, so here are some of the best and most innovative portrait apps out at the moment to make the most of your smartphones and keep your dollars out of the arcade camera booths.


I've come across a superb photo gallery on Mashable from which I'm going to feature a few photographs and links to the apps and software used to create them. Of note is that these are all photos taken using the iPhone. Incredible photography , the whole article can be read on Mashable

Train Passenger by Peter Davis

Unbelievably snapped on a normal mornings train travel to work, the photo has been enhanced using Mill Colour a renowned app from an award winning visual effects company that allows you to manipulate an image to achieve the desired colour effect. Recommended by many professional photographers.

Mr Melancholy by Anton Kawasaki

Incredible to think that such unique portraiture is a product of a camera phone, the broodiness of this portrait is enhanced with 
CameraBag :allowing many different camera filters to be applied such as:

LOLO-Giving vibrant colourful shots

Italiano-with coffee hues

and many more filters, also with customization and reprocessing features.

What about some colour Gametrender?

Okay , thank Amy-Mae Elliot for this then and those crazy fools Bryan and Ola as photographed by Jim Darling

And that is why Smartphones cameras are awesome-when combined with the right apps and an artistic eye. What can you create? You're welcome to add your best-and worst- efforts in the comments section.

(Thanks to Amy-Mae Elliot for her brilliant Mashable article)

Now if serious photography is not your thing then amuse yourselves with this Cartoonize App

This and many more camera apps are freely available on iTunes.