The smartphone has evolved tremendously in less than a decade, with the camera being the one feature coming in for a lot of exceptional performance enhancements. With AI-driven photography, multiple lens systems, and speedier processors, phone cameras have reached a level of sophistication that was previously available only to professional photographers. The default camere apps for Android and iPhone are certainly okay for most uses, but they do not offer the advanced features one may desire.
Whether shooting better photos, filming great videos, or looking for more settings over the standard defaults for sophisticated exploration, a third-party camera app will help.
Why Go for Third-Party Camera Apps?
Before we get straight to our list of the best camera apps, let’s answer this question: why do you need to use third-party apps, when most smart products are generally satisfactory? Well, that’s simple. The built-in camera apps, however useful they may be for regular shooting simplicities, tend to not offer the more advanced manual controls, special effects, and better processing algorithms that could encourage your creativity.
Because of such reasons, please consider a third-party camera app that allows for:
- Manual controls: Better manipulation of focus, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, and exposure.
- RAW image support: For professional-quality editing.
- Advanced shooting modes: Night mode, long exposure, time-lapse, and others.
- Filters and effects: Apps wielding built-in effects would help incite some creativity into your images.
- AI-powered editing: Enhance photos with AI-driven tools that can auto-correct lighting, color, and composition.
Now let’s take a look at the best camera apps that Android and iPhone users can try and unlock their mobile cameras to their full potential.
Best Camera App for iPhone
1. Halide Mark II
Platform: iOS
Overview: One of the best-rated camera applications on iPhone, Halide has all the features in an intuitive interface. Halide was built for photographers that want the complete control of their cell phone’s camera; manual focus, shutter speed, ISO, and other professional tools are all present.
Key Features:
- Manual controls: Adjustable shutter speed, ISO, and focus with ease.
- Focus peaking: Helps you to focus on an object precisely by highlighting the areas in focus.
- RAW support: Take photos in RAW to retain maximum editing flexibility.
- Depth control: Change the depth of field for framing creative effects.
- Gesture-based UI: More intuitive, easy-to-learn gestures that allow you to quickly make adjustments to your settings.
Why it’s good: This application is suitable for someone who wants a camera app to provide professional control and ease of use. The fact that it also works quite well for customizing RAW photos is most highly praised by iPhone photographers.
2. Moment Pro Camera
Platform: iOS
Overview: A moment-camera app is oriented toward mobile photography enthusiasts who can live without beefy phablets. It offers brilliant manual controls and will even reward you further if you have one of Moment’s external lenses. It gives you DSLR-like options for taking control over your photos.
Key Features:
- Full manual controls: Adjust shutter speed, ISO, focus, and white balance.
- RAW and TIFF support: Capture high-quality images for post-processing.
- Focus peaking and zebra stripes: Ideal for getting precise focus and ensuring highlights aren’t overexposed.
- Time-lapse and long exposure modes: Create stunning effects with exposure control and time-lapse functionality.
- Real-time histogram: For better exposure adjustments and image balancing.
The Camera is the perfect app for anyone looking to simulate their iPhone’s return to more professional camera experience. It has a streamlined intuitive interface-a professional’s white balance, exposure, focus, and many others to offer.
Camera + 2.
Platform: iOS.
Overview: The Camera + 2 is the updated version of Camera+. This is a versatile camera app, packed with quite a lot to offer. Beginner or professional, this app should work for you with its manual controls, advanced editing tools, and RAW capture.
Key Features:
-Manual controls: Control focus, exposure, ISO, and white balance.
-RAW capture: Enables you to shoot in RAW for higher pursuit-quality editing.
-Scene modes: Includes different modes like portrait, night, and macro to fit different kinds of environments.
-Built-in editing tools: Adjust exposure, white balance, saturation, etc.
-Slow shutter mode: For creative long exposure photography.
Camera+ 2 is great for both normal use and professional photography. Camera+ 2’s multitude of options ease to use; dawned with edited tools makes Camera+ 2 such a force to deal with.
- ProCamera.
Platform: iOS.
Overview: ProCamera is another professional iPhone camera app that puts everything from aperture priority, manual focus, exposure, app lock, and white balance stack into your hands for both the new users and the pros to maximize the camera’s usability.
Key Features:
-Presets from whole manual adjust setting: You got full control on exposure, ISO, aperture, white balance, and many others.
-RAW/TIFF format: You can begin high up to keep image quality higher for post-processing.
-Designed for low light: You make more beautiful photos thanks to settings made for low-light.
-Anti-shake: Move for hands that quiver.
-360degree mode: Very simple to make 360-degree panoramic photos.
Why it’s great: ProCamera” is famous for its purity photo quality and versatility-a great app for those that want high-quality shots minus a DSLR.
—-Obscura 2Platform: i-OS.
General idea:obscura 2 is a good-looking, friendly camera app emphasizing manual control o0f the i-phone camera in barely minimalistic yet elegant interface. It is meant to fulfill the needs of someone who wants to snap professional pictures and hates the heavy interfaces and extremely complicated settings.
Key features:
totally manual: compensation, shutter speed, ISO, and focus.
–This app supports RAW format-shooting in RAW suits only evil professionals who do everything on the computer.
-The variety of bulls: it is cool for i-phone owners who have wide-angle lenses or a telephoto lens.
-Many filters and effects, which apply right within the app.
-Live histogram-to keep a right measure across exposure.
Why it’s great: Obscura 2 is a combination of a beginner app’s simplicity and a professional tool’s power! It is so much fun to use and so good to look at-no crammed file lists here-just all the most important features and helpful techniques as focus peaking, real-time histograms, and RAW capturing.
Best Camera Apps in Android
- Adobe Lightroom
Platform: Android,-IoS.
General idea: Adobe Lightroom is a mobile camera app that features high-quality image capture and advanced post-production capabilities. A must-have for serious photographers, the app offers the largest range of camera features.
*Key features:
-Take RAW photos for maximal post-editing
-Fully manual inputs
-tons of different built-in editing works
-Profiles/presets
- Cloud syncing: Sync your photos across devices for easy access anywhere.
Why it’s great: Lightroom is perfect for photographers who wish to employ both manual camera controls and professional editing features inside one app. The combination with Adobe’s Creative Cloud makes it appealing for users who also edit their photos on desktop.
- Open Camera
Platform: Android
Overview: Open Camera is an open-source camerawork application without the exorbitant price tag. This app is quite helpful for previous users of Android who preferred to manage whatever: dual or manual, without haggling over a paid app. Open Camera offers full feature support, including manual focus, exposure controls, and RAW support, free of charge.
Key features:
- Manual controls: control focus, ISO, white balance, and exposure.
- RAW support: capture your photo images with RAW format for professional quality.
- HDR and panoramic mode: good for taking high-dynamic range (HDR) photos or panoramic-style wide-angle shots.
- Time-lapse and slow motion: advanced video recording features.
- Grid overlays: helping with composition and appropriate arrangement of your shots.
Why it’s great: With this list of features, Open Camera makes providing superb manual controls easy and most importantly cost-effective, making it one of the best-value camera applications for Android. It’s simple and efficient; really, it could offer just about everything set to complete your expectations in a mobile camera application.
- Camera FV-5
Platform: Android
Overview: Camera FV-5 is another brilliant camera application for Android users who seek manual controls in the convenience of their cameras. The app is made for semi-casual to professional photographers with detailed control over every shooting aspect of interest, focus, shutter speed, ISO, and more.
Key Features:
- Manual controls: adjust shutter speed, ISO, focus, and white balance.
- Support for RAW: could capture high-quality RAW images ready for detailed editing.
- Exposure bracketing: create HDR images by combining multiple exposures.
Why it’s great: Camera FV-5 caters for the advanced photographer in Android, with full manual control, advanced shooting modes, and RAW support for the image. This is great for those who want to go further into the realms of mobile photography.
4. Google Camera (GCam)
Platform: Android
Overview: Google Camera, or GCam for short, is a camera app for the Pixel family of devices made by Google, but due to superior image quality and AI-powered post-processing, GCam is now available for other Android devices as well. It comes with tons of features, including an extensive number of AI enhancements, Night sight, and a range of shooting modes.
Key features:
- Night Sight: A low-light mode capturing remarkable detail in poorly illuminated conditions.
- Portrait mode: Creates a professional background blur, mimicking a more traditional DSLR engine.
- Astrophotography mode: Capturing beautifully starry skies for long exposure shots.
- HDR+: Google’s AI-enhanced feature that improves image quality in tricky light conditions.
- Super Res Zoom: Enhancements make zoom quality great while preserving detail.
Why it’s great: Google Camera has impeccable image processing algorithms and can rival any of the stock camera apps in pretty much any scenario, if even your phone isn’t among the best hardware. AI features used in the app indeed make a real difference standing-out for it.
5. ProCam X
Platform: Android
Overview: ProCam X is a professional camera app for Android equipped with full manual control that can provide you with features like focus peaking, white balance adjustments, and RAW capture dedicated to those of you who want to take photography to the next level.
Key Features:
- Manual controls: Adjust the shutter speed, ISO, white balance, and focus.
- RAW capture: Shoot in high-quality RAW.
- Video recording: Type of a video with manual controls with frame rate and resolution.
- Time-lapse: Create astounding time-lapse videos.
ProCam X provides DSLR-level controls available to Android users. With it, you have a plethora of options for pictures and videos that are sure to please any professional photographer.
Conclusion
Stock camera apps on both iPhone and Android have grown to provide mainstream power, while third-party applications would go a step beyond in terms of control, editing, and creativity. Whether you are a novice photographer or an experienced and advanced one, some camera applications think for you.
For iPhone, Halide Mark II, Moment Pro Camera, and ProCamera offer manual controls and RAW support, while Obscura 2 has a simple but powerful user interface.
For Android users, camera options like Google Camera, Camera FV-5, Open Camera distinguished by their unique features and professional tools among others.
Choose wisely depending on what you need, and all apps discussed here would be a giant leap toward your better photography. From manual tweaks and RAW support to AI features and creative modes, these apps really have something for everyone, Android or iPhone.