Mojo Zoo's Photo Class: Digital Photo Apps
If you thought there was a lot of choices for optical filters, wait until you dip a toe in digital photo apps. There are lot to choose from. Here are the biggies.
Adobe has three apps that are great for photography; Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge.
Photoshop needs very little introduction and the word is now used as a verb. But there is a mobile version of Photoshop titled PS Express. It allows for quick editing of photos with countless presets, tricks and fun stuff.
Lightroom is the gold standard for photo editing; saturation, tinting, color correction and every single thing you can imagine to adjust in a photo you can adjust in Lightroom.
If you have an iPhone, it comes preloaded with an app titled Photos which will do all the basic things that Lightroom will do, but it is free.
The above is an example of before and after and how colors can be manipulated in Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Photos app.
Bridge is another Adobe app that is great for organizing, cataloging and tracking photos. It is especially useful for managing photos for upload to stock photography sites. It works seamlessly with Photoshop and Lightroom.
In terms of online galleries, I suggest Wordpress. They have a low-key free plan that is awesome.
Flickr is a bit old school, but great for curation. So is Google Photos and Dropbox. If you are on Team Apple, there is always iCloud.
If you want a social media solution, I have to recommend BlueSky. There is an app titled Flashes that will set up your BlueSky account to look like Instagram. Bluesky is setup to where billionaires can't control or steal your content.
With the new announcement from Zuckerberg about how Meta will begin to allow people to lie, misinform and propagandize you, I would avoid all Meta Apps for photography use; Facebook and Instagram. Plus Meta apps have been stealing the work of artists to train their AIs without compensation for the artist. Protect yourself and flee.
Don't even get me started on the toxic, Nazi hate-pit known as Twitter. Yes, I know it goes by a different name, but as long as Elon Musk deadnames his daughter, I am going to deadname the shit out of Twitter. Fuck him.
And of course there is always Tumblr. ❤️
If you are into film photography, you can always use your phone as a light meter, plenty of apps for that.
Another fave of mine is an app titled Find Your Ansel. It is a navigation app to show you the locations of where Ansel took his photos.
EXIF Viewer is also helpful and self explanatory.
Lastly, PhotoPills is your photography planning app. It helps you PLAN your photos ahead of time… So you’re always at the right place at the right time to capture the best photo possible. Very cool app.
