We've included fan favorites, lesser known names, apps for photo editing, apps for video enjoyment, and many more.
Did we leave your favorite photo or video app off the list? Let us know what you love and why in the comments.
Photo Sharing
PixelPipe - Media Gallery - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) PixelPipe is a free and fully loaded photo sharing app that lets users easily send and geotag their photos to any of 50 supported destination sites including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Seesmic, Facebook, FriendFeed, Tumblr, WordPress, and FTP sites. One downside to PixelPipe is that you do have to manually add each destination site, which could take hyper-socialites like myself a substantial amount of time.
AroundShare - (App Store Rating: 1.5 stars) AroundShare supports sharing your photos, with location and description, to Flickr, Twitter, Google Maps, and WordPress blogs. One nice bonus is that users can subscribe to any AroundShare RSS feed to import full resolution images into iPhoto. One flaw is that your photos are shared publicly to the AroundShare website.
Twitxr - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) Twitxr, a competitor to Twitpic, has a dead simple free iPhone app that, once configured online (you do have to create an account), will post your photos to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa.
Rotzy Photo Sharing - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) Rotzy is similar to Twitxr, but there's a little bit more baked into this free app. You do have to create an account, and should you use it like a photo-sharing social network instead of just a photo sharing utility, you can upload your photos, view your friends' photos in a Twitter-like timeline view, comment on photos with either text or photos, and auto-post to Facebook and Tumblr.
Photo Apps for Tweets
Twittelator - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) With both free and pro versions available, Twittelator has something for everyone. When it comes to photo-sharing, your photos are posted to Twitpic, and photo-viewing happens right inside the app.
Twinkle - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) With Twinkle, you can share and view photos via this location-aware iPhone app. Just note that uploaded photos are posted to a custom Twinkle URL that doesn't support comments.
Twitterific - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) Twitterific is a simple Twitter app with a mini-browser that supports photo uploads from the app.
Twitfire - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) Twitfire is a free Twitter app that's especially handy for web browsing and inserting links, it also supports photo uploads to TwitPic.
Tweetie - (App Store Rating: 4 stars) Quickly becoming the hottest Twitter app, Tweetie offers full features and an iChat-like UI for $2.99. Especially of note is the inline Twitpic image viewer.
One Site Wonders [Photos]
Kyte Producer - (App Store Rating 2.5 stars) Even though Kyte is video-centric, the iPhone app is a video workaround where users can create slide shows from the iPhone's photo gallery, add polls, and chat with their Kyte audience in real-time.
Facebook - (App Store Rating: 3.5 stars) - This social networking app supports photo uploads with captions, posts to Friends' walls, photo sharing, viewing, and tagging.
MySpace Mobile - (App Store Rating: 3.5 stars) - MySpace Mobile gives MySpace addicts the photo features they want including the ability to post comments on friends' photos, and the ability to share uploaded photos.
SmugShot - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - SmugShot is a handy mobile app for the SmugMug aficionado. The app is free and adds geotagged photos, as you shoot them, to your SmugMug galleries.
Mobile Fotos - (App Store Rating: 3.5 stars) - Mobile Fotos is for Flickr users looking for a simple way to browse and upload photos. For 99 cents, users can swipe through their Flickr photos, contacts' photos, favorites, groups, sets, and interesting photos. There's also a nearby search option for finding photos taken near your location. If Flickr isn't enough, you can also opt to send notifications of photo uploads to Twitter.
Photobucket for iPhone - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) - Photobucket users will appreciate this free app, which originally cost $4.99 at launch, that lets you upload your photos to your Photobucket account, as well as browse other online photos. It's simple, effective, and just for Photobucket users.
Snaplog (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - If you're a Snaplog Photo Blogger then you'll like the free Snaplog app that automatically uploads photos to Snaplog.com. Users can crop photos, add effects, tags, captions, and post to Twitteriffic.
ImageShack - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - ImageShack's free app has exactly the same feature set as the Photobucket app, but its audience is existing ImageShack users.
Frivolous Photos
Tattoo Shop - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - Instead of branding yourself for life, why not just add digital tattoos to your photos with Tattoo Shop? The app offers a collection of real-life looking tattoos and text options that you can place on your photos and resize as desired.
Toy Camera - (App Store Rating: 3.5 stars) - For $1.99, Toy Camera automatically applies several random effects to the photos you take.
GothPix - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - Make your photos look creepy with GothPix. The $1.99 app replaces your image with its darker cousin by randomly adding in splatter, sprays, texture, and high contrast black and white tones.
Shakin' Faces Morph123 Lite - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) - Blend together pictures of people, animals, or inanimate objects to see them morph into one strange photo. It's not the most intuitive app to use, but it might be just what the 12 year-old in you is looking for. The Lite version is free, but for a few bucks the fully featured version lets you export your creations in QuickTime movie format.
FAIL Maker - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - FAIL Maker is a dead simple app that lets you take or select a photo, drag and drop a few common FAIL expressions, and save it for future mockery.
Photo Enhancement
Colorator - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) - For 99 cents, Colorator users can color cast their photos by either selecting spots in photos to cast them in black and white, or by changing the entire photo to black and white and then selecting single areas for color popping effects.
EdgePix - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - This 99 cent app is perfect for the person looking to select from a variety of frames and edges to add to their photos. The app supports multiple borders and boasts 14 different borders and edges.
Photogene - (App Store Rating: 4 stars) - Photogene brings Photoshop-like image editing attributes to your photo library. This $2.99 app lets you rotate, mirror, crop, sharpen, adjust coloring and saturation, and add special effects. Your professional works of art can then be saved to your library for sharing or importing to iPhoto.
Magic Touch - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - If you're looking for more photo retouching options and have $1.99 to spare, you might like Magic Touch. The app lets you use your finger to touch up photographs and adjust anything from cosmetic changes like teeth whitening to night vision enhancements.
Photo Lab 1600 - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - Yet another photo enhancement app with 20+ image effect filters and cropping functionality. Photo Lab 1600 is normally priced at $2.99, but is available now for 99 cents.
Photonasis 2.0 Lite - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - Photonasis 2.0 Lite is a free alternative to Photogenie, offering users 32 photo effects including histogram equalization, gray scale, sepia, dilate (light enhancing), erode (darkness enhancing), emboss, smoothing, motion blur, contour, and cartoon effects. The app, however, only supports adding one filter and is pretty prone to crashing depending your system memory. There is a 99 cent version available, but it's unclear what the added cost does to enhance the free version.
Pano - (App Store Rating: 4 stars) - Ever wished you could take panoramic photos on your iPhone? Pano, which is a bargain at $2.99, is a simple app with a huge effect. Pano guides users as they take up to six photos that are automatically merged into one panoramic shot. To check out some of the amazing shots that Pano has played a part in creating, make sure to visit the Flickr Pano for iPhone: Panoramas group.
SteadyCam - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - SteadyCam attempts to tackle a common problem—blurry photos—making those photos you do share pretty and pristine. Once you press the shutter button the app waits until your hand is steady before snapping the photo. The premium version, with fullscreen shutter touch, is also available for an additional 99 cents.
Night Camera - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) - This 99 cent app aims to help you take better photos at night or in low light conditions. Like SteadyCam, the app uses the accelerometer to trigger the shutter when it detects that the camera is stable.
FLEX Photo Lab - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - Another free option for photo enhancement is FLEX Photo Lab, brought to you by Ford as a tie-in with their Ford FLEX campaign. The app, which is incredibly easy to use, has 6 different touch-oriented filters that you can add to your photo.
Polarock - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - Polarock is a simple app that applies the Polaroid effect to your photos. At 99 cents, this app also lets you add in additional styles and captions.
SodaSnap Postcards - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - Make cute postcards from your photos that you can email to friends and family. With SodaSnap, just snap or select a photo, enter a message, and select from your contacts to share and send a postcard with your personalized message.
Seeframe and CEIVA Snap - (App Store Rating: NA (no reviews)) - These apps all have one simple purpose - to let you showcase your iPhone photos on digital picture frames. Seeframe enables users to send their photos to a connected Seeframe digital photo frame. You'll want to visit the Seeframe website for instructions on how to configure your frame and for information on how to pull in additional online photos via RSS. CEIVA Snap supports sending photos to CEIVA frames and online albums, organizational options, and geotagging.
One Site Wonders [Video]
Qik - To livestream your own video content, you'll need to jailbreak your iPhone, but it might be worth it to stream video via the Qik iPhone app, which also makes it easy for you to view comments from your viewers' reactions on the fly. I originally jailbroke my iPhone just for Qik, and although I loved the app, I've since restored my phone. I'll just keep hoping that Qik will show up in the App store in the near future.
Flixwagon - a Qik competitor, also supports a mobile livestreaming iPhone app for jailbroken phones.
12seconds.tv - (App Store Rating: 4 stars) - If you're not quite ready to jailbreak, you might consider 12seconds.tv. You can create and post 12second slide shows from your iPhone with this brand new app. Just take or select 3 photos, record 12 seconds of audio, and post your new video to the site. It's a nice video workaround that doesn't require jailbreaking your phone.
Animoto - (App Store Rating: 4 stars) - This brand new app adds music to your photo library. Just choose between 8 and 16 images, select from 9 different musical genres, preview different song selections, and the final result is a really nice musically-enhanced video that you can embed and share. Check out my little creation from the UCLA vs. Wynoming basketball game at Pauly Pavillion (UCLA won 113 - 62).
For Your Video Watching Pleasure
Television - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) - It is what it is. For $2.99 you can watch 61 television shows from 33 channels on demand on Television. Channels include CNN, CBS, VH1, MTV, and Digg.TV.
Movies - (App Store Rating: 3.5 stars) - Brought to you by Flixster, Movies is the perfect free app for viewing movie trailers, finding show times near your zip code, and browsing top rated and upcoming releases.
Joost - (App Store Rating: 2 stars) - With the Joost app you can choose from over 46,000 available titles to watch music videos, television, and movies on your iPhone or iPod touch. Although the viewing experience is great, the app would definitely benefit from a few additional features, like being able to save and view personal favorites. There's also still a few kinks that need to be worked out.
i.TV - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - i.TV is a TV and movie guide with a selection of media to watch on your phone, the ability to browse television previews, movie trailers, and listings, and the option to add content to your Netflix queue. There's also integration with Tivo, making it possible to set your DVR recordings from your phone.
Truveo Video Search - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - AOL's Truveo is a pretty nifty free app for searching and viewing videos from various sources. Users can search by category or keywords, check out featured content from sources like CNN, and watch what's hot.
Howcast How-To Videos - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - Search and watch how-to videos on origami, recipes, cocktails, car repair, and a plethora of other subject matters. With Howcast, you can view your history, save your favorites, and send them to friends via email.
AppVee - (App Store Rating: 2.5 stars) - If you ever wanted to watch video reviews of iPhone apps, then you're in luck. AppVee is a free app that has in-depth reviews on hundreds of different apps.
Video Streaming Viewing for Work or Play
iRa Pro - (App Store Rating: 4 stars (1 rating)) - If you've got $899.99 to spare, IT know-how, and a predilection for surveillance, then you might want to check out iRa Pro. The app, inspired by the high-end security industry, enables users to view live video feeds from cameras or video management servers. Users can even control pan-tilt-zoom cameras right from their iPhone.
Air Cam Live Video - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - What does $7.99 buy you in the App Store? Air Cam Live Video. The app utilizes the iSight webcam (or other compatible web cams) to bring a live video feed, with audio, to your iPhone. It's a neat idea that you can use for surveillance, as a baby monitor, or just for fun. Additional software download required.
iCam - (App Store Rating: 4 stars) - At $4.99, iCam might be a more affordable way to stream live web cam feeds to your phone. The iCam bonus is that you can view up to four feeds simultaneously. Additional software download required.
World Traffic Cameras - (App Store Rating: 2 Stars) - For practical purposes, World Traffic Cameras adds utility to publicly accessible camera feeds. The $4.99 app gives users the ability to search for cams on a map (there are over 4,000 across the globe), select a cam, and actually watch traffic as it happens.
WorldView Live - (App Store Rating: 3 stars) - Voyeristic types will get a kick out of WorldView Live, the $2.99 iPhone app that lets you watch live video streamed from web cams across the world. You can search for webcams using a map, watch live video streams for more than 40 webcams, view the distance from a web cam to your locale, or save and share your favorites with your friends via email.
That's it. That's all we got. So what do you think of these 50 plus apps. Love 'em or leave 'em? Let us know in the comments.
Interested in more iPhone resources? Check these out:
- "100+ iPhone Games That Use the Accelerometer"
- "Beyond YouTube: 10 Top iPhone Video Apps"
- "11 iPhone Apps That Will Clean Out Your Junk Drawer"