For anyone who regularly checks out my posts, a regular tool I use to enhance images taken by me are the iPhone apps: Instagram and Hipstamatic. I feel its important to create your own images when posting content since its not the most kosher practice to constantly take images from other existing content you may write about.
Instagram and Hipstamatic are only available on Apple products (such as iPhone and iTouch), so unfortunately if you do not have an Apple product, you won’t be able to utilize either photo app to enhance your photos. However I want to give a quick overview of each app and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Depending on what kind of image I’m looking to capture I switch between the two apps.
Instagram: Founded by Kevin Systrom, Instagram takes its inspiration from the instant quality of Polaroids and Systrom’s perception of photos retaining a telegram characteristic. If both attributes had a baby, it would be Instagram, which is what you have here.
Advantages:
- Free
- Easy to use app interface: The menu bar is very intuitive with options to: View Your Feed, View Popular Instagram Photos, Share (Create Your Own Instagram Photo), News, and Profile.
- Large selection of filters to choose from.
- Ability to Share on: Twitter, Facebook, FlickR, Posterous, Tumblr and Foursquare.
- Adds professional quality to photos.
- Quick upload speed.
Disadvantages:
- When you post a photo, it doesn’t go to a separate photo album on say your Facebook account. There’s really no easily accessible central location.
- Users can really only view one photo per link that you post.
- If you want to delete a photo from your profile you can’t (or at least I don’t know how).
Hipstamatic: In a nutshell, Hipstamatic is, “an application that brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty and fun of plastic toy cameras from the past.” Hipstamatic has been around longer than Instagram so it has more features established and has worked more of the kinks out. FYI,Instagram was launched last October.
Advantages:
- You are able to order your prints from the app to actually have.
- Gives you background information on the effects the lenses, flashes and films you use on your picture. A good resource to educate yourself on vintage camera tools.
- When uploading photos to Facebook, stores your photos in a separate photo album.
- Hipstamatic’s Facebook page shares some really stunning photos apps users have taken through Hipstamatic.
- More established so you can stay up to date on updates to the app.
- Bigger social media presence which is always nice.
- Has ability to delete photos you don’t like.
- So many mix and match options with lenses and film types.
- Really professional finish.
Disadvantages:
- App costs a pretty penny of $1.99 (not that bad actually)
- Hipstamatic occasionally crashes
- Photos take awhile to develop and process
- The lens window is kind of small so its hard to see what main object will be the center of focus in your picture.
- Pictures take awhile to develop but this is understandable since the app is truly transforming your picture.
So depending on what kind of situation and image you’re looking to capture, switching between the two apps is suggested. I have to say that recently, I’ve been using Instagram more because its quick and simple to produce an enhanced photo. But by playing around and feeling out the apps you too can master the art of almost looking like a professional photographer. If you have any other input on these apps that I missed please feel free to comment.
Below are some of the photos I’ve used in my posts that were enhanced by either Instagram or Hipstamatic:
Instagram (Click on photos to see corresponding post or Tweet):
Hipstamatic (click on photos to see corresponding blog post):
