And so, an abundance of apps has launched recently to cater to all the smartphone owners who might want to snap a quick shot as they roam the city streets. It's now easier to take, tweak, share and display photos than it ever was in the pre-app world. These are some of our favorites.
Snap and Share
Instagram and Picplz have virtually identical functionality for adding effects to photos and sharing them with friends. Both allow you to add filters after you take photos, share them to Facebook and Twitter, view popular photos from other users, and follow friends to see their photos from a news feed. Even the interfaces of the two apps are so similar that at first glance you might mistake them for each other.
The biggest difference between the two free photo sharing services is that PicPlz has an Android app while Instagram does not (neither has a BlackBerry app). Picplz also gives its users slightly more control of camera settings in its Android app than Instagram does in its iPhone app, and it recently added a "collection" feature that easily adds photos to a group file (Instagram accomplishes this function via hashtag).
If you're an iPhone user and have the option to choose between the two (Android users, also check out Vignette), the best way to decide between them comes down to which network most of your friends use. You can scope out the situation on each app by connecting your Twitter and/or Facebook profiles to the photo app.
Hipstamatic, $1.99, is another similar option for iPhone. While its more expansive filter collection produces beautiful effects, it doesn't integrate social sharing like Instagram and PicPlz do.
Share Selectively
Using multiple photo apps can easily result in photo overload, but there are several apps that address this very problem by organizing and streamlining your pics.
Browser app Memolane takes social media activity, including photos from Instagram and Facebook, and automatically plots it in a searchable scrapbook. When you want to remember, let’s say, a vacation, you can search for that point in the timeline to see Foursquare checkins, photos, videos and updates you made during that time period.
Gramframe, a $1.99 iPad app, uses Instagram's public API to create iPad photo gallery screensavers for its users. If you want to put your friend's photos into the mix, Pixable's Photofeed iPad app has a slideshow feature that can accomplish something similar with friend's Facebook photos, though the iPad will still go black after its normal sleep time.
Photofeed browser, iPhone and iPad apps also allow you to follow photo updates from specific Facebook friends and sorts photos into categories like "most popular," "family updates" and "new profile photos."
If you want to bring things into the physical world, you have your pick of services for creating albums from digital photos -- SnapFish, Shutterfly, MyPublisher and Apple’s photo book service are some of the most popular. Then there's Instaprint, which prints Instagram photos with a retro Polaroid camera look.
More Photography Resources from Mashable:
- iPhotography: 10 Pro Tips for Snapping Perfect iPhone Photos
- 15 Incredible iPhone Dog Photographs
- 7 Superb Short Films Shot With Cellphones