App Store Apps

Instagram Direct now lets you send links and images in landscape and portrait orientations

Instagram yesterday announced a pair of minor updates for Direct, a direct-messaging feature built into its mainland mobile app for iOS and Android. For starters, Instagram Direct now supports sending images and videos in portrait and landscape orientations.

Plus, Instagram is just now offering support for sending links in direct messages.

The ability to send a permanent photo or video in landscape and portrait orientations through Direct means you no longer have to worry about weirdly cropping it as it will now show up properly in its intended orientation.

“We’ve added support for links in Direct,” noted the company. “You can share website links with friends and preview them directly from your thread.” As a bonus, the team also has implemented automatic links to phone numbers and addresses send through Direct.

Landscape and portrait uploads in Direct are available today on iOS, with Android coming soon. Links in Direct messages are available today on both iOS and Android.

Today's features are part of Instagram's version 10.22 update.

Grab Instagram for free via App Store.

Google’s Snapseed app picks up new Double Exposure filter + Pose & Expand tools

Google just pushed a new version of Snapseed for iPhone and iPad to App Store. Snapseed version 2.17 includes a new Face Pose tool, the app's second tool that focuses on working with portraits and selfies. There's also a new Double Exposure filter for blending two photos using analog film techniques and digital image processing. You can grab the latest version of Snapseed for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch at no charge from App Store.

Camera+ updated with RAW saving improvements, 3D Touch Peek and Pop & more

Camera+, my favorite iPhone photography app, was updated this morning on App Store with new features putting more RAW power at your fingertips while adding support for Peek and Pop gestures in the app on 3D Touch-enabled devices like the iPhone 6s/7 series. Building on the previous update which enabled RAW shooting and editing, the new Camera+ version 9.1 includes new RAW options for saving and exporting images at the best possible quality.

FiLMiC Pro 6.0 hits with overhauled UI, iPhone 7 exclusive features and other improvements

Anyone who's serious about taking videos on their iOS device would agree that FiLMiC Pro for iPhone and iPad leaves Apple's stock Camera app in the dust.

The filmmakers' go-to app, this ultimate video recording and editing software has become even better thanks to yesterday's update which brought out a redesigned user interface along with a number of new features.

The update includes iPhone 7-exclusive capabilities such as gamma curve controls for Natural, Dynamic, Flat and LOG (a first for mobile video), live adjustments for Shadow, Highlight, RGB, Saturation and Vibrance curves, temporal noise reduction up to 1080p resolution and more.

Save your custom edits and share them as reusable looks via QR codes in latest Snapseed update

Google today rolled out another update to its free of charge photography app, Snapseed. In Snapseed 2.16, you can now save your complex edits as reusable looks.

You can apply saved looks to other images with a few taps or share them with friends and other Snapseed users via QR codes. This Snapseed update also lets you apply the Structure filter to individual areas with the Selective tool.

Snapseed now gives you precise control over brightness levels and colors

Earlier this week, Google's free image-editing app Snapseed was refreshed with a new tool for adjusting brightness and color levels precisely. A pair of under-the-hood tweaks is included, too. Snapseed is part of my iPhone photography toolkit and while I'm fond of its simplicity, I wish I could say the same for the app's imprecise slider-based controls.

With Snapseed 2.15 for iPhone and iPad, adding drama to your photos has become a lot easier than before.

That's because the new curve-based editing gives you precise control over things like contrast, brightness and color intensity in a given image.

How to add Live Photos to your Instagram stories

Post iPhone Live Photo as Boomerang in Instagram Story

The official Instagram app can upload Live Photos and turn them into Boomerangs, and the best part is, you don't even need any other app to do it. However, Live Photos can only be used in your Instagram stories. You can't use them as regular Instagram posts, and if you do, they will appear like a standard still image.

In this post, we show you how to turn your Live Photo into a Boomerang and post it as an Instagram story.

Snapseed for iOS gains white balancing tool, RAW format improvements & UI tweaks

Google-owned Snapseed, the popular image editing app, was updated Wednesday on the App Store with a trio of improvements bringing the app's version to 2.13. The first change tweaks the user interface to make it easier and simpler to select and change filter parameters.

The second new feature is basically the dedicated tool which got launched on Android a while ago that lets you adjust white balance of your images.

The last feature is a correction for developing RAW files with embedded color profiles.

FabFocus kinda brings Portrait Mode to other iPhones

Portrait Mode was on of the standout features of the iPhone 7 Plus. It intelligently uses both cameras in tandem to create a 3D image map of your subject, then in real time, applying a blurring/bokeh effect to the background of your photo. That's something would normally require a high-end DSLR with a wider aperture lens to achieve. While the result wasn't as good as a professional camera, it is a great effect with promising results. Since Portrait Mode does require the two cameras, anyone without an iPhone 7 Plus was left out of all fun. Enter FabFocus.

Adobe updates Lightroom for iOS with support for iPhone 7 Plus dual-lens camera & more

iOS 10 provides new APIs allowing third-party photography apps to capture and edit raw image data in the DNG format, and Lightroom for iPhone and Lightroom for iPad are among first apps to implement photo capture in the highest possible RAW quality. Earlier this week, Adobe released updates to Lightroom for iOS to help users take advantage of the new iPhone 7 camera’s raw shooting capabilities, including support for the iPhone 7 Plus's dual-lens camera.