Top Five Photo Apps – Photo App Lounge – By Em Kachouro
Welcome to our Top Five Photo Apps – Photo App Lounge section of theappwhisperer.com. This is an area on our site where we ask highly accomplished mobile photographers what their top five photo apps are and why.
We recently published the Top Five Photo Apps as recommended by Yannick Brice , Cedric Blanchon, Irene Sneddon, our Columnist and Award Winning Mobile Artist Sarah Jarrett as well as Louise Fryer, Lisa Waddell, Davide Capponi, Ali Jardine, Clint Cline, Elaina Wilcox, France Freeman, Tess Gomm, Lola Mitchell and Vivi’s Top Five Photo Apps including accompanying images demonstrating these selections, if you missed those, please go here.
Today, we are featuring Em Kachouro, we have Kachouro in many of our Flickr Group showcases and we’re delighted today to publish this wonderful article today.
Number One— Procreate
©Em Kachouro – Snapseed, Procreate
My first app that I ever bought for my iPad was Procreate — and it’s still my favourite one. It’s not an app for editing photos like e.g. Snapseed, my Number Two app. Procreate is an app made for sketching, painting, creating . But, of course, you can import a photo and modify it via those sketch and paint tools. But Procreate offers a lot of more: You can work with layers and merge them in a variety of ways (e.g. multiply, linear burn, color dodge). As I come from Photoshop world, I felt very familiar with those possibilities – but Procreate is a lot easier to learn and use.
When I like to quickly merge to pictures, I use Image Blender. But when I like to apply some paint and sketch effects between layers, I prefer Procreate.
The above picture is my first one I ever made with Procreate. It took me 20 minutes; the source is a photo I took with my iPad in Ada/Tuscany (Italy).
You can use Procreate even without importing photos. The following picture was painted completely on Procreate and was processed afterwards with some photo apps as it were a photo.
Number Two – Snapseed
©Em Kachouro – Source photo
Snapseed is my basic tool I use for nearly every photo before processing it with other apps. I tried out a variety of apps for tuning and adjusting, but I always come back to Snapseed. Just for grunge effects I prefer other apps. Snapseed offers some random buttons for specific tools.
Sometimes I’d like to have some random proposals for a whole set of effects to get some unexpected results you can work with– and in this case I first use Snapseed and then e.g. Phototoaster.
I processed the photo of the little model car in the first steps with Snapseed before it went into further processing steps with other apps (Image Blender, Color Lake).
©Em Kachouro – Snapseed, Image Blender, Color Lake, Repix
Number Three – ToonCamera
©Em Kachouro – ToonCamera, Procreate, Snapseed
For converting photos into cartoons and pencil art, I can recommend ToonCamera. It doesn’t work for all subjects and often the effect is too exaggerated. You have to find out, play around, experiment. In the following photo of a hairdressing salon it worked fine. The picture was first processed with ToonCamera. Then I wrote the text in Procreate and mirrored it – and finally the picture got its specific atmosphere via Snapseed.
Number Four — Vintage Scene HD
©Em Kachouro – Snapseed, Vintage Scene HD, Image Blender
My favorite vintage app is currently Vintage Scene HD. It offers you a lot of presets and also a random button. Some effects remind me on really old newspaper pictures. The following pictures show this vintage newspaper style.
Number Five – Color Lake
©Em Kachouro – Snapseed, Vintage Scene HD, Alien Sky
I also like to mention in this list an app with one special feature: With Color Lake you can add and modify water reflections to your picture. I also used it in my picture with the little black model car you can see above. I always use Color Lake as one of a multitude of tools – but for water reflections it’s perfect and easy to use.
Links To All Apps Mentioned
Procreate
Snapseed
Image Blender
Color Lake
Repix
ToonCamera
Vintage Scene HD
PhotoToaster
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Joanne Carter is a British photography journalist, editor, curator, and the founder of *TheAppWhisperer.com*, one of the world’s leading platforms dedicated to mobile photography and art. Since its launch in 2009, TheAppWhisperer has become an international hub for artists of all levels to discover, learn, exhibit, and engage with contemporary photographic practice.Built on principles of inclusivity, accessibility, and artistic excellence, Joanne has spent almost two decades championing mobile photography as a serious artistic medium. Through interviews, critical essays, exhibitions, competitions, and education, she has helped shape and document the evolution of mobile art on a global scale.Her work has taken her internationally, lecturing on photography and mobile art at institutions and events including the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, alongside appearances in the UK and Europe. She has served as a juror for international photography and mobile art awards across Portugal, Canada, the United States, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.Joanne is also the founder of *TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com*, one of the first online galleries dedicated exclusively to collectible mobile art, connecting artists with collectors across Europe, the United States, and Asia.Before founding TheAppWhisperer, Joanne worked extensively in print journalism and photographic publishing, including roles at a paparazzi photo agency and as deputy editor of a leading photography magazine. Her freelance journalism, criticism, and commentary have been published widely in both the UK and the US, with bylines in *The Times*, *The Sunday Times*, *The Guardian*, *Popular Photography*, *NikonPro*, *DPReview*, *Which?*, *Vogue Italia*, *LensCulture*, the *BBC*, and more recently, the *Financial Times*, where her published letters on photography continue to contribute to wider conversations around the medium.Alongside her editorial and curatorial work, Joanne’s own photographic practice has been exhibited internationally across the UK, Europe, South Korea, and the United States. Her work increasingly explores themes of grief, loss, death, memory, and the body.Her current research interests centre on grief, death, and poverty, with forthcoming postgraduate study leading towards doctoral research in these areas.Joanne is currently developing new long-form writing and photographic projects and is available for commissions, editorial projects, speaking engagements, and collaborations.Contact: joannetheappwhisperer@gmail.com)
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