Camera+ 2.4VS (for iPhone)

Camera+ has been a favorite, highly-rated iPhone photo app in the iTunes app store for a few years. The $1.99 app matches the competing Camera Genius in a lot of ways, with many features in common, though this latest version of Camera+ has a slicker interface and more photo enhancements. For its part, Camera Genius ($1.99, 3.5 stars) offers a bit more in shutter options and sharing targets. Camera+ features fall into two main categories, shooting and photo enhancing. How does it compare with the best iPhone camera apps around?

Shooting
If you use Camera+ to replace the iPhone's default Camera app, you'll get several extra shooting options. First, a timer, common to pretty much all standalone digital cameras, lets you set up a shot and walk into the photo yourself. But you don't get all of Camera Genius's ingenious ways to trigger the shutter—using a noise, on focusing, and with a full screen shutter button. These are less of a concern now that you can shoot with the iPhone's Volume button or using its front camera.

The app also, like Camera Genius, offers a "Stabilizer," which, rather than adding actual stabilization as is done optically or digitally on digital camera, simply waits till you're holding the camera steady to snap a picture. This worked equally as well as Camera Genius's equivalent. A burst mode does a better job than Camera Genius's equivalent feature. By lowering the image resolution, I could shoot more rapid photos, though of course, the resulting images couldn't be blown up as much.

Another shooting possibility that Camera+, like Camera Genius, adds to the iPhone is the ability to specify separate focus and exposure points. It takes an interesting, if less intuitive approach than Genius: You touch the screen once on the spot you want the focus, and while holding that finger down touch another spot for exposure. After this you can drag either point around anywhere on screen. This only works with the better camera on the back of the phone; with the front camera I could only set the aperture point. But this was better than Camera Genius's, which showed separate focus and exposure points for the front camera, but in fact they didn't work separately.

A final shooting tool was the ability to set the flash always on—something not available in Camera Genius, but also something that will wear down your iPhone's battery quickly.

Enhancing
After taking your shots, photos appear in a smart-looking "Lightbox"—a photo gallery that looks like a contact sheet of film photos. From here, you can touch an image to get the Edit, Share, Save, and Info buttons. The first offers Scenes, Adjust, Crop, Effects, and Borders, each with their own subchoices. "Scenes" is like the feature offered on many point-and-shoot cameras, including Clarity, Auto, Flash, BackLit, Darken, Cloudy, Shade, Fluorescent, Sunset, Night, Portrait, Beach, Scenery, Concert, Food, and Text—a healthy selection! One drawback—unlike Snapseed ($4.99, 4 stars) and Camera Genius, you can only edit photos taken in the Camera+ app itself, not existing images in the Camera roll.

But you don't get sliders to adjust the lighting the way you do in Snapseed ($4.99, 4 stars) and Camera Genius; Camera+'s Adjust tab only let you rotate and flip the image. The Cropping tool is excellent, with large easy-to-grab handles and plenty of preset aspect ratios. One problem, though, was that I couldn’t rotate a preset from portrait to landscape orientation, as I could in Camera Genius.

The FX tab is one place Camera+ shines: you get four sets of nine effects: Color, Retro, Special, and Analog. Be warned, though, that the last set is an extra-cost item, only available for preview in the base app. The Special effects include HDR, polarize, color dodge, grunge, and cross process. It's just about everything you find in Instagram (Free, 3.0 stars) and Hipstamatic ($1.99, 3.0 stars). And each effect offers an Intensity slider for further adjustment.

Sharing
Once you've got your photo all dolled up the way you want it, your choices are Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter (as well as SMS and email, which you can do in the default Photo app). Camera Genius goes a bit beyond this, with Tumblr and Picasa sharing thrown in. Of course, both are a far cry from Instagram, which encourages deep delving into its own photo-centric social network based around small, usually stylized square images.

A Lot of Plusses
Camera+ 2.4VS is a beautifully designed app that enhances your iPhone camera and photo enjoyment. I actually find its slick interface design one of the best, but Camera Genius offers more shutter and sharing options, more editing control, and lets you work with existing images. Camera+ has a better burst mode and lots of fun effects. But for the ultimate in photo correction and enhancement, look to our Editor's Choice, Snapseed for iPhone.

[App Store link: Camera+]

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