Your smartphone is probably not the first thing you go to when out shooting photos on your DSLR or mirrorless camera. However, there are a variety of amazing apps that turn the phone in your pocket into an incredibly powerful piece of equipment to help you create amazing photos on your camera. It can be a challenge to sort through all the clutter and find the best apps for photographers, so use this guide to help you analyze some of the best.
Best Apps for Photographers
PhotoPills – $9.99
This is by far one of the most versatile apps for photographers in 2021. Photopills is a great app for planning your shoot. One of the best features is the ability to drop a waypoint anywhere on the map to see the overlay of the sun and moon. This will help you know direction the sun and moon will be at any given time or date.
This is one of the most popular apps among astrophotographers because it also allows you to see the times that stars will be visible, as well as which direction it will be. You can also check the time of the moon rise and moon set, and see what phase the moon is in.
This app is useful for planning your shoot from home and in the field. PhotoPills has day and night augmented reality features, which allow you to point your phone camera and see exactly where the sun, moon, and Milky Way will be at any given time.
PhotoPills also has many more features, including star trail calculations, exposure calculator, Depth of Field Table, and so many more. This app is well worth the money for all of the amazing features.
Adobe Lightroom Mobile – Free
If you use Lightroom on the computer, you need to download Lightroom Mobile. It allows you to sync your images from the computer to the Lightroom Mobile app for your smartphone. This means that you can edit your images on the go whenever you have a spare minute or two. If you don’t like editing on your phone, it’s still worth getting this app for the ability to download photos straight to your phone from Lightroom, or to have the option to show someone your photos from your phone.
Dark Sky Weather – $3.99
If you shoot outdoors, it’s always useful to know the weather. This is one of the best apps for predicting weather on a smartphone. It will show you the predicted weather for up to a week in advance, and you can break it down by the hour. Using the “Cloud Cover” option, you can see what percentage cloud cover is expected in the sky at every hour. This is incredibly helpful if you’re trying to photograph an amazing sunset. You can also use the “Precip Rate” option to see how much rain is expected. This can help you decide if it’s going to be pouring rain, or if you can expect just a sprinkle.
MAPS.ME – Free
This is a great app for offline mapping and marking locations. In Maps.me, you can pre-download maps when you are at home in phone range, and continue to use them when out of range. The maps don’t take up too much space compared to other offline mapping apps. In fact, it is very easy to download a whole state at a time.
Even if you don’t ever go outside of phone reception, this app is amazing for being able to mark spots, and add notes to those marked areas. It can be helpful to create notes when you visit a really cool spot you want to return to. You can even put your waypoints into folders, and colorize them for better organization.
Pocket Light Meter – $10.99
This is a great app for finding the exposure of a certain scene. Simply pull out your phone, open this app, and it will tell you the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and white balance. You can also adjust these settings as you wish. For example, you can set the ISO to 400, and then the shutter speed and aperture will automatically adjust, telling you what to change your camera’s settings to.
You also have the ability to add the photo you take in this app to your camera roll with notes included. It can be helpful to make notes if you plan on returning to a spot in the future.
My Sunset – Free
If you want to catch the best sunsets at your favorite spots, this is the app for you! MySunset gives you predictions for the sunset based on your current location, or preset locations that you can choose. You can even turn on alerts for sunsets and sunrises that the app predicts to be very good. Each morning and night is given a percentage, with the higher percentages meaning that a better sunset or sunrise is predicted.
Download some of these apps for photographers to aid in creating amazing photos! Different kinds of photographers will find different uses in each of these apps but no matter what you photograph, there is an app that will help you create better images.
