Best Photo-Editing iPhone Apps

This is a blog entry that a lot of people have requested from me!!

I've already done at part 1 here, but yet with every photo I post people keep asking what apps I used to edit them. And to be honest newer and better apps have popped up so I've changed all my favourites!!

As I mentioned in my previous entry about photo editing on the iPhone, I am a photography app junkie. I actually enjoy shopping for apps and I don't mind paying money for them at all. 99c is such a reasonable amount to pay compared to the thousands needed for photoshop, think about it. I support programs that are made affordable to the mass market, so I pay! It's a principle! If they make programs reasonably priced, people will pay instead of pirating.

Also, I actually regularly go into the "newly released" section in the photography category just to try out new apps. Isn't that crazy? I actually wasted quite a lot of money buying and testing out shitty apps. :X

But it is all worth it because iPhonography is my passion!!

And tadah, here is my updated list of the best photo-editing apps, 2012:

LOL at my self obsessed background

Mei Tu Xiu Xiu (red icon with chinese words) used to be my favourite but now I rarely ever use it anymore.

I've also retained in my list Makeover and Princess Cam, so you can read my review about them here. Princess cam I also rarely use now but I still regularly use Makeover because it is SO EASY to liquify my face with that app, although it isn't very precise or perfect.

So let's start from the top with...

RAKUGA CUTE (樂画Cute)

This app costs money but imho it is the BEST purikura app there is!!

There are many purikura apps available but none of them have stamps or borders as gorgeous as Rakuga. You actually get the standard collection free but the rest you have to pay. I actually paid for every single collection and I'd say that the best one is the collage collection and standard. The blog one is not bad either for bloggers but skip the heart and ribbon, they are quite meh.

I love how the collage collection has these lace stamps! You can also use their "pen" tool to draw on your pictures, or use one-touch for a nice frame.

Here's a picture of Igloo I randomly edited with Rakuga... I did this in 1 min but if you put in effort you can make it very, very pretty.

Photo Wonder

Photo Wonder is one of my new favourites... They have lovely filters!! I love this one called "Autumn".

But my favourite is called "Sweety". Sweety makes the saturation of the picture very high but I LOVE to use it in combination with one of Camera360's filters to create this effect:

The photos end up look super pink and romantic... I will talk more about this later!

There is also a "beautify" section in Photo Wonder but I don't think much of it. The effects are not precise and tend to be overdone. Only "remove acne" is good for blurring away a zit.

Oh and one more thing I love about this app? You can sharpen your photos to whatever degree you want, which is really handy!

Mei Ren Xiang Ji (美人相机 Beauty Camera)

Beauty Camera is another app from China that is AWESOME! Photo Wonder is also btw. Thank you BFF for introducing this!

Why I love Beauty Camera is because... THEIR LIQUIFY IS THE BEST THERE CAN BE ON THE IPHONE.

They somehow worked out a system that makes liquifying on the iPhone's little screen extremely precise. It takes a bit more effort but if you are a perfectionist like me you will love it!

I have translated some of the text for my non-chinese readers. (IKR I AM SO NICE)

Once you go into the app you can choose to snap a picture or pick an existing one. What I don't like is that the app immediately makes your photo extremely fair and blurry, which is so unrealistic.

Fortunately, you can choose to reverse this by making the "skin" and "fairness" level to your own preference.

Next, click on the green heart.

You will be given 5 options. I love the liquifying obviously. The makeup part is good too, you can put on blusher and eyelashes and contacts!

This is how the liquifying looks like. It is a bit confusing but basically you place the green circle at where you want to push and you touch the arrows! For example, it is currently placed at my nose to make it smaller. Make sure your tab is under "slimming" or the "big eyes" option will just make your photo bloat.

You can also pick the "hand movement" to be off but I feel that makes it less precise.

That green circle the arrow is pointing at lets you adjust the size of the liquifying brush and where it goes. For example, it is now set to a bigger brush size so I can push my jaw smaller!

Tadah! This is the before and after.

Camera360

I cannot believe I gave Camera360 a miss in my previous post. At that time I didn't like it because it forces me to snap a photo within the app. Then one day Audrey blogged about this app and I decided to give it a try again.

Now it is probably my favourite app of this lot.

BECAUSE OF THIS ONE FILTER:

Called "Light Color: Sweet"

This is just a screenshot of the camera lens focusing on my desk and the filter made it look so freaking gorgeous!! This filter is magic!!

These are photos taken with Camera360... NO EDITING AT ALL, not even liquifying. It creates this ultra dreamy pastel vibe which I love. Plus, you can edit the DEGREE to which you want the filter, so you can make it less dreamy if you want.

Oh and I also discovered you can edit existing pictures so you don't HAVE to snap a photo within the app!! OH JOY!!

Only con is that it is a bit troublesome to do that.

As I mentioned I love to layer Photo Wonder's "Sweety" on top of "Sweet". I guess it makes my photos ultra sweet hahahaha

Camera360 has many other filters, and a lot of them are gorgeous. Go explore!

Lumie

Lumie lets you put bokeh on your photos...

I like the huge selection of bokeh, but I hate it that they don't allow you to tweak the transparency on the bokeh, so a lot of the times it covers your face or is too opaque.

The cosmos range is pretty!

Not bad, huh?

Line Camera

What I like about Line Camera is that it has many super expressive stamps!

Also many cute accessories:

The filters are not bad either (nothing compared to camera360 or Photo wonder) and you can also add text and frames.

Lenslight

Like Lumie, Lenslight lets you add bokeh and various light effects to your photos.

This is the app most people have asked me about... HOW DO YOU ADD A RAINBOW TO YOUR PIC??

With lenslight.

In fact, there are several rainbow variations to choose from, but the best imho is spectrum halo.

Rainbow on top of Igloo!!

Only bad thing is that the interface is so damn ugly. :X I hate black backgrounds.

Diptic

Of all the framing apps my favourite is Diptic.

Diptic is one of the rare ones that allow you to pick not only a stupid square format, which I need because to post photos to my Photo of the Moment I need the photo to be 4:3 in ratio.

You can also apply some filters to your photos, although they are quite basic.

I also love that you can make the border any size and colour you want and make all the corners rounded!

It is also very easy to use.

Picfx

Picfx also provides filters and light effects on your pictures.

I don't think much of their filters but their "Light Set" is nice, for bokehs!

They have two heart bokehs which I love! The hearts are rainbow coloured and you can see that you can rotate the bokeh so it doesn't cover the bits you don't want covered, and also you can adjust the transparency!

Whitagram

No need to write much about this. I just use this app to post 3:4 long pictures to instagram. This creates a white background for you and is very easy to use. Another popular variation is squareready.


That's it for the apps... Here are some before and after pictures!!

 Original

After Beauty Camera's liquifying (also note how it turned a little bluer)

 After Camera360 in Sweet

After Photo Wonder in Sweety, Rakuga cute, and Lenslight.

Original

After Makeover for liquifying, Rakuga cute for purikura (to cover ugly toilet door) and using Camera360 over the whole picture so that the purikura also looks so pastel and pretty!!


Phew, spent a long time doing this entry, hope you guys like it! :)

Trying to reinstate my comments to the blogger one, once it's up please share your favourite apps too! :D

100 Years of Nestle

Advertorial

Would you believe it? 2012 marks the 100th year that Nestle has been in Singapore!! A hundred years is an extremely long time, and I don't even know how Singapore looked like 100 years ago! But all I know is that throughout my entire childhood till now when I'm in my late twenties, I've been eating, drinking and loving Nestle products... They have shaped my life!!

Although this is an advertorial I was asked to share my memories and nostalgia with Nestle, so bear with me because there are so many and I really want to share them all before I forget about them!!

Tadah! I had loads of fun today shopping at the supermarket for my favourite Nestle products!!!

Let's start with MILO!!! OH HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU!!

Did you guys know that Milo is not originated from Malaysia or Singapore where it is extremely popular but from Australia? However, there is a Milo factory in Singapore that is the largest protomalt factory in the world!! It isn't as popular over in Australia as in Malaysia and Singapore, where I can almost safely say every true blue Singaporean must have at least tried it before and a large majority drink it regularly. Whenever my friends order Macdonalds the favourite for drinks is always an ice cold cup of milo. :)

Milo now comes in so many varieties be it tiny convenient packs (like in the above picture), in a  chilled can, or in sachets where we can bring overseas to cold countries we are travelling to to rid some of that homesickness. Just a note... If you do that remember to put the sachets in a ziploc bag coz I didn't and one sachet burst, making all my clothes brown lol. And let's not forget milo dinosaur and milo ice cream!

And for us Singaporeans, our love for milo started young when milo trucks, if we are lucky, would arrive during Sports Days or after marathons...

 Never a more welcoming sight after a long jog

I used to LOVE LOVE LOVE these trucks!! I remember we had to redeem our milo drinks, which were in tiny little paper cups, with these coupons and each person is only limited to 2. There is always a very long queue too!

And here's a memory with milo I will never forget... When I was in secondary school, Eekean (or Wongsie as I sometimes call her) loved to drink iced milo. When the stars align and it just so happens that she is sitting in the canteen table directly opposite me drinking milo and I tell an unexpectedly funny joke, she would laugh violently and spray milo all over me.

I swear this happened not only once but many times. My school uniform was white too and it would be dotted all over with brown stains from the milo from her mouth -_-. I remember I had an ex boyfriend then who asked me why my school uniform was always so dirty. It's all thanks to Eekean!!

Next....

I rarely ever eat cereal at all but if I do, my favourite is always HONEY STARS!!

THEY ARE SO CUTE!! I love the puffy yellow stars, they always cheer me up!

I still remember when I was a kid and I first discovered Honey stars... I loved it so much and kept pestering my mom to buy them for me. I was very fascinated by how they have holes in the middle and even tried to pull a string through to make a honey star necklace but it proved difficult to do so I gave up.

Used to pop them into my mouth nonstop while watching TV. MY FAVOURITE WERE THE STARS THAT WERE STUCK TOGETHER!!! Like the honey glued two stars back to back. Loved it. :D

NOMS IT ALL!!

Just kidding, because Honey Stars are the best with MILK!!

Ultimate nostalgia now I'm thinking of how Momo used to wake up at 7am to make breakfast for me before school... ♥


Maggi Mee, of course, have also been a staple in my life!! Maggi mee is my guilty pleasure!! Although I try to refrain from eating too much carbs nowadays every once in a while I still indulge in a pack because it is not only super easy to cook but so extremely yummy. :X

Maybe some of you think instant noodles can't be that delicious but it is because you don't know how to cook it properly ok!! LOL (My recipe HERE)

What's your favourite Maggi Mee flavour?? Mine is Curry with extra coconut milk and 1 egg with either cabbage, spam, or mushrooms inside!! My second favourite is Chicken which I always somehow associate with comfort food when I'm feeling sick. It always makes me feel slightly better after I eat it!!

I still remember the very first time I cooked Maggi Mee. It was during a camping trip my school organised. We were all given flimsy mess tins and were instructed to cook the noodles with solid fuel. I had absolutely no idea how to cook it but the boys in my group said it was very easy and so they did it. I kept being uncertain that the noodles really got cooked but of course it was overcooked and soggy since it was done by amateurs lol. Still ate it anyway... Still delicious!!

Till today I still don't understand... There are so many other instant mee brands and so many of them have up to 4 packets of sauces/powder/ingredients for you to add into your cooking. Chilli, oil, onions whatever... Maggi mee only has ONE big packet of curry powder and yet it's still more delicious. Don't know how they do it, it's magic!!

Have you tried this before? If you are Singaporean or Malaysian I guess it's a likely yes...

A super innovative dish called Cereal Prawns, usually served at Zi char stores in Singapore. It's stir fried prawns coated with a generous amount of... yes... Nestle's Original Nestum cereal!!

I love this dish since the first time I've had it!! It's so delicious be it with prawns, crabs or crayfish. :D

The cereal is crunchy and sweet and buttery and oh-so-yummy!

I love to just put a forkful of it into my mouth!!

And who can forget Nescafe? For so many of us, this is THE taste of instant coffee... Personally, I don't drink coffee but Mike is an avid coffee lover and when I received so much Nescafe, he was so happy, like a kid during Xmas!! A bit ridiculous lol...

And I don't blame him because...

I didn't receive one flavour but FIVE!! To pamper every sort of coffee lover out there Nescafe is available in so many types... Hazelnut latte sounds so awesome, like milky foamy creamy goodness.

Ok my last nostalgic memory of Nestle's products I swear...

Did you know that Nestle's first product is Milkmaid Condensed Milk? That's right... This product is exactly 100 years old!!

When I was just a little girl my grandparents used to take care of me while my parents worked, so after school my grandparents will always spend the afternoons with me.

My grandma was a big fan of Milkmaid and always had a supply of it at home. She used to pour it into her coffee and sip it happily while watching afternoon tv. I remember the creamy Milkmaid milk at the bottom of the glass and the black coffee layered on top of it. I always offered to stir it for my grandma!

The sight of the Milkmaid tin tilted upside-down (with two holes pierced on the lid) on a cup to drain all its contents was a common sight because my grandma refused to waste even a drop!! Sometimes, if I'm being good, she would even just mix water with the condensed milk to form a sweet drink for me. I love it till today!!
 

So yes, Nestle has been in our lives and hearts for the past 100 years... And it hopes to still be here for another 100 years more!


As such, Nestle welcomes your feedback, ideas, and say on all their products!!


What I hope to see in the next 100 years?

I WANT MORE MAGGI MEE FLAVOURS!!!

I don't even know if this is possible can I want more atas flavours for Maggi Mee like foie gras or truffles or lobster bisque :D Ok one can dream, right?

And please, more exotic kit kat flavours in Singapore!!! WHY ONLY AVAILABLE IN JAPAN?!?! It's so unfair they have all the super interesting flavours like "mango pudding" (yummiest kit kat I've ever had) and "watermelon and salt" etc etc... I DEMAND THEM IN SINGAPORE!!

(For a whole list of kit kat flavours you can click here)

You have suggestions too? Let Nestle know!!

HOW?

By downloading the iFeedback app for Nestle on your mobile phone! 

(Available on iPhone and Android)

Search for the app and install it... It's free!

I've just tried using it and it's extremely simple and fuss-free...

Next... Click on a button that says "SCAN" and scan your Nestle product's barcode. I'm sure most of you have at least 1 Nestle product at home be it Nescafe, Maggi mee or chilli sauce or milo...

See? After scanning you can pick either "I like" or "I critique" for your Nestle product. Give your feedback in whatever form you wish... And that's it! EASY PEASY!! See how I wrote I want Milo nuggets in hearts? Nestle would love to see constructive feedback and interesting suggestions on how to improve their products. :) OMG YES I WANT HONEY HEARTS. IN BABY PINK. STRAWBIE FLAVOURED.


AND WAIT FOR IT...

Be innovative in your feedback and YOU STAND TO WIN PRIZES!!!


TWO TICKETS VIA FINNAIR, THE FASTEST AIRLINE TO EUROPE, TO ANY EUROPEAN CITY OF YOUR CHOICE!!!


How fun is that?!

Click HERE to see more details.

*************************************

Wait there is more! Are you a Blogger like me??

Well obviously not like me like me coz I'm special hahaha but if you are a blogger you stand to win  the 1st prize of $1,000 and the 2nd and 3rd prize of $500!!

It's really simple... Just blog a creative post about your own constructive and innovative feedback for your favourite Nestle product! Have fun! Maybe post up a picture of your own recipe of Milo cereal prawn or something. Ok that sounds horrible so go think of something else.

Talk about which European city you'd like to go to, and lead your readers to submit their own feedback as well.

More details HERE!

Good luck! :)