Snapture – A Leap Forward in iPhone Photography (no jailbreak required)

Over half a million iPhone photographers have long sung the praises of Snapture, an iPhone app that helps you take better pictures with your iPhone camera. The iPhone’s built-in camera app is so basic that it seems like an afterthought. Snapture, however, seeks to improve the quality of mobile photography by turning the iPhone into a true digital camera by adding features not found in the camera app.

Up until today, the only way to enjoy the features of Snapture was to jailbreak your iPhone. Previously, Apple was forcing developers to use the SDK’s camera framework which was too limiting to enable the advanced features found in Snapture. Now, at a last, all iPhone owners can enjoy the benefits of Snapture which has just been added to the App Store. If you take any still photos with your iPhone, then this app is for you.

Snapture offers a bundle of features so handy that it’s surprising Apple has not included them in the native camera app. Once you use Snapture you probably won’t return to the native app at all. 3GS owners will still need to use the native app for video capture since Snapture is only for enhancing still photography.

The first thing you’ll notice about Snapture is the large size of the view finder which uses most of the iPhone display. Unlike the native camera app that has buttons along the bottom row, Snapture removes the buttons out of the way until you need them. Tapping on a small arrow watermark will invoke the interface which overly on top of the view finder’s display where you can access all of Snapture’s features.

One of the annoying things about the native camera app is the button you have to tap to take a picture. It’s located near the bottom of the screen which makes it awkward to hold the iPhone with a thumb or finger hovering above it waiting to snap a photo. With Snapture you take a picture by tapping anywhere on the screen.

You can also turn on a feature called TouchZone, which makes it even easier to hold the iPhone stable while taking a picture. To snap pics with TouchZone you tap and hold your finger on the display. The picture will be taken when you lift your finger. To cancel, simply slide your finger out of the circle.

After taking a picture with Snapture you’ll see it displayed in a thumbnail view along the side. Thumbnails will appear in a stack of up to four as you take more pictures. You can review these quickly by tapping and holding, or flick them across the screen to delete or email them. If you don’t delete them they are automatically saved to your Cameral Roll.

Snapture also has a 5x digital zoom which uses a patented-pending multi-touch interface that is almost joyful to use because it’s so easy. You zoom by pinching the display with two fingers. Once you are zoomed in on a subject, you can use a finger to pan around the display without having to move the iPhone. Thoughtful features like this make it evident that Snapture’s creators are focused on improving the camera experience on the iPhone.

We also appreciate that Snapture can take take photos in three different sizes instead of forcing us into only one size like the native camera app. There’s also a high speed mulit-shot mode that will take three pictures in rapid sequence, good for action shots. And there’s a nifty level aid that will help eliminate taking tilted or off center pictures, something that happens a lot when taking photos on the iPhone.

Snapture represents a leap forward in iPhone still photography and won’t return to the iPhone’s native camera.app anytime soon. No matter what we say about Snapture here at Touchtip, the app is best when experienced for yourself. At only $1.99 in the App Store, Snapture is another must-have application for any iPhone owner that likes to take pictures.

• Snapture – $1.99 [app store]

 

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