Like most camera based apps you can either shoot a new picture right from the app or load one from your saved images. From there you’ve got the ability to edit several aspects of the image.

You can…

• rotate/flip
• crop
• adjust alignment (i.e. fix crooked images)
• adjust brightness/contrast
• adjust gamma
• adjust exposure
• increase shadow detail
• increase highlight detail
• adjust levels
• adjust hue, saturation and lightness
• adjust color balance
• adjust color temperature
• sharpen
• remove noise

There are also several preset effects:

• vintage (think sepia)
• posterize
• bloom
• pencil paint
• black and white
• invert

While many of these adjustments are, at best, crude, it’s nice to have them available if you really want them. The noise removal filter is, to me at least, one of the most useful. This camera can be very noisy in low light and the ability to knock that back some is very helpful.

Adjusted photos can then be either saved back to the camera roll, emailed or uploaded to either Twitter or Facebook.

I should say this app crashed on me a couple of times when testing it out. If you’ve just spend five minutes tweaking an image that’s going to be a real pain.   Also,  if a call comes in while you’re in  the midst of editing an image, it will dump you out of the app losing all of your work. Hopefully both these issues will be addressed in updates.

This app is much more robust than the Best Camera app, but at the cost of speed. Best Camera is great in it’s ability to rapidly move through it’s preset filters. Perfect Photo is more about taking your time and making finer adjustments. All in all this app is very helpful if you’re like me and really want to do something about that noise. Also, for 99 cents how can you go wrong.

By artificially darkening the corners and edges of images we can direct the viewer’s eye toward the center. The trick is to not overdo it, but to have it be subtle. If you look at an image and think, ‘Oh, darkened corners,’ you’ve most likely gone too far. There are several points along the way where you can employ this trick, but my preference is in Photoshop, after the image has been cropped and the contrast adjusted.

My personal method involved the Quickmask tool and an Adjustment layer. On you image, enter Quickmask mode (Q key command) and select a round paint brush of appropriate size. Then simply mask the majority of the image. Remember this is a mask, not a selection, so the areas you paint will not be affected by the next step.

After you’ve masked the appropriate areas, exit Quickmask mode (Q key command again.) The areas you haven’t masked will now be selected. Add a Curves adjustment layer (Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves) and bring the mid-tones down to the appropriate point. I usually use 10% as a good starting point. This is the area where you can go too far if you’re not careful, so take your time.

The great thing about doing this on an adjustment layer as opposed to directly on the image is the ability to edit the curve as well as the layer mask after the fact.

Sometimes we simply have to go with the situation presented to us. Those situations don’t always allow for full control at the time we shoot. But using a number of little techniques and gimmicks can really help a shot pull through.