Process Now Universal

Speaking of native apps, remember last week’s DF sponsor, Process — a photo filtering/adjustment app for the iPad? As of yesterday, it’s now a universal app for the iPhone, too. It’s apps like Process that make today’s camera market so fascinating. The sensors and lenses of dedicated point-and-shoot cameras remain superior to those in smartphones, but, smartphones can run real photo editing apps right on the device itself. Use a “camera” and you still need a computer to tweak or share your photos. Use a smartphone and you can do it all right there.

Instagram is more fun for me than anything else in photography today. Process is a good way to tweak photos for Instagram — or any other way you might want to share directly from your phone — without the schtick of faux-retro toy camera effects. Here’s the neat living-in-the-future thing: when you save a set of adjustments as a new custom process, it gets synced across your devices via iCloud. Save a new process on your iPhone, and that process is available on your iPad. Just like that. $3 on the App Store.

★ Wednesday, 14 December 2011