Mike's NBC-TV stories

Great photo editing apps

We sure use our mobile phones for a lot more than making and receiving phonecalls. These days, probably the next most used feature is the camera on our mobile devices and  a constantly evolving number of apps can turn those photos into works of art that look like they came from the studio of a professional photographer.

snapshotThe best photo editing app I’ve found is Snapseed, recently bought by Google and packing so many photo editing tools and social media sharing functions that you gotta wonder how they can give this away. But free it is, for Android and the iPhone and it is very easy to take even a mediocre photo and make it rich, dramatic , filtered or stylized. You can save it to a library or share it with one click with literally every major social media platform there is.

Luminanace is a 99-cent iPhone photo editing app that has lots of fans. You can add filters, crop, highlight and create just about any look, by combining adjustment layers., sort of like you do with big ticket professional photo software for a computer.

One more, for both the iPhone and Android phones: Handy Photo. This is extremely easy to use, super fast and has the editing adjustments right on screen for instant feedback. It does done and color, fine tune adjustments and has power retouching capabilities.  Cost is $1.99.

Mike is a veteran journalist whose video "PC Mike" reports have been distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations since 1994, making him one of the most experienced tech reporters in the country. His tech stories and videos have appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, the Today Show, The New York Times, USA Today and in numerous national newspapers and magazines. In addition to the PC Mike tech blog, he also publishes the Roadtreking.com RV Travel Blog in which he travels North America in an RV reporting about interesting people and places.