Picture perfect, an app away

Pixlr-o-maticu00a0(iOS and Android)
Grab any picture and transform it using dozens of options — a host of filters to effects which throw in flashes of light and add bubble-like elements to frames that could make your image look straight out of an art gallery or out of a Polaroid camera. It takes some patience to understand which filter does what (with names like Hagrid, that’s hardly surprising), but once you get a grip on it, this is perhaps the best free image-tweaking tool around.
Get it from: iTunes App Store, Google Play

Cartoon Camera (Android)
Imagine an app which not only converts photographs into pictures which seem to have been produced by daubs of paint and pencil work, but even gives you a preview before you click them? That’s Cartoon Camera for you. Watercolour and sketch lovers will adore this app and its ability to transform photos into works of art, albeit relatively amateur ones. There’s a paid version of the app as well, but the free one does more than enough, if you do not mind the ad banners on the bottom of your screen.
Get it from: Google Play

Photorim (Symbian)
Cynics might say that Symbian’s day is over in the mobile OS wars but the platform supports some of the best camera phones in the world today (the Nokia N8 and PureView for instance). You can add a stack of filters and effects on the device itself. The interface could have been better — you end up with your screen cluttered with different filter options. Yet it is one of the best free options for those on Symbian devices.
Get it from: Nokia Ovi Store

Adobe PhotoShop Express (iOS and Android)
You didn’t expect Adobe to be left behind in the image editing revolution, did you? PhotoShop Express, Adobe’s mobile app, comes with a set of quite attractive filters and borders letting you change the look and feel of your images. Since this is a version of PhotoShop, you can indulge in more ‘traditional’ images, playing around with exposure, colour levels and focus. Talk of having the best of both worlds in one free app, which works a treat.
Get it from: iTunes App Store, Google Play

Photofunia (iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and BlackBerry)
When it comes to tweaking images, few free apps pack as much punch as Photofunia, which is also one of the few apps to work on just about every smartphone. It lets you add filters to your pictures, add frames and place it against backdrops of, say, billboards or as a tattoo. It is not perfect, though — it cannot access your camera’s gallery directly on some devices and it is largely cloud-based, so loading screens takes time.
Get it from: iTunes App Store, Google Play, Nokia Ovi Store, BlackBerry World, Windows MarketPlace

Flickr (Android)
There was a time when Flickr was considered to be THE place to go to for sharing pictures. Then, along came Facebook and Instagram, and the world changed. However, Flickr remains a favourite among many users and while most of its mobile avatars restrict themselves to letting you upload and view pictures to the Flickr site, the Android app comes with a very handy set of filters, letting you tweak your image before sharing it. We just wish it worked a tad faster in filter mode, though.
Get it from: Google Playu00a0

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