Enhancing iPhone Pics with Lightzone
Everybody knows the iPhone camera is bad1). But sometimes you don't have any other camera available. This weekend I tried what I'm able to do with the iPhone camera. I took a few shots that looked quite okay.
I then tried to enhance the quality in Gimp, but I have to admit I suck at photo manipulation. I never know what sliders to push and what filters to use.
So I was looking for an alternative and came across the commercial software Lightzone which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I downloaded the trial version and played a bit with it.
It provides a list of predefined filters which can be stacked on each other. By enabling or disabling them you can easily see their effect on the photo. It is also possible to restrict an effect on certain areas only, but I haven't used that one, yet.
Below are some of my iPhone pics. I posted the original and the one I enhanced with Lightzone for comparison. Not bad for an amateur like me I'd say, but a pro could probably do better.
I like the usability of Lightzone, but 145€ is a lot for a software I'd only use occasionally. What do you think? Would you buy Lightzone? Do you know of a similar but free and Open Source software for Linux? Please let me know in the comments.