Buying a helping hand is money well spent

SEARCH for “photography” and you will see there are more than 1200 apps to choose from in the App Store. Some of the best ones cost a few dollars, but it is money well spent.

THREE GREAT APPS FOR IOS

◗ One of the highly rated photo apps by CNET, and us, is Enlight, which offers a complete set of retouching tools that deliver good results. Enlight has a good, clean interface and ranks as one of the best photo editors on iOS. It’s not free, but it’s worth the $4.

◗ PicsArt Photo Studio goes even further with mashups, filters, collages, shapes overlays and the like. CNET says it is pretty easy to use while in-app purchases are not critical.

◗ Another great app which allows you to control more manual settings in your photos is Camera+.

THREE GREAT APPS FOR ANDROID

◗ VSCO Cam has been around for a while on both iOS and Android and offers a range of pre-sets and photo-altering tools. When editing photos, you can quickly see a perspective between the original shot and the edited final product, allowing for before and after comparisons.

◗ Little Photo has been one highest rated photo apps on the Google Play Store. It has more than 70 effects and tools.

◗ Adobe Photoshop Express, available on both iOS and Android, is one of the best photo editing packages around. And it is free. You can crop, straighten, rotate, flip, adjust colour, and remove red eye and pet eye. You can also adjust hue, brightness, white balance and more with slider controls.