Best photo editing apps for Android

Once you take the photo, what do you do with it before sharing? You edit it!

Choosing a phone with a great camera is only part of the equation, though. The apps you use with it — and after the fact, by enhancing your photos — are equally important.

But once you’ve taken the photo, how do you make it better? These are the best apps that help you get the most out of your photographs.

• Google Photos
• Instagram
• VSCO Cam
• Snapseed
• PicsArt
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

Google Photos

Google Photos is probably the best overall photo app on Android. You can automatically backup your photos and videos to Google’s cloud, making them available on every device you own — including the web — and view highlights of each day, so you don’t need to scroll through all your photos to find the best ones. This means that for folks who don’t have a ton of storage on their phone, they can ensure that a photo is never lost or deleted accidentally. And because Photos has unlimited storage, you can feel safe deleting pics from your phone to free up that space.

Google Photos is full of great features to make storing and accessing your photos easier than ever

One of Google Photos’ best features is Auto Awesome. Take a bunch of photos and it’ll periodically “gift” you enhanced versions of them to sit alongside the originals in your collections — think animated GIFs if you’ve taken a burst shot, Instagram-style filters and contrast-boosted versions of washed-out shots. Take a series of images from different perspectives and you might even end up with an auto-generated Panorama based on these pics.

The Auto Awesome feature also lets you create video highlights reels based on a series of images and videos. And if you’re going on vacation, Photos can sort your images and videos into a chronological story book of your trip, ideal for sharing on social networks. Photos even includes some of Snapseed’s photo editing and filtering capabilities through its “edit” button, which is useful if you just want to tweak your shots or add filters without downloading a separate app.

Of course, Google makes editing photos a breeze — the app has a number of non-descructive (meaning you can undo them if you don’t want them) tools so you can quickly and easily make changes and share them to various social networks.

Download: Google Photos

Instagram

Instagram is the original filtered photo-sharing app, now owned by Facebook and pretty much synonymous with smartphone photography. It’s also come a long, long, long, way since it was first introduced to users. They’ve added some excellent features that make sharing photos, and videos, an easier and more enjoyable process.

Instagram is pretty much synonymous with mobile photography.

New filters are being added all the time, and for the most part they do a good job of giving photos character without stomping all over them. In addition to controlling lux and the level of filtering, you can tweak photos’ color temperatures, adjust highlight and shadow brightness, add a vignette, sharpen and even introduce tilt-shift effects. There is also video integration, so that you can take and share videos with your followers, and if you have a particular photo or video you want all of your followers to see, you can add it to your story as a pinned post of sorts. Of course, there’s also Stories, a Snapchat clone that has proven an extremely popular way to share snippets of your day — if you’re into that.

Download: Instagram

VSCO Cam

Popular on iOS before making its way to Android, VSCO Cam aims to be your one-stop shop for photography and image editing on your Android phone. VSCO lets you capture images, tweak and tune them to your liking, sync them across devices and share them with the world. You can even discover the best original photography from other VSCO users through the Grid feature.

Like the rest of VSCO, the built-in camera app is relatively simple, offering basic controls including grid lines and flash toggles. When it comes time to enhance your photo, the app brings an assortment of filters to the table, along with the option to buy even more through in-app purchases. That’s on top of the usual combination of dials to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and other properties. There is also the ability to copy/paste batch photo editing as well.

VSCO has a fairly minimalist look when scrolling through photos that others have posted, showing you only the photo and the username of the photographer. This minimalism also translated over to the camera and editing functions. This makes it easier to concentrate on what you’re working on without lots of extraneous things getting in your way.

Download: VSCO Cam

Snapseed

Google’s Snapseed is one of the most accessible photo editing apps for Android, with a wide range of features for experienced users and newcomers alike. At its most basic level, Snapseed lets you scroll vertically through image enhancement options, then drag horizontally to control the intensity of the effect.

The range of features is pretty diverse: everything from basic automatic color and contrast enhancement to cropping and sharpening, to selectively adjusting color properties within a particular radius. And of course it wouldn’t be a photo editing app without the obligatory filters and frames, which are controlled by swiping, just like Snapseed’s image tuning features.

If you’re after a photo editing app that’s powerful yet simple to learn, Snapseed strikes a great balance between the two.

Download: Snapseed

PicsArt Photo Studio and Collage

PicsArt is its own tiny social media network that includes a robust photo editor. It includes the usual tools, allowing you to adjust white balance, tone, cropping, and more. PicsArt goes a big step further though. You can purchase sticker packs to adorn your photos, add adjustable lens flares, access to filters, and even use what it calls ‘magic’ to apply Prisma-like features to transform your photos.

While some of the cooler features do require in-app purchases in order to use them, you still get tons of fun stuff to edit and share your photos with friends. When you’re done editing your app you can save the photo privately, or share it on PicsArt. You can also make the photo free to edit, if you want to let strangers tweak your photos into something strange and new.

Download: PicsArt

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

Lightroom is the photo editing software from Adobe Creative Cloud, and now it’s available on Android. If you don’t already have a Creative Cloud account, you can try out the trial version of Lightroom for free, but if you already pay for the service, all you need to do is sign into your account and you’ll be good to go. Using Lightroom Mobile can take a few minutes to get used to, but after you figure out where everything is, it’s a breeze to edit your photos wherever you are.

Lightroom Mobile also lets you take photos using the app

You’re able to add photos to Lightroom so long as it’s a photo saved on your phone. Once you’ve imported the photo that needs adjusting, just tap on it an the editing menu will open up. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a bar that has settings that can be applied with a tap. You just need to select the category of tool that you want to use from adjusting the look of the photo itself, to cropping it or adding a gradient. This includes white balance, auto tone, and black and white mode. You can also easily adjust the temperature, tint, contrast, and exposure.

Lightroom Mobile also lets you take photos using the app. You can shoot in Auto, Professional, or HDR modes. Select phones can also capture and edit in RAW. There are a ton of features packed into Lightroom’s shooting mode from adjusting the ratio, to including a grid when shooting, to geotagging your photos, and plenty more to boot.

When you’re done adjusting your photo, it’s also easy to save your edits and share it, You can save to your gallery if it’s a personal photo, or share to your social media network of choice without any further hassle.

Download Lightroom Mobile

What are your favorite apps for Android photography?

There are tons of great apps on Android that can help you take and tweak photos of the people, places, and things that you love. Did we miss an amazing app that deserves to be here? What is your favorite photography app? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!

November 2017: We’ve updated this post to reflect the best photography apps currently available on Android!

Essential Phone gains portrait mode, 2nd gen model in the works, and more

The Essential team tells all in its latest Reddit AMA.

Every other Wednesday, the Essential team takes to Reddit to hold an AMA to answer any and all burning questions that people have about the company and its products. The most recent one was held on November 29, and as per usual, there’s a lot to talk about.

For starters, Essential confirmed that a portrait mode is now available for its phone as an update for the camera app through the Play Store. In addition to this highly-requested feature, the update also includes better compression of JPEG shots and other general bug fixes and stability tweaks.

Speaking of software, an update to the existing 8.0 Oreo beta should be rolling out next week with improvements to Bluetooth performance, battery, and touch latency/choppy scrolling through the UI. Android 8.1 is also in the works, but Essential says it’ll likely just push this out as a regular update without first running it through a beta.

Moving on to the hardware side of things –

• The Stellar Gray version of the Essential Phone should be available at some point before 2017 is over, but there’s still no ETA for the Ocean Depth variant
• Essential is still working on the charging dock accessory, and along with sharing a couple hands-on photos of it, the company says that the final build was recently completed and that the price will be under $100
• When talking about reparability concerns that popped up for the Essential Phone, we got confirmation that a 2nd gen version of the device is in the works (“We are focusing on reparability for the next generation phone)

Photos of the Essential Phone’s charging dock.

Lastly, while Essential didn’t exactly address the recent allegations against Founder and CEO Andy Rubin, it did confirm that support for the existing PH-1 would continue on as per usual –

We absolutely will be continuing to support the PH-1 device including security patches, more camera features and additional worldwide carrier support throughout the lifecycle of the PH-1 device. We still have plenty of work, continued release milestones on the roadmap, and new features we want to deliver from the great feedback we get in these AMAs. We are looking forward to supporting you guys for a long time.

Those are the biggest highlights from this last AMA, but if you want to read the full thing for yourself, you can check it out here.

Essential Phone

• Essential Phone review
• Essential Phone specs
• The latest Essential Phone news
• Join our Essential Phone forums!

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How to get Doom VFR for your headset

Here’s how you can play Doom VFR on everything!

First-person shooters in VR are a dime a dozen, but Doom VFR is on an entirely different level. Combining the AAA scale of a Doom with the full immersion is truly epic, but currently only officially available for PlayStation VR and HTC Vive.

Got a different headset? You can still enjoy Doom VFR. Here’s what you need to know!

Read more at VRHeads

MrMobile: The ZTE Axon M is a fun phone that you probably shouldn’t buy

I have had more fun in my week with the Axon M than with almost any other phone of 2017. It’s a crazy dual-screen clamshell, a half-phone-half-tablet that simultaneously evokes memories of the Nintendo DS, the ill-fated Microsoft Courier, and something you might see on an episode of The Expanse. But as far as Android has come since the oddball Kyocera Echo of 2011, it’s still not flexible enough to make a “folding phone” that’s not frustrating to use … at least, not one designed by ZTE.

Check out Android Central’s first impressions, then come along as I share the surprising highs and not-so-surprising lows of the ZTE Axon M: a very fun phone that you probably shouldn’t buy.

Stay social, my friends

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Best Stranger Things Gifts

Take care of your Stranger Things fans this year.

Stranger Things quickly became one of those shows where everyone who hasn’t seen every episode is treated like a social pariah, and with the second season having recently hit Netflix the excitement has been renewed. If you have a Stranger Things fan in your life, be careful with what you choose to give them as a gift.

It’s not hard to find something with the logo on it, but if you want something special, take a look at some of the things we found.

DVDs of that show you can stream from anywhere

Yes, Netflix exclusive Stranger Things had a Blu-Ray release for its first season. Stop laughing, there’s more to it than that. This box set is designed to look like a VHS cassette straight out of the show, and comes with a nice poster for the show.

The Stranger Things fan in your life, the one eyeballing a 011 (or 008 if they’re really cool) tattoo for their wrist, is going to love this. And, really $35 is a small price to pay to be their hero.

See at Amazon

You know what mornings are for

Sheriff Hopper didn’t live in a time where you could get whatever you want easily laser-etched on a glass mug, so that poor guy had to constantly remind those around him what mornings are for.

If your Stranger Things fan is a coffee drinker, this will absolutely put a smile on their face. And for $14, you’re not spending much to get there.

See at Amazon

That Dustin look, now with all the teeth in place

Lucas may be the most intertesting of the Hawkins boys, but Dustin is by far the most endearing. The thing that pulls his look together in every scene is his hat, and grabbing one for your Stranger Things fan is only going to set you back $9.

There’s nothing Stranger Things-themed about this hat, it just looks exactly like the one Dustin wears in the show. That makes it even better, because there’s no effort here to use the now iconic font to tie in some deeper meaning.

See at Amazon

Sometimes you need a Zoomer

The newest member of the Party doesn’t have a lot of her own swag yet, but there’s one word that instantly lets everyone know you’re a fan of Mad Max herself.

This particular shirt comes in a bunch of different colors, but you can also find hoodies made by the same people if you prefer. Not bad for $14.

See at Amazon

Justice for Barb?

She’s not coming back, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a few minutes to appreciate just how much character was packed into the writing for Barb before she was pulled to the Upside Down.

For $11, this book offers Stranger Things fans a deeper look into the kind of person Barb was and what you can do to look and act a little more like her.

See at Amazon

The Hawkins Field Guide

Unless you were alive in the time Stranger Things was set in, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on at least a couple of the references dropped in this show. If you want to give the gift of full immersion into the Stranger Things universe, this unofficial guide goes a long way towards explaining a little bit of everything.

This book is available as a paperback or a Kindle Book for $13, and does a great job adding to Season One of the show.

See at Amazon

Love me some POP!

These simplistic figures have a ton of little details that will make any Stranger Things fan grin, and there are quite of few of them to collect. These figures span both seasons already, including multiple versions of Eleven from important points in the show.

Most of these figures will run you $15, but you can also find some bundles that offer some savings to keep an eye out for.

See at Amazon

Pieces of flair

When in doubt, give the gift of awesome stickers. It can be something subtle like the Hawkins AV Club logo, or your Stranger Things fan can go full Demogorgon all over their favorite stuff.

If these stickers aren’t what you’re looking for, there are some epic laptop decals to give off the full Stranger Things vibe. Either way, stickers are a foolproof way to gift. $12!

See at Amazon

Don’t forget the game!

If you know someone really going all-in on the Stranger Things universe, make sure they are playing the game. It’s free, it’s surprisingly good, and it’ll make even causal fans want to go back and re-watch the series. It’s free!

See at Google Play

Friends don’t lie

So tell us your suggestions in the comments below!

Elon Musk’s Boring Co. to bid on Chicago airport transit link

The Boring company will bid to build a transit link between O’Hare airport and downtown Chicago, CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter. The project, unveiled on November 28th by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, aims to provide commuters with a 20-minute option to taxi or Uber rides, which cost between $40 and $60. The project could run under or below ground, and will be bankrolled “entirely by the concessionaire” and not taxpayers, the city said.

“The Boring Company will compete to fund, build & operate a high-speed Loop connecting Chicago O’Hare Airport to downtown,” said Musk in a tweet. Given Boring Company’s tunneling expertise, that obviously means it’s likely to propose an under-, rather than above-ground link.

Chicago city officials recently took a trip to LA to discuss meet with Musk and presumably discuss his ideas for high speed rail, the Chicago Sun-Times notes. The Boring Company has shown off futuristic plans for a high-speed “skate” that would carry cars from point-to-point (shown below), but hasn’t discussed subway-style transportation much. When someone asked Musk if the high-speed loop meant a skate-type tunnel, he replied “kinda.”

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) already has trains that run between both Midway and O’Hare and downtown for $5, but the travel time is around 45 minutes. The high-speed option would take just 20 minutes and provide a direct trip from O’Hare to downtown. “There’s a lot of room between the price of the CTA [and Ubers or taxis] to price a service in a way that you can make a lot of revenue,” Deputy Mayor Bob Rivkin told the Sun-Times.

Bidders must give a price that includes downtown and O’Hare stations along with a maintenance facility, and propose options that “minimize potential conflicts or impacts on existing transportation systems and the environment,” the request-for-proposal documents state.

Building below ground generally costs more than overland solutions, but the Boring Company and its autonomous drilling machines would probably disrupt existing transit and traffic the least. Mayor Emanuel was reportedly very keen on Musk’s technology, so it’ll be interesting to see how the bid process plays out. Either way, Musk’s involvement is bound to create more than the normal amount of interest in the project.

The Boring Company will compete to fund, build & operate a high-speed Loop connecting Chicago O’Hare Airport to downtown https://t.co/bRqKpzSJjz

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2017

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Elon Musk

FDA clears first EKG band for the Apple Watch

AliveCor’s KardiaBand, a device that detect dangerous heart rhythms, has become the first Apple Watch accessory cleared for medical use by the FDA, the company announced. It can capture your EKG in 30 seconds, then detect problems like atrial fibrillation, a type of heart arrhythmia.

In addition, the company launched a new version of the band today in the US with a feature called SmartRhythm. That uses Apple’s built-in heart rate sensor and AI algorithms to warn you if your heart rate is elevated when you’re not exercising or doing strenuous activities.

FDA clearance means that AliveCor can sell and market it as a medical device, but users don’t need doctor approval to use it. “The average consumer doesn’t know what a normal sinus rhythm looks like or what atrial fibrillation looks like. Yet the FDA has cleared our individual algorithms,” AliveCor CEO and former Google exec Vic Gundotra told Business Insider. “We have the clinical studies to prove it.”

These capabilities will allow people to easily and discreetly check their heart rhythms when they may be abnormal, capturing essential information to help doctors identify the issue and inform a clear path of care to help manage AFib, a leading cause of stroke, and other serious conditions.

The device uses AI to determine what range of heart and EKG readings are correct for individual users, rather than just a generic group. If the band detects problems, it will advise you to take a more accurate EKG test. You can also use AliveCor’s voice recognition tech to describe your symptoms aloud, and the watch will combine all the data. It can even email an analysis to your doctor.

AliveCor’s KardiaBand is now available for a reasonable $200, but you’ll need a premium $99 per year ($10 per month) subscription to get all the features and analysis. That means it’s more or less aimed at patients who might have reasons to worry about abnormal heart rhythms because of a family history or previous diagnosis.

That will put older patients squarely in the target market, but Gundotra said that ease-of-use was high on the design list for AliveCor. “The members of our team are people who build consumer products and so we know what it takes to run a product that a 55 year old can use,” he said.

Source: AliveCor (PR Newswire)

Amazon wants Alexa to be your new office assistant

Alexa could soon be coming to work with you. At Amazon’s annual re:Invent conference, the company revealed its plans to make the voice-activated virtual assistant office-friendly with an Alexa for Business platform, which will come with specific skills for the workplace.

Initial features are likely to include apps for teleconferences and data organization, as well as enhanced security layers that could authenticate multiple people in one space. Sources say the company is probably going to announce a new marketplace for the Alexa for Business platform, too.

Alexa hit the consumer market three years ago, and now boasts more than 20,000 skills developed by third parties. Giving the platform a business focus will no doubt accelerate development even further. Here’s hoping someone creates an app that’ll make the dreaded office printer easier to wrangle.

Source: CNBC

Engadget giveaway: Win a DiskStation DS418 courtesy of Synology!

After a quick setup and you could be running your own private cloud server with one of Synology’s NAS drives like the DiskStation DS418. This device can handle a variety of tasks while providing more storage space at an ultimately more affordable price than third-party online services. You can schedule backups of your personal computer and mobile data, synchronize data across all your devices and access files from anywhere with either a mobile device or PC. If you’re into 4K movies, the DS418 provides online transcoding via Video Station and DS video allowing high-res content to playback on devices that don’t even support UHD. With Surveillance Station software installed, you can also record and monitor video from connected security cameras. This week, Synology has provided us with one of its DiskStation DS418 4-bay models so that one lucky reader can expand their world of storage, streaming and capture. Just head to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning this NAS from Synology.

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Google Home can now do two things at the same time

Google Assistant on your Google Home is going to get a lot more useful this week. The AI butler has recently been updated to support commands that have up to two conditions. Meaning, now you can tell your smart speaker to do things like the bump the temperature in your kids’ room and start playing Slayer’s “South of Heaven” in there as a lullaby. Or, if you’d rather set the mood in your living room rather than give your offspring nightmares, you could ask Assistant to dim the smart lights and start streaming something from Google Play on your TV. CNET notes that making a query with more than a pair of requests doesn’t work.

It’s wholly separate from the Routines Google promised back at the Pixel 2 event earlier this fall, too. So you can’t say “Okay Google, I’m home; start the Roomba” and expect the cluster of commands tied to “I’m home” to transpire while the living room gets vacuumed. Still, this is something that really isn’t possible on other digital assistants unless you issue multiple, separate commands.

Source: CNET