Photo and Video Software on iPhones and some other smart phones

iPhone Built in camera:  With the release of iOS 6, the camera app has been significantly improved.  It already did a tolerable job of HDR pictures, the main problem I had with that is that it did not save each of the original pictures it used to create the HDR picture.  The major new feature is the ability to take a panorama.  To take a landscape panorama picture, hold the camera as if taking a portrait picture, select Options at the top then choose "Panorama".  You start at the left of the desired image, tap the camera icon to start the process then sweep the camera to the right at about the same speed you would use in making a video.  If you go to fast, it will give you a worming message.  You also need to sweep in a fairly strait line.  It gives you a target arrow to help in doing this.  Try to keep the point of the arrow on the line.  It does not keep as many pixels as you might expect, it is like a 5.7 MagaPicel camera on the iPhone 4s not a 8 MegaPixel camera like normal.  Of course, since you have panned over a large angle, the total pixels count can be quite large.  I got a 20 MegaPicel picture panning over about 90 degrees.   Click HERE for more info from Apple.

PRO HDR: (Icon has changed somewhat) HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  Pictures taken with this technique do a better job of capturing the the lightest and darkest parts of the picture.  For an example and more notes, click HERE.   Pro HDR is also available for Android phones.

PS Express:  (PhotoShop Express) A good photo editing program by the makers of Adobe Photoshop.  The free version does most of what you want but it is so good that you may want to send a little money their way anyway.  I use it to Crop, straighten, change the exposure (lighten or darken) or sharpen but there are other options also.  Since the camera in smart phones only does a digital zoom meaning that it basically just crops the picture ahead of time, I always do the cropping afterword as there is no more loss of resolution and I have more flexibility. A video review is available.  It is also available for Android phones but not Windows phones as of 8/3/12.  There is also an on line version that I have not explored yet. You will need to crate a free account to use the online version.
Adobe now has a program just for the iPad and Android tablets called Adobe Photoshop Touch that should be considered if you have on of those devices.  I have not used it but it looks promising.  $9.99

The Photos app that comes with the iPhone was significantly improved with iOS 6, the operating system released in September 2012.  It is now possible to have multiple folders.  It used to be that it was only possible if you had a Mac.  It still leaves something to be desired but it is still a big help.  The catch is that while you can add folders to sort your pictures and videos into a master copy of the picture or video needs to reside in the "Camera Roll" folder.
It also has an edit capability as of iOS6.  You access it by taping on the word "Edit" in the upper left corner of the initial screen.  It will edit a bigger picture than PS Express or at least a big picture loads much faster.  Creating a panorama can create very large files and they may need cropping.  It also can crop a picture so the it fits any of a number of photo sizes such 3x5, 8x10, or 16x9 as .   To get to this click on the desired picture, then EDIT in the upper right corner, then the CROP icon in the lower right corner, then Constrain in the bottom center.

SynthCam:  This program uses video to post process into interesting stills. It is not available for the current iPhone operating system. The creator, Robert Scoble is is a professor at Stanford and apparently has moved on to other things.  Someone needs to take the app over and convert from a 32 bit app to a 64 bit app.  I am not aware of any other program with this capability.  The way the program works is you pick 1 to 4 points and say keep these points fined.  It then takes a short video and moves the frames around so the fixed pints are all in line.  It then merges everything else together.  For example, when taking a picture of a water fall, you pick a couple of points on the land on either side.  When the image is merged the moving water will be blurred while the background will not.

  It will take a lot of playing with this program to figure it out. Some uses are:
  
1) Mimic the shallow depth of field that like a SLR camera so only the subject is in focus.
2) Mimic a slow shutter speed to do things like blur moving water. (My favorite use)
3)Take pictures in low light conditions.  (Although I have not been able to make this work)
4) Get rid of moving objects like people because because they are only in a few of the frames being averaged together.
For examples and more notes, click HERE.   SynthCam is free and is also available for Android phones but not Windows phones as of 8/2/12.

Photosynth for the smartphone has been discontinued. 360 panaarama has a similar capability but noting is interchangeable.   Used to be a free Microsoft program that permits you to take picture that you can rotate to view in any direction.  Basically a 360 degree panorama in both a horizontal and vertical reference. As you can see particularly in the second example, things can get a little jumbled up where the pictures are joined together.  To minimize this hold the camera in as close to the original spot as possible.  Also if there are any people in the photo, get them entirely within the center of one frame.