iPhone photo and video editing apps

Seeing how I cannot seem to use an actual camera to take pictures, I am doing my annual exercise of taking stock in the photography apps I use on my iPhone.

When upgrading to the 17 Pro iPhone recently, I went ahead and got the 1TB version, which means I have more room to store photos and videos taken at higher resolutions.

Years ago I used Lightroom by Adobe but, for a variety of reasons including their attempt to charge me to cancel a subscription, I have vowed to never use any of their services again. I also did not like having to import photos to Lightroom and them export them back to my camera roll; that workflow was absurd.

Darkroom for iOS has been my main photo editing app in recent months. It can edit both photos and videos, and has an excellent variety of presets (filters) and editing tools. The annual subscription isn't crazy expensive and Darkroom works within the iCloud photo library, so no exporting/importing madness.

Snapseed is another great app, especially for quick, dramatic edits. It is a free tool by Google, which means I am sure one day it will mysteriously disappear, but for now I use it for quick edits.

However, more and more these days I am using the photo editing tools within the Photos app. These have become surprisingly more robust in recent years and are now great for most of the basic edits I need on the go.

Video editing has been a little tricker. I loved CapCut but that is a privacy nightmare and an insanely expensive subscription. InShot is good for most video edits, and then I use iMovie when I want more significant editing.

I primarily use the stock camera app because it is easily accessible via the camera control button. (Side note: I will admit that I called the camera control button a total gimmick when it was first released, but now I use it all the time.) I keep Halide Mark II on my phone and it really is great for more serious picture taking, but it doesn't shoot video so I am not willing to make it my default camera app.