Get iOS 5 Features Now: Improved Camera and Photo Editing

Unlike many of the iOS 5 features you can get right now, enhancing your camera app or editing photos directly on your iPhone does not require jailbreaking your device. There are two applications that can be installed from the Apple App Store that provide the functionality of iOS 5 Camera and Photo app improvements and more.

First we'll start with taking pictures and recommend the Camera+ app for $0.99. Not only will Camera+ take better photos than the stock Camera app, it adds features that are not even included in iOS 5. Open the app and you'll see grid lines that help compose the shot and a simple zoom slider on the right.

White balance and focus can be set separately from different portions of the scene and the white balance can be locked once set. Other photography modes can be accessed via the setup gear icon next to the camera button. These include an image stabilizer, timer and burst shooting for snapping many photos quickly in a short amount of time.

All of your work is stored in the Lightroom, which is the Camera+ camera roll. Opening the Lightroom lets you view your photos and edit them. Tapping a photo gives the option to edit, save, share or view information about the photo. Editing options are extensive, including various enhancement modes (including Auto), rotation, flipping, cropping, special effects and borders. Apple has announced only a portion of these functions for iOS 5 and a pinch-to-zoom feature while shooting we guarantee you won't miss.

For those who don't feel like spending any money, Adobe Photoshop Express is available for free. This app will not add any features to your photo taking experience, but it will edit pictures you've already taken. An in-app Adobe Camera Pack is available which adds noise reduction and a timer feature for $4.99.

The strength of Photoshop Express is its photo editing features. Photos can be cropped, straightened, rotated and flipped, and the exposure, saturation, tint and contrast can be adjusted. There are a few effects and filters as well. After editing the photos can be saved to the Camera Roll or uploaded to Photoshop.com, Facebook or TwitPic. Overall, for a free application Photoshop Express has some basic editing capabilities that are useful on the go.

For more extensive features Camera+ is well worth $0.99. Between these two apps your camera will have even more functionality than iOS 5 as soon as they are installed. Why wait?