Best photography apps: Windows Phone 7

With cameras improving all the time in mobiles and smartphones, we're using them more and more. The problem is, the offerings on Windows Phone 7 are not the best, and that makes 3rd party photo applications all the more useful.

Whether it's adding an effect like black and white or sepia, removing red-eye or some other bizarre effects, your snaps can be dramatically improved and for not a lot of money when you remember the brilliant Photoshop costs a massive amount of money, and you can't edit on-the-fly.

Here are our five current favourites when it comes to photography-based applications.

Thumba Photo Editor

Though there is no real order to our list as such, Thumba Photo Editor is our current favourite. It's feature packed, easy to use and incredibly reasonable at 79p.

What can the app do, specifically? Well, how long have you got? Practical features include resizing, rotating and cropping images. Artsy filters like Vintage, Velvia, Tilt Shift, black and white or a 3D effect can be added. There are four sections of features to choose from and each one is sizeable

Using each feature is easily done, as it will either require you to use a slider or read easy-to-follow on-screen instructions, like in the case of adding vignette - dark borders that pushes focus on the centre of the photo.

If you want to edit photos on the Windows Phone platform this should be your first port of call.

Pictures Lab

Not quite as good value for money as Thumba Photo Editor but similarly well-specced is Pictures Lab, the second of our general photo editing apps.

For £1.79 you get over 20 filters, which is slightly less than the above but it does claw back some points in its presentation. Whereas Thumba Photo Editor needs you to apply a filter to see it in action, Pictures Lab generates a small thumbnail of every filter so you don't need to bounce back and forth.

It can also output images straight to social networks and because it edits photos based on their original sizing you could still print or use the result as a desktop background.

We've not yet reviewed Pictures Lab but from the looks of things it has some strong features. Definitely worth giving the trial a go.