The iPhone camera has served me well since the day I got it. It has served a lot of people well considering it’s the No.1 camera on Flickr (dipped down only because the Flickr app doesn’t upload Exif info). The App Store is loaded with photography apps, and we’ve reviewed a bunch of them on SA. But there’s one app that has really struck a chord with me, and that’s TiltShift Generator.

Tilt Shift is a style of photography which brings up unreal worlds by simulating miniature scenes. It’s characterised by a shallow depth of field, and weird perspectives. From thereon sprung up numerous Tilt Shift generators, which simulate these optical features by adding blur and contrast digitally. TiltShift Generator is the iPhone version of the free online tool which allows you to do Tilt Shift effects.

First things first: the app is beautiful. I really like the even-if-non-native tab bar, which blends in very nicely with the photographic effects it puts out. You can either load an image or snap a new pic with your camera. The next tab allows you to add a blur. You can add a spot blur, or a streak blur which runs across. The blur control is all in the fingers, as you move it around and twist it, and pinch it. All very fluid and performance is stunning even on the first gen iPhone. Next tab allows you to shift Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast, all important settings and very effective in improving those iPhone images. Add a vignette, and finally save it to disk.

Pimping the cat again, I know.

I waited for a long time to recommend this app, mainly because the previous update would output a low resolution images. The newly updated TiltShiftGen allows full resolution output which really completes the app. There’s also added support for three image uploading services to send it directly up to Twitter if you want. I’ve made a bunch of images look really superb with this app, and people are usually quite wow’ed. Even if you don’t want the whole TiltShift effect, you can get some good results by just moving the Saturation and Brightness sliders.

Available at the App Store for $0.99, and highly recommended (if you don’t have enough photo apps already). A warning though: the app comes with a butt ugly icon that’s totally non native to the iPhone home screens. It’s shunned away in the corner along with Guitar Toolkit.

[Header img via SevenZebras]
Updated to add note about ugly icon as reminded by Eric.