Let’s get started with Photo Studio™ by KVAD Group® for BlackBerry, available for both BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. The basic version of Photo Studio is free, while the PRO version costs $5.99 $3.99 to download and includes an expanded catalog of effects, picture frames, and a color splash editor.

Three features I love about Photo Studio, followed by a “Before and After” demonstration used on a picture of Puerto Rico taken by my friend:

• It makes a splash. Photo Studio boasts over 100 “effect” filters for your photos including “Vintage,” “Blur,” “Sketch,” and “Art.” Once your masterpiece is finished, Photo Studio allows you to share your pictures on Twitter®, Facebook®, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), or other message applications installed on your device.
• It cures the blues (and reds, and greens…). Clean up any imperfections in old photos with RGB color adjust, hue, brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments.
• It’s compatible. Photo Studio works on BlackBerry® OS 5 and up, along with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet OS. Developer KVAD Group also provides an open API for future developers to integrate their apps with Photo Studio, which means future messaging apps also have the ability to integrate with Photo Studio.

BEFORE

AFTER

Utilizing Photo Studio, I created the “after” picture by applying the “Old Style” effect and the “Mystique” effect before turning up the saturation and brightness by 25. Just like that, my picture of modern-day Puerto Rico is transformed into 1940s Casablanca.

As mentioned earlier, the “Before and After: Photo App” series will be a regular feature here on the Inside BlackBerry Blog, so if there is an app you would like to see featured or a question on a featured app you’d like answered, please let us know in the comments.

Photographers are a unique and highly creative bunch — they come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, backgrounds, skill levels, and styles. BlackBerry® smartphone cameras and the apps that drive them can say the same thing—that they are unique, creative, and are far from one-size-fits-all. So, what are some of the most useful photography apps for #TeamBlackBerry users? Let’s take a look at a few:

Camera Plus By WickidApps
For active shutterbugs looking to snap and email photos from their BlackBerry smartphone in batches, WikidApps’ Camera Plus can be a big help. This app allows you to capture, preview and email up to 25 photos or about 5MB of data. Camera Plus also allows you to preview and remove individual photos from an album, then email the album off to a recipient. One caveat to this app: Sending large amounts of data may result in extra charges not covered by your data plan, so consult your agreement before utilizing Camera Plus through your wireless carrier.

Simple Depth Of Field Calculator By Arvinder Channey
In photography, Depth of Field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Arvinder Channey’s Simple DOF Calculator for BlackBerry calculates Depth Of Field, Near Depth of Field, Far Depth of Field and Hyperfocal distance. It also supports a variety of camera formats and does not require a keyboard to operate. This app is not for the casual photographer, but if you’re looking to move from amateur photographer into semi-pro, you may want this in your toolbox.

FlickrShow By Motek Americas Inc.
FlickrShow (formerly Screen Charger) is a fun little app for showing off your photography on your BlackBerry smartphone, and it delivers a few fun options as well. For example, FlickrShow replaces the standard clock screen that you see when you start charging your phone battery with pictures publicly available through photo-sharing site Flickr® and controlled by parameters that you set (no Flickr account required). You can include photos by user, tags, location and more to create a pretty sweet slideshow. This app also rocks because it’s free!

If you use these apps on your BlackBerry smartphone – or have suggestions for others – please share them here or, better yet, post a photo!