Art and Photography Apps

Why not turn your day out into an excuse to develop your skills as an artist or photographer? Young people might like to draw, paint or photograph a favourite tree, bug or scene, discovered on a walk.

There are many different apps available to help. Here are some we recommend:

Inspire Pro (Free or Full Version £0.69 – iPad, iPhone)
This excellent painting app provides a gallery of finished art to help inspire you, alongside a set of painting tools to allow you to create your own masterpieces. Its sophisticated paint blending features set it apart from the rest. The full version allows you to import photos to draw over as a guide. As with all drawing apps, you can either use your finger or a stylus to draw with.

Animation Desk (Free or Full Version £2.99 – iPad, iPhone, Android)
This fully featured animation app allows users to create doodles that move or drawn animations complete with sound effects. It has an excellent toolset of brushes and palettes and you can export finished movies then send them to friends. There are several ways to make use of photos as well, either as backgrounds or animated objects. Take photos on your day out to use as inspiration! Sketch a creature you saw and make it crawl across the screen. You can also enter your finished work into an international competition.

Instagram (Free – iPad, iPhone, Android)
The popularity of Instagram makes it the obvious choice of app for sharing the photos you take with your smart phone or tablet. You can add special effects such as antique photo finish or blurring, then share pictures with friends on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr or Foursquare.

Young people can have lots of fun creating a photo album based on an outing. They can even choose a theme for their photo quest, such as making a gallery of birds, bugs, trees or geocache finds.

Flickr (Free – iPad, iPhone, Android)
Flickr have created an app which brings all the best features of their popular photo sharing web site to the smart phone or tablet. The family can create photo diaries of their adventures then publish them publically, or just to family and friends.

Skype (Free – iPad, iPhone, Android)
Young people love to keep in touch with friends and share their adventures. With Skype’s video chat, they can give friends a guided tour of the places they are visiting, showing off the things they like best, and even collecting the sounds of bird calls or seascapes.

360 Panorama (Free – iPad, iPhone, Android)
This is an impressive way to capture a beautiful vista or castle ruin to show to friends and family. The app will stitch together images for you as you pan your camera around from a fixed vantage point. You can then share these on Facebook or email them to friends. They can be viewed interactively on any tablet or smart phone, panning with you to create a virtual window on the world. They can also be viewed as flat montages or as stereographics (a fish eye style special effect).

Here are some examples taken around the Griffon trails area:

Roman Camp, Aylmerton
Felbrigg Hall 01
Felbrigg Hall 02
Baconsthorpe Castle 01
Baconsthorpe Castle 02