A Deservedly Smug iPhone Photo App The new free iPhone app from photo storage and sharing site SmugMug has something to be smug about. The app, called Camera Awesome, adds photography functions to your iPhone, including help touching up and framing your shot. Camera Awesome says its Awesomize button is the critical feature. That button is a one-touch photo fix, touching up the exposure, color, clarity and vibrancy. Of course, these are all things you can easily do on a tablet or desktop after you take a picture. While it's handy to have Awesomize right there to improve and share instantly, I think some of the less flashy features are more useful. For instance, a pull down tab gives you three kinds of grids for framing your photos, something you can't easily do after the shot without greatly compromising picture quality. There is the rule of thirds grid, golden spiral and golden triangles, all classic rules of proportion. The app lacks instructions on how to use the grids, but you can find one online. There is also a horizon feature that helps you level your camera and a square frame, for - go ahead, guess - framing square photos. The app also lets you choose separate focus and exposure points, but it's hard to find without instructions, which the app sorely needs. To find the feature, tap the screen with two fingers at the same time - a circle and a box will appear. The circle is exposure, and you can drag it to the part of the picture you want to base the lighting on (that way you won't miss details that are mistakenly over or under lit). The focus box can also be dragged around the screen, so you can focus on a specific subject, even if it is not in the center of the frame, as the rule of thirds demands. The app is loaded with features that come from numerous pop up panels, but you'll have a hard time finding all of them. Have I mentioned the app needs instructions? Among the features are a number of filters and effects you add to your shots, like highly saturated color, and you can also add textures and frames around the edges. Therein lies a bit of a catch. The app comes with a total of 36 free textures, filters and presets, but more are sold in sets. If I count correctly there are 29 sets of effects at 99 cents each. The Camera Awesome app will load your photo to a number of sharing sites, like Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and, of course, SmugMug. SmugMug does offer an advantage in that it doesn't compress your photos, so it claims to have the highest-quality reproduction. But it charges for that quality: a minimum of $40 a year for unlimited storage. Normally I am moved to high dudgeon by free apps that are Trojan Horses to sell you associated products, but Camera Awesome offers a lot of utility even if you just use the free features, and even without the much-needed instructions.