By now, you've probably launched the Camera app and taken a few pictures. Maybe you've even shared these pictures with other people. Though the built-in camera doesn't do everything your point-and-shoot does, and it will never have the optical abilities of a DSLR, it has a major advantage over dedicated cameras: the iPhone OS lets you install apps that take your pictures and video to another level.

Here are 10 great apps that let you create, modify and share your images. You probably don't need all ten, as there's some feature overlap among these apps. Try a few of these to see if your creative mind enjoys using a variety of tools.

CameraBag
Publisher: Nevercenter Ltd. Co.
Price: $1.99

Imagine that your iPhone is a bag full of different film cameras, and you're on your way to understanding Camerabag. This app lets you play with different "looks" for your photos. Choosing the "Instant" style lets you make pictures reminiscent of the kind that came from old instant cameras. Another style, "Helga," gives your photos saturated, darker colors and simulated vignetting in the corners. "Fisheye" lets you pretend you've mounted a fisheye lens onto your iPhone. All told, there are 12 filters in the newest version.

The Helga style: vignetted corners, rich hues

Though the end results may feel like you're using different cameras, the app is really a set of filters that modify images after they've been made. You can use it on pictures you've already taken, or you can create new pictures using the app.

When you use the app to take pictures, you won't see the filter applied in real time. That makes it even more like the old-school cameras, where you didn't know what the picture looked like until you developed it. Luckily, if you don't like what one filter did to the image, you can easily switch to another filter until you get the look you want.

You can also run an image through multiple filters, to combine them. Just save a filtered image, open it, apply another filter, and save it again.

ShakeItPhoto
Publisher: Nick Campbell
Price: $0.99

Maybe you long for the days of old, when a bulky camera's click followed by a sustained motorized whirr meant a picture was coming in a few minutes. Or maybe you're too young to remember those days, but have heard OutKast sing that you should "shake it like a Polaroid picture," and you want to know what that's about. ShakeItPhoto lets you do both.

This model airplane looks more contrasty, thanks to ShakeItPhoto

This app copies the squarish aspect ratio of the old-school camera, as well as its saturated hues. After you take your shot, you can click the "Use" button, and hear those ancient gears push a white-bordered photo down onto your iPhone's screen. You can watch the images develop slowly, or shake your phone to speed up the process.

Sure, shaking to develop the picture may be a waste of computing resources (since it takes more calculations to fade the image in slowly rather than just process it to get the final result). Sometimes you have to be inefficient to have a little fun.

Gorillacam
Publisher: Joby Inc.
Price: free

If you wish the Camera app had more camera-like features, try Gorillacam. It's free, though it may make you want to spend money on hardware.

While taking pictures, Gorillacam can display a grid on the screen, letting you easily compose a photo using the "rule of thirds," which can make many photos more interesting. It can also display a bubble level along the top, so you can be confident your horizon is straight. Gorillacam also lets you save smaller pictures, and includes a digital zoom slider, a camera shake indicator, and three-shot burst, which some users may find useful.

Grid lines made it easy to set up the shot for rule of thirds composition. The bubble level is visible at the top.

Where Gorillacam really shines is in its time lapse and self-timer features. You can use those to take multiple pictures over time, or to take pictures of yourself. But how will you set up your phone to take such a picture? The publisher, Joby, hopes you'll drop $40 on its Gorillamobile case and stand, which has three bendable legs that you can wrap around things to hold the iPhone in place. The legs can also stand the iPhone on a table. And, what do you know? That bubble level and composing grid can come in handy when you're setting up the stand to take pictures.

It's as if Joby had it all planned out.

Camera Genius
Publisher: CodeGoo
Price: now on sale, $1.99

Not content to just improve on the Camera app, Camera Genius wants to improve your photography.

Just because the iPhone doesn't have a "real" camera doesn't mean you can't make great photos with it. Hidden inside the app is something called the "Camera Manual," which is chock full of pointers that will make you a genius with the iPhone's camera. It's like a class in aesthetics, and it even comes with examples. It takes only a few seconds to study all of the topics.

The grid lines let us align the Chemung River and a bridge along the top third easily. At top left is a counter that says how many photos we've taken, and on the right is a time and location stamp (which you can turn off).

The camera side of Camera Genius features multiple guide line patterns, a shake indicator, burst shooting, capturing by sound (say "Cheese!"), a timer, zoom, and a bigger button for taking pictures. It also lets you visibly stamp your location and the time onto photos when you take them. (You can also change the location to any text).

Camera Genius also makes it easy to share images by e-mail or by copying, for paste into another app.

Photoshop.com Mobile
Publisher: Adobe Systems Inc.
Price: free

It's easy to say that photographers use tools like Photoshop as a crutch, but the fact is, many images can be improved with a few tweaks. Most professional photographers spend some time editing photos before they're ready.

Photoshop.com Mobile's crop and straighten tools can give photos tighter composition and fix crooked horizons. Rotating the image helps if the iPhone got confused about which side of the image should be topmost. You can also flip the image. It's easy to adjust exposure, saturation, contrast and tint, or quickly convert the photo to black and white.

Exotic money looks more exotic-er, thanks to the Tint filter!

Beyond that, there are sketch, soft focus and sharpen filters, as well as a handful of interesting and tasteful effects that you can experiment with. Borders let you frame up the image, for even more variety. The app supports multiple levels of undo, so you can experiment until you're happy with the resulting image.

Photoshop.com Mobile is integrated with Photoshop.com, which offers similar editing tools and also acts as a photo sharing service. Like the app, that website is free, though you'll need to sign in with an Adobe ID.