CameraBag adds mutliple filters to your iPhone photos.

The iPhone’s camera already feels outdated and clunky, even though it’s just over a year old. The resolution is locked at 1,600-by-1,200 pixels, it needs a ton of light, and once you’re done with a photo, you can’t alter it unless you import it into your computer. That’s where CameraBag comes in.

CameraBag lets you take a new photo or import one already on your iPhone. Then from the pull-down menu, one of nine filters changes the photo's style. Some are meant to emulate classic camera styles--Helga=Holga and Lolo=Lomo--while others, like 1974, fade and tint to make a retro image. The Instant filter simulates a Polaroid photograph with a border, and so on. You can preset favorite filters for quick access, too.

CameraBag gets more interesting once you export a photo. You can then open it back up in the application and apply another filter, allowing you to stack multiple looks on one image. But we wanted to do this within the program, rather than having to save out images and then go through the process all over again.

CameraBag also has a few other tweaks, letting you save your photos out in resolutions of 400-, 600-, 800-, or 1200-pixels wide, and certain filters add variable border and cropping effects that you can switch on or off. However, you can't crop a new photo however you want. And those advanced settings aren’t explained in the application or on the CameraBag website.