A smartphone is an almost essential part of any walking or cycling holiday. Although a stand-alone camera will usually allow you to take better photos, for ease and convenience most modern mobile phones also offer good quality picture taking. There are also dozens of great photo apps for android and Apple smartphones to help you to create amazing images. We discover some of the best free phone photo apps around. Remember, too, that every month, between March and October, there’s a chance to be the winner of the #MacsMoment competition. To be in with a chance of winning a new item of outdoors kit – and being named #MacsMoment photographer of the month – you’ll need to submit a fantastic holiday photo taken while on a Macs Adventure or Macs Bike holiday.

9 great photo apps – for free

1 Instagram

Platform: iOS, Android Price: Free This social media platform can be used for editing and creating fantastic photos. There are lots of custom-designed filters and editing tools to make it really easy to transform photographs. You can also take video or combine several clips into one video.

2 Pixlr

Platform: iOS, Android Price: Free Another brilliant editing tool, Pixlr has some two million combinations of effects, overlays and filters to give you plenty of scope for creating great images. You can also layer images, add text captions and create collages. [gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="20175,20176"]

3 Qwik

Platform: iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android Price: Free Qwik describes itself as the “fastest and easiest way to make pretty photos”. There are 600 filters and tons of fonts and frames so whether their statement is true or not it’s a good app to check out.

4 Camera MX

Platform: Android Price: Free Only useable by people with Android phones, the app combines enhancement tools with a simple-to-use interface. There’s an “intelligent image processing” feature that helps you to take sharper pictures. The newest version has a Live Shot feature so you can take moving images.

5 Fotor

Platform: iOS (iPhone), Android Price: Free The app lets you edit photos, create collages and share images, plus you can discover photos taken by other users of the app. There is also a new high definition finish tool in the latest version of the app.

6 Geló

Platform: iOS (iPhone) Price: Free make use of a range of colour “gels” to add a fun or dramatic burst of colour to your photos.  

7 Camera Awesome

Platform: iOS (iPhone and iPad) Price: Free The functions and filters are modern and sophisticated and the “Awesomize” button lets you brighten and sharpen a picture using one click, but still with the option of fine-tuning details.

8 Photoshop Express

Platform: iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android Price: Free This offers the kind of slick editing you’d expect from Adobe but in a photo phone format.

9 PhotoWonder

Platform: iOS (iPhone), Android Price: Free This is a super fast editing app that allows you to use photo booth type effects and collages. The Vintage filter is a good one to look at and apply.

• Note that some apps require you to pay to switch off a series of adverts.

Also see: How to take great holiday photos