Turns out there’s a way to enable that as-yet unsurfaced iOS 5 panorama mode in the Camera app without having to Jailbreak — though you do have to be comfortable opening up iPhone backup files, editing plists, and restoring the modified backup. It’s not difficult mind you, just a little be of time and effort.

If you’re itching to get your tinker on, hit the link below for all the details.

Source: Funky Space Monkey via 9to5Mac

iPhone hacker @conradev has found a way to enable the “secret” panorama mode within the iOS 5 camera app. At the moment, you can only enable it on a jailbroken iPhone by tweaking a plist file, com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist, and setting ‘EnableFirebreak’ to YES, but an easy-to-use hack should appear on Cydia at some point tomorrow.

Don’t worry, if you’re not on #ATeamJailbreak — hopefully Apple will officially enable Panorama Mode in an iOS 5.1 or iOS 5.2 update at some point in the not-so-distant future.

Source: Twitter

Today’s TiPb Top 5 will be directed towards our iPhone and iPod Touch wielding readers who love photography. Just like our other TiPb’s top 5 must-have posts, all of these applications are available in the App Store. For the full overview, follow us after the break!

Photogene

Today’s first application is Omer Shoor’s photo editing app Photogene. If you’re looking to do some serious photo editing with your iPhone, Photogene is the app for you. Whether you want an app that auto edits for you and has special effects or you want full control over every aspect of the editing process, Photogene does it all!

• Correct color distribution, brightness, color temperature, exposure and contrast
• Gamma correction
• RGB Balance
• Special effects
• Customizable Frames and Frame effects
• Text bubbles

Photogene is available for $2.99. [iTunes link].

DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition

Are you an aspiring or professional photographer with a Nikon or Canon DSLR? DSLR Camera Remote displays what your camera sees on your iPhone or iPod Touch and allows you to remotely control your camera’s shutter release and settings. This app is ideal for studio photography, self portraits, and awkward angles. Even though you are restricted to using this app on WiFi, when comparing it to the price of professional remotes, DSLR Camera Remote is a must-have for photographers with a supporting camera.

• Remotely fire your DSLR over any WiFi network (ad-hoc ok)
• See through your camera’s viewfinder with LiveView mode and focus remotely
• Remotely control camera settings like aperture, white-balance, and shutter-speed
• Auto Bracketing, burst, and intervalometer modes

DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition is available for $19.99 [iTunes link]

Panorama

Next up, we have the excellent panoramic application Panorama. Similar applications require the user to have skill in aligning photos for the final stitching to look good, but not Panorama! The stitching algorithms built into Panorama are very sophisticated and do an amazing job at fixing a bad alignment job. So if you’re interested in taking beautiful, high quality panoramic shots, be sure to pick this one up!

• Sophisticated stitching algorithms
• Take individual photos as portrait or landscape
• Add photos to the left or right
• Auto brightness/exposure corrections

Panorama is available for $9.99 [iTunes link]

TiltShift Generator

Photographers will often shoot photos with a shallow depth of field to make their subject stand out, but the iPhone’s camera is rather limited in this regard. With TiltShift Generator, you can add a very natural blur to your photos to bring non-subject matter out of focus and adjust contrast and saturation to really make your photos pop. Look no further than TiltShift Generator to satisfy your depth of field generating needs.

• Create “retro miniature pictures”
• Radial or linear Blur
• Edit contrast and saturation
• Vignetting
• Direct email and Twitter support

TiltShift Generator is available for $0.99 [iTunes link]

ColorSplash

Have you ever wanted to add a Sin City feel to your photos with only specific details in color? With ColorSplash you can! This technique is what’s known as selective desaturation and with 4 different brush types and a mode to clearly see the boundaries between black & white and color, ColorSplashis an excellent choice to give your photos that dramatic look.

• Give photos a dramatic look by keeping chosen details in color
• Use your finger as brush
• 4 different brush types
• Share with Facebook, Flickr, or Twitter
• Alternate mode that shows colored regions in red to easily see boundaries between black & white and color.

ColorSplash is available for $1.99 [iTunes link]

Conclusion

There you have it, TiPb’s Top 5 Must-Have iPhone photo apps. Did we miss any of your favorites? Overlook any killer photo apps? Drop us a comment and let us know your list!

AutoStitch Forum Review by msbaylor. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

AutoStitch is the only application in the App Store that gives the ability to stitch multiple rows of photos in any orientation in creating your panorama, meaning you don’t just get the normal one row, 360 degree view that Pano or the Panorama apps produce.

I was completely taking off guard when I found how utterly simple it was to use the application! Literally you “select & stitch” that all you do, no take one photo, stitch, take another photo, stitch, etc.

Overview

On the main screen you navigate to your photo album and tap to select photos, they don’t have to be in any particular order. The application will then load it into app (bottom half of screen) once that is complete; you can tap the “stitch” button. If there are photos you want to remove, just tap on the photos in the bottom pane and confirm that you want to delete it.

There is a progress bar at the bottom that I found quite accurate and you can watch you panorama build right in front of you.

Once the panorama is complete, it might be odd shaped, but you can crop it later via Photoshop or GIMP- one of the options that is really lacking. At this time you can also zoom in to view the stitching and if you want to replace a photo, you can go back and go through the process again.

There is a progress bar at the bottom that I found quite accurate and you can watch you panorama build right in front of you.

Once the panorama is complete, it might be odd shaped, but you can crop it later via Photoshop or GIMP- one of the options that is really lacking. At this time you can also zoom in to view the stitching and if you want to replace a photo, you can go back and go through the process again.

Once you are satisfied with your result, it’s time to save the photo

Here are some tests (4) that I conducted with the app

1) 4 “rows” of photos, 360 degrees horizontally:

I tool 57 photos and had it stitched into the photo below. Each iPhone (3GS) photo has a resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 (~1000kb each). The photo that I ended up with is 2,406 x 831 (784kb). So my end result is nearly smaller than the initial size of one iPhone photo – not cool. Test Grade: C-

2) 3 Rows of photos, 100 degrees horizontally:

Now the photo below, I took a total of 19 photos taken at the same resolution (obviously), ending result was a 2,350 x 851 photo – just as large as the previous panorama with less photos. I assume that the application is capping the size of the photo to reduce the RAM usage. Test Grade: C+

As In the first test photo I captured about 100 degrees vertical by 360 degrees horizontal, while the second one is only about 30 degrees vertical by 100 degrees horizontal. I am not a fan of this at all.

3) “Normal” one row panorama: The app did a good job at just creating a single row panorama Test Grade: B

4) “Really bad photographer” panorama

I decided to take a number of shots that were taken diagonally, horizontally & vertically. The result I was very pleased with: Test Grade: B-

At first, I thought this app was amazing, but after doing a thorough analysis of the app through the tests, I wasn’t happy with the results. I expected a little more on the resolution side of things. As a reference point, the photo below was created using the Panorama App – its resolution is 3,004 x 832 by combining only 5 iPhone photos, considerably better resolution over the Autostitch app.

If you are someone that’s likes taking panoramas occasionally or would like to get into taking panoramas, this is a nice app to start with; however, if you are a photography kind of person, this isn’t the best app – namely due to the resolution issue, it’s just too low to do anything “more” with it.

Conclusion

Overall I found this application to be groundbreaking on the iPhone, even if it’s not the first Panorama application to come to the App store market – it has raised the bar for other Panorama apps. The application is simple enough for anyone to use. My main complaint is the lack of cropping and picking of resolutions. I assume rendering into a larger resolution would eat up the RAM, but it would be a nice option, especially for the 3GS users. I noticed a lot of blurry areas in my pictures – this is caused by one of two issues – 1. I took a blurry shot or 2. The photo blending didn’t work out to well. Two bucks is a good deal for this tiny, yet powerful app.

Tips on Taking Panoramas with this app

• If using the 3GS, try to set the exposure on a foreground object (which initially appears darker) or vice versa
• If using the 3GS, try to focus on the furthest object, such as the horizon. Obviously this can’t always happen especially if you are following the point above.
• Try to hold the iPhone as steady as possible in low light situations

Pros:

• Incredibly simple to use
• Don’t have to have photos in order to stitch
• Add photos all in one go
• Watch the building of the Panorama as it’s created
• Save to photo album is quick

Cons:

• No advanced options
• Alignment isn’t always dead on
• No cropping ability
• Resolution of panorama is low
• Only one resolution option

TiPb Review Rating

Autostitch is available for $1.99 from the iTunes App Store.