By Lindsey Roberts January 8 at 2:01 PM

Jenna Walker, a professional photographer in Denver, shoots through the lens of her smartphone more than her DSLR these days. I find myself taking more and more images on my phone because its the camera I have with me, she says.

Her reality is now everyonesmoms and dads especially. I personally havent used my point and shoot in who knows how long because its too bulky to carry around in a purse already full of snacks, sippy cups and pacifiers. More notably, Smithsonian Magazine opened up its annual photo contest to smartphone photos just this year, acknowledging that the quality of iPhoneography is on the uptick.

To help us all take better photos and edit them right on our phone, we asked Walker and her pro photog crew of husband Matt Walker and sister Katie Thurmesall co-founders of photo-product business Artifact Uprisingto add to our list of the best apps for great smartphone photos.

1. Dont miss the shot: Fast Camera ($4.99) Toddlers moving too fast around the house? Kids flying around at a sporting event? Instead of waiting for a still-enough perfect photo (not going to happen), try taking up to 1,500 pictures a minute with this app and then review and select only the good images. I get great photos of my son at play this way.

2. Take easier selfies: CamMe (Free) Instead of holding a camera out only as far as your arm to take a selfie, hold it away as far as you like. Then, raise your other hand and close it into a fist. CamMe uses gesture control to help you take better cheesy photos of you and your childeven in photobooth form, with three successive pictures, if you like.

3. Prepare photos for Instagram: Squaready (Free) Walkers husband, Matt, uses his Instagram feed as a journal, and so he leans heavily on Squaready, which allows you to add white space on the top and bottom of a picture, giving you more control over how an image will appear in Instagram. A lot of people are using their Instagram feeds to tell the story of their life, Walker says.

4. Easy editing: Afterlight ($0.99) Afterlight features 59 fun photo filters, 66 natural textures, and 128 frames. But the best part is just how intuitive it is to edit the quality of a photo, making it ready to quickly upload and order prints or books from your phone. This app is a favorite of photographer Jen Altman, author of Photographing Your Children: A Handbook of Style and Instruction (2013).

5. Pro editing: VSCO (Free) Our entire team of photographers are huge fans of Visual Supply Co. [the makers of VSCO], Walker says. They dont overdo it. You have controls in the filters, but the filters are set out to mimic the intricacies of film. Advanced camera controls and sleek professional-grade tools and presets are the bread and butter here, though the ability to follow other photographers work is instructive and inspiring.

6. Automatically back up photos: Carousel (Free) Carousel is a godsend for parents who take hundreds of thousands of pictures of priceless moments because it backs up, dates, and organizes all of photos and videos to Dropbox. Automatically. Without taking up any room on your smartphone. Dropbox is sufficient in space for me, Walker says. Im no longer keeping multiple hard drives. Best of all, she adds, It [Carousel] gives me peace of mind when my kids steal my phone.

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6 smartphone photo apps to try