With all the great photo apps out there, we find ourselves in less of a panic when we're out and forget to bring the digital camera. We can rest assured that at least we have photo apps on the iPhone, (our favorite one being the ever popular Instagram), and with the right lighting and a unique angle, we can document our outing fairly decently with just the phone camera. The best part about stylized photo apps is how quickly you can share photos once you’ve taken them - no laptops or USB cords required.

Here’s a roundup of the four most popular photo-taking apps and their newest updates:

Path: Path started out as a “private” photo sharing application with a 50-friend limit on sharing. The app’s recent update now brings Facebook sharing into the picture. Path has also added “Lenses” which are photo and video filters. They currently have a total of 7 filters to try out.

PicPlz: The app’s newest feature known as “collections” or “playlists” is the easiest way to curate and categorize photos into collections. The collections give some order to the chaos of floods of real-time feed and their site provides a seamless photo browsing experience.

Hipstamatic: Practically everyone knows this app now. Hipstamatic is really good at timely giveaways for major events. A new fashion lens was released in February in time for Fashion Week and most recently the app gave away “HipstaPaks” for SXSW, a commemorative event case and a new “Tejas” lens.

Instagram: Along with new feed organization and sharing options, Instagram has also incorporated a nifty new Tilt-Shift effect. The feature lets you focus on a specific part of your photo and blur the surroundings to simulate a “miniature-like” scene – a function that used to only be available on SLR cameras.

(Image by mobiflip)