8 Free Apps To Learn Photography – Android & iOS

 

1) UDEMY

Udemy is not a “dedicated photography app”, but it does have photography courses that you can sign up for free. What I like about Udemy is the sheer number of training videos and series – All by different trainers, covering a wide range of interests and skill levels.

This alone, hands down, beats most of the other “learn photography” apps. Oh, and it also has a feature to track the progress of the courses you signed up. Stop whenever you wish, then follow up where you left off. Overall, Udemy is just a very well polished and mature platform. Worth checking out.

 

 

2) COURSERA

If you have not heard of Coursera – It is an online platform that hosts courses offered by a number of reputable universities around the world. Of course, some of these are online courses that do not require you to be “physically at school”. But Coursera is kind of a double-edged sword with both pros and cons:

• The available free photography courses are kind of “depending on your luck”.
• Some of them are “study at your own pace”, while others follow a semester calendar.
• Yes, there are probably more paid courses than free on Coursera – Bad news to some.
• But they are not that bad and actually affordable – I like that there are actual lecturers teaching, and certificates will be given out.
• I don’t really know how credible these certificates are, nor if they are recognized… Although, my hunch is that the more expensive ones from reputable universities are probably useful in a couple of ways.

So yep. You decide.

 

 

3) LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY: DIGITAL, DSLR

There is quite a lot of these “learn photography” apps on the Google Play Store. But after checking out some of them, they are just “low-quality empty shells” loading posts from blogs or videos from YouTube channels… Just a way to make quick bucks from ads.

Not all of them are bad though, and this one caught my eye. A simple well-formatted app that kind of looks like a mini-magazine. Works offline too. But one bad thing that I thought was – The information is too shallow. It barely touches on the raw essentials and doesn’t really teach too much.

 

4) TUBESTUDY

YouTube, we already know there are a ton of free tutorial videos lying all around… But digging them up will take quite some effort. TubeStudy does the favor of compiling all the videos into nice collections and series, so you don’t have to. While the videos are all free on YouTube, one small thing that I really don’t like about this app is the rather excessive number of ads – It can get really irritating at times.

 

 

5) FOTOJI

Fotoji is one of the more “polished” learn photography app that I have seen on iOS. Apart from the tutorials, it is also fully interactive. Adjust the “settings” around, and see how it affects the “photos”.

But personally, I think this can be rather counter-productive in learning sometimes… One can rave all about it “how cool, now I know”. But without any actual practice, it remains as theory and just something that you have read before.

 

6) LINKEDIN LEARNING

Some of you guys may remember Lynda, and yes, it has been rebranded to LinkedIn Learning now. This is another mature platform that has a ton of courses to choose from, but I will be honest – They are not completely free.

As a free member, all you can access are bits and pieces of course preview and introductions. But the first month is a free trial anyway – Go ahead and take full advantage of it. Watch entire courses, and download all the course materials.

 

 

7) CURSA – FREE COURSES WITH CERTIFICATES

Cursa is yet another app that offers free courses with certificates. But personally, I find this to be another “rather funky gimmick app”.

• It only has a few photography-related courses at the time of writing.
• Free, but stuffed with ads and affiliate links.
• The tutorial videos are practically “ripped” from YouTube… Might as well just watch on YouTube.
• The “digital certificate” is probably as useless as it sounds. Who on Earth will recognize a certificate from an app? Oh, you finished watching a series of videos, you are certified now!?

Yep… But I still think it will be kind of fun to “over-qualified” with these “digital certificates”. 😆

 

8) EBOOK SEARCH & DOWNLOAD

Finally, these are actually 2 different apps, and there are probably more “free ebook” apps in the app stores. But here’s the drift, there are a crazy number of free ebooks in the world right now. We only have to use one of these “specialized ebook apps” to dig them out really fast.

But there is just one problem – There are way too many ebooks to choose from. Some of them are complete rubbish, or completely outdated. You have to choose your reads carefully, but either way, photography isn’t too bad since the basic concepts hardly ever change.