I’ve seen my fair share of camera apps for the iPhone that crop, filter, enhance, and make your photos look more professional. There a handful of great ones out there, but one that’s recently launched really is in the awesome app category.

Camera Awesome is no exaggeration.

Rather than just using photos from your existing library and making them better, Camera Awesome actually lets you take better pictures–and even videos–directly from the app. There’s an image stabilization feature, and a big button option which lets you click simply by touching anywhere on the screen. Perfect when trying to grab pictures of your kid’s first bike ride without training wheels while running down the street after her.

After the exquisite photo is taken, Camera Awesome lets you improve on it even more with basic and advanced editing features. This goes way beyond cropping, including tons of filters for any kind of effect you are looking for–think Black/White, Sepia, Vintage, even filters from professional photographer Kevin Kubota. If you just want basic photo enhancers, you can just use a feature called Awesomize that improves the photo with one click.

Keep in mind that there are in-app purchase options for additional filters and effects–something to be mindful of if you’re letting your toddler play with the app. And there are so many different options and settings, it definitely takes playing around with Camera Awesome to get a sense for all its features, but for this feature-rich of an app to be free, is well, pretty awesome.

Camera Awesome is available in iTunes for free.