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The smartphone revolution hasn't just put a video camera in your pocket. It's given you a whole movie-making studio in one compact package. With the right apps, you can add special effects and filters that the Hollywood experts would be proud of—and you don't even have to transfer your footage to a computer first. In this guide, we'll take you through six apps you can use for the job. Whether you want to send a dinosaur stampeding through your scene or give your footage a woozy, dream-like effect, you've got all kinds of possibilities to play around with. Action Movie FX The clue's in this app's name: Action Movie FX can overlay explosions and monsters with such aplomb that it's previously earned an Apple award. From natural disasters to wandering spaceships, it offers a ton of high-quality visuals to explore, though most of these effect packages require an in-app payment. That said, you do get some effects for free—look for them under the All menu—...

When you want to revisit an old digital photo, you can simply scroll through your past social media posts or open your favorite storage app. But what about those physical prints from your film camera days—are they still filling up old albums and boxes in the basement? If so, they're probably looking a little worse for wear. Once you digitize these pictures, you can harness modern-day software to restore them to their former glory. This guide will offer some free techniques for bringing your print pics to digital life, but we won't cover every photo problem. That said, you should be able to adapt these methods to tackle your specific situation, or apply the tools we recommend to experiment with your own fixes. First of all, you'll need to create digital versions of your physical photos and put them on your computer. Either upload them with a scanner, or in a pinch, set up some good lighting and snap them with a high-quality smartphone camera. Once you have the scanned ...

Apple's Steve Jobs famously disliked the idea of using styluses with smartphones. But there are plenty of reasons to disregard his opinion. For one, your sausage fingers are imprecise and today's oversized phone screens make one-handed typing difficult, two problems that a stylus solves. Here are a few more reasons you should give the stylus another chance. Once we make our case, you can pick up a stylus-equipped handset, like a member of Samsung's Galaxy Note series, or buy a cheap third-party stylus to use with your current device. Most of the latter, such as the LIBERRWAY Universal Touch Screen Capacitive Stylus ($6 for a 10-pack from Amazon) or the Friendly Swede Stylus Pen ($9 for a 3-pack from Amazon), will work with any touchscreen device—but just to be safe, make sure to double-check compatibility before you buy. 1. Enjoy easier swiping A pointy little pen makes all of your screen interactions smoother and more intuitive. Think about signing digital documents...

SIDE EFFECTS bobbieo/Getty Images The modern lobotomy originated in the 1930s, when doctors realized that by severing fiber tracts connected to the frontal lobe, they could help patients overcome certain psychiatric problems, such as intractable depression and anxiety. Over the next two decades, the procedure would become simple and popular, completed by poking a sharpened tool above the eyeball. According to one study, about two thirds of patients showed improvement after surgery. Unfortunately, not all lobotomy practition-ers were responsible, and the technique left some patients with severe side effects, including seizures, lethargy, changes in personality, and incontinence. In response, doctors refined their techniques. They replaced the lobotomy with more specialized approaches: the cingulotomy, the anterior capsulotomy, and the subcaudate tractotomy. Studies of these procedures found evidence of benefit for at least one fourth of patients suffering from problems such as O...