If you’re looking to add a little zing to your photo library, look no further. Afterlight is a critically-acclaimed, feature-packed photo editor that can put your Instagram game on a whole ‘nother level.
While some photo editing apps focus on just adding filters, cropping, effects, or other adjustments - Afterlight does it all, without being overwhelming. Let’s take a look at the features it has to offer.
Photo Editing in Afterlight
Adjustment Tools
The first tab in Afterlight features standard adjustment tools to affect the light, saturation, hue, etc. Each tool includes a slider for fine tuning. The tools include Clarify, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Face, Highlight Tone, Mid Tone, Shadow Tone, Temperature, Vignette, Grain and Sharpening.
Filters
The next tab includes 74 filters in several categories. You can adjust the strength of each filter with a slider.
- Original: Afterlight’s original set of filters
- Guest: Created by popular Instagrammers
- Seasons: Filters to more accurately portray Winter/Spring/Summer/Autumn vibes
- Wander: More recent filter additions
- Fusion: Combine multiple filters
Textures
This tab contains several effects and textures to make your photo a little more interesting. The app page describes these effects as “a range of real and natural light leaks created with 35mm film and instant film, to simplistic scratchy film textures.” It contains 4 categories: Dusty, Light leak, Instant film, and Wander. Adding these effects can give photos character, and the light leaks work well with landscape and urban photos.
Cropping & Transforming Tools
Here you’ll find tools to transform the photo, including 15 different crop presets, rotate, flip horizontal, flip vertical, straighten and a brand new tool called Double Exposure. Double Exposure allows you to select a second photo to combine with the original, creating cool layered effects. It has several blending options like screen, lighten, darken, multiply, colorburn, overlay, softlight, hardlight and difference. The photo below is a great example of what is possible with this effect, with the photo of the woman being the main photo and the roses being the secondary.
Frames
Afterlight provides 128 adjustable frames that work great with instagram. There are shapes, silhouettes, letters and all kinds of options for seeing your photo in new ways.
Sharing
Once you're done, you can export to Camera Roll, Instagram, Postcard, Photo Book, or other apps. You can choose to export at full size, or a compressed size to share your masterpiece with the world!
All in all, Afterlight is a very powerful editor that can be used to create incredible photos. At just $0.99, it’s a steal.