Afterlight review
Afterlight packs in a compact and straightforward interface essential photo adjustment and enhancement tools, including 59 filters, 66 textures, and 77 frames. Unfortunately, the last update has introduced some annoying bugs that make the current release one of the most unstable to date.
Pros
Good design, high usability: Afterlight's tight and well-ordered interface with its features toolbar at the bottom of the screen makes it possible to quickly switch between cropping, transforming, and adjustment tools and experiment with different filters and textures without detriment to your thumb. It is this thoughtful arrangement of the interface, rather than any feature in particular, that makes this a worthwhile photo editing app.
Wide selection of frames: When it comes to frames, Afterlight beats most other photo editors we've tried so far, offering a wide array of creative, adjustable frames. Note that some of the frame packs available require an additional purchase of $0.99.
Quick image scaling: After editing an image, you are taken to the Save & Share screen, which lets you choose the size of the edited image between Small, Medium, and Max. This is more convenient than having to manually rescale the image with a separate tool.
Cons
App crashes when applying filters: The app comes with 59 filters separated into three categories, but when you try to apply some of them, the app hangs for a moment and then crashes. It's a pity because many of the filters look great.
Image glitches: Sometimes, quite inexplicably, an image that looked great on the editing screen turns out to have some visual blemish or glitch when opened later after being saved.
Some trite textures: The textures include some delicately beautiful light leaks that can add a nice touch to nature photos, but also some rather odd lightning effects.
Bottom Line
Afterlight is an appealing photo editor, but technical problems, such as editing glitches and crashes, make this release difficult to use. If this were a free app, these issues might have been tolerable, but since it's a paid app, we cannot recommend it. Until the bugs are fixed, try one of the many other photo editors available.
