If you left your love of iPhone photo filters in the early days of Instagram, I understand you. At the time it seemed like they were making everything cool and retro. But in retrospect, they made our already blurry shots look even worse.
Fast forward to 2024 and it’s true that not all filters are created equal. You’ll still find a lot of things that make your iPhone photo look exaggerated and a little freaky. But there are many that are subtle enough to be mostly undetectable, and add a touch of vibrancy or a subtle tint to your photos.
There’s no end to photo apps with built-in filters (I recommended Tezza earlier this week, which is my current favorite), and you’ll find quite a few on Instagram itself. But if you want a wide collection of filters to choose from, I suggest you check out Polarr for your iPhone or iPad.
What makes Polarr worth downloading?
Polarr has a much different editing process than other apps I’ve used. Instead of uploading a photo to an editing suite, we encourage you to upload a photo and then see how it looks with a whole bunch of different filters in real time on the app’s ‘Discover’ page.
There are literally hundreds of filters to choose from and they’re categorized with tags like ‘avant-garde’ and ‘indie film’. You can then cycle through all the different ways your photo can look with the applied photos.
Many of these filters are actually created by creators. This is a completely different vibe from the Tezza, which I recommended earlier this week only because its filters were selective and hand-picked. But if you’d rather have tons of stuff created by different people, then Polarr might be better for you.
Polarr’s main attraction might be its filters, but you can also access all the tools you’d expect from an editing app, including brightness, contrast, gradients and more.
There are several different options you can choose if you want to use Polarr long term. ‘Polarr Premium’ gives you access to all content and all tools and removes ads. The annual subscription is $25.49/£25.49, which translates to $2.12/£2.12 per month. Monthly subscription is $9.99/£9.99 per month. Like most subscription apps, annual makes more sense. There’s also a “Lite” version that gives you some perks, it’s $12.99/£2.99 per year or $5.99/£5.99 per month.
You can stick with the free version, but what you can do each day is limited. You will still have ads and you can only run one ad-free creation each day and save three filters per day. This isn’t ideal, but it’s handy if you can’t afford another subscription.