APP
OF THE
DAY
Afterlight: Photo Editor
Vintage Film Filters & Presets
The photo-editing app Afterlight delivers powerful tools for adjusting exposure, contrast, saturation, and sharpness—while also offering RAW image support and dozens of filters, dust effects, and light leaks.
In short, the sky’s the limit—and even that can be edited easily!
Afterlight has an extension built into the native Photos app—tap the edit button and then find the ellipsis button (“...”) at the bottom of the screen and select Afterlight. From there, you’ll be able to quickly access the app’s powerful editing features without leaving the Photos app.
You can also find photos in your library in Afterlight or capture a new image by tapping the camera icon in the bottom left corner of the app. The app’s camera offers manual control over the shutter speed, ISO, and white balance—just enough tools to achieve powerful results, without being cluttered.
Afterlight has all of the adjustment controls you’re probably used to, plus unique tools of its own. Tap on Touch Tools, for instance, and then pick one of the adjustments (like Lighten, Darken, or Blur). Using your finger, paint over the part of the image you’d like to alter.
And if you make a mistake, no problem. Use the arrows up top to undo it, and use the slider on the bottom to increase or decrease the size of the brush. Pinch to zoom in to handle nuanced edits on even the smallest parts of your image, just like a professional retoucher would on a desktop computer.
Afterlight’s color-editing features are especially powerful. Tap on the Adjustments tab. Use Color Overlay to create tonal effects, and blend them in different ways, like SoftLight and HardLight, by toggling through the options above the color.
The Selective Saturation, Selective Hue, and Selective Lightness tools allow you to make changes to specific colors. They are perfect for tweaking one part of the image: Use Selective Saturation to make the blue sky more colorful, then Selective Hue to bring it to more of a teal, and then Selective Lightness to darken it a little. These same tools work well to easily adjust skin tones.
While Afterlight is a powerful image editor, it also offers fun finishing touches for sharing. Add titles and preset artwork that turn your photographs into slick montages.