Culture

Filtertune lets you design your own filters without relying on Facebook's tools

Forget Facetune.

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The creators of Facetune, Lightricks, have another trick for you: filters that you yourself can make and share forward. Lightricks' new Filtertune is now freely available on the App Store, compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch running iOS 13.0 and up.

Filters are massively popular on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat (just check how the latter catapulted itself out of has-been status with this anime filter) but they conventionally come from designers and developers. With this kind of app, Filtertune mainstreams the creation of these little visual tricks to the public. Per TechCrunch, Lightricks CEO Zeeb Farbman says:

Filtertune represents a natural evolution of our growing product experiences, and with it, Lightricks will continue fostering a culture of online community, sharing, and collaboration that is necessary for young artists, creators, and anyone who enjoys social media

What Filtertune offers — Users on Filtertune will be able to make their own filters with the in-app editing tools and then save and store these filters in Filtertune. You can share and tweak these filters with others. In order to let others use your custom-made filter, you need to "tap the switch before you export to add a scannable code to the bottom of your photo," per Filtertune. You can also download the filters you like and edit them to your taste. If you really want to spice it up, Filtertune offers a VIP range of features, including unlimited access to all tools within the app.

What it looks like — Here's what the interface offers.

Filtertune
Filtertune

Filter tools — Filtertune users will be able to adjust the brightness, exposure, contrast, vibrance, saturation, color, white balance, grain, sharpening, and curve levels for their filters. Let's just hope they don't become unhinged like what we've seen with Facebook's Spark AR, which has birthed some racially insensitive and downright crass filters that fall directly in the category of blackface.