Hidden Gem: Priime adds tasteful style to your photos
There are many iPhone photo editing and filter apps on the App Store, but I’m always looking for tasteful ways to enhance my photos. I recently discovered this hidden gem that I think you’ll enjoy. Priime has a small but devoted following of iPhone photographers, and it’s easy to see why.
Many photo-enhancing apps feel cheap or silly or cluttered and get deleted before I get very far with them. Priime’s user experience is smooth and classy from the start. It’s intuitive to use, and the user interface is pleasing to the eye.
Priime has the basic editing tools you’d expect, such as brightness, contrast, warmth, tint, saturation, highlights, shadow, vignette, fade, and more. You can also rotate, straighten, and crop your photos. But that’s not what makes this app shine. It’s the subtle and sophisticated filters that lift Priime from the pack.
Priime doesn’t call them filters, though. Rather, they are called styles. Each style was created by a professional photographer. Once you choose a photo to work on, try tapping Suggested. Priime will analyze your picture and bring up a list of suggested styles for your particular photo based on the type of photo, color palette, brightness, contrast, season, and location. If you don’t like any of the suggested styles, you can tap Mine instead to bring up all of your styles, or Favorites to bring up the ones you’ve starred. Alternatively, you can search all of the styles sorted by author or by categories such as Vibrant, Landscape, Architecture, or Portrait.
Once you choose a style, tap Info to learn about the style in the author’s words. In addition to a description of the style and its inspiration, you get a list of the types of photos it’s useful for, and a selection of photos filtered with that style. You can also adjust the level of style application to your photo on a scale of one to 12. Feel free to layer multiple styles; mix and match for different looks. If you change your mind, you can always tap History to remove styles. Your edits can be copied and pasted onto multiple photos.
Just a subtle tweak: before (top) and after (bottom)
Priime is popular among Instagrammers. You can see some examples of real-life usage of the app here.
Priime is free on the App Store. Eight filter styles are included free, which many users will find to be plenty. In-app purchases will allow you to unlock more styles. Each additional style costs $.99; you can unlock all 69 styles for $9.99 for a limited time.