Comparison

Impresso Pro vs HDR Portrait

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Impresso Pro

Transform your photos into stunning Impressionist masterpieces with multi-textured brush strokes. This app offers a pro workflow with smart layers and brushes for blending multiple paint styles, creating captivating, print-worthy artwork.

Highlights
  • Transform photos into multi-textured Impressionist paintings
  • Smart layering system for blending paint styles
  • Library of Edges and Background Paint effects
  • Soft Paint effect for foreground subjects
  • Aged Paint effect for cracked texture
  • Impressionism Paint Effects: Alla Prima, En Plein Air, Tache
Read full description

Lucky you, 21st century software wielding seer and lover of beauty—you have Impresso Pro. With the same enduring attention to detail, light, color, and texure, Impresso transforms your photos into multi-textured, stroke-filled Impressionist masterpieces. And keen eyes will love how Impresso maintains the balance of your piece! The result—captivating, print-worthy paintings brimming with passion, life, and beauty. Transform photos into paintings then combine paint effects with layers and brushes for gorgeous print-worthy artwork. Smart Layers and brushes for blending multiple paint styles, a library of Edges that blend beautifully with canvas, a Background Paint effect to create distances, a Soft Paint effect for enhancing foreground subjects, an Aged Paint effect for adding cracked texture, and an ultra-impressionism effect called Tache to cover paintings with broken brush strokes and dabs of color. Impresso Pro has everything an Artist or Photographer will need to create gallery-style paintings with enough detail even for the largest print. Includes: Layers, Brushes, Soft Paint, Background Paint, Aged Paint, Painted Edges and three Impressionism Paint Effects: Alla Prima, En Plein Air and Tache paint styles. Features A pro workflow automatically transforms a photo into a painting and places it on a paint layer along with a canvas. With a smart built-in layering system the photo can then be transformed again when a new paint layer is chosen and placed on the layer above. The layers are ‘smart’ because the settings are retained per layer allowing changes to brush strokes, color finishes and other settings for infinite variation when blending. There are several ways to blend the layers, change the opacity slider to blend the strokes beneath, or to blend color use the brushes to brush-off the paint style or back-on if too much is removed. This powerful feature is great for creating lighter values in distant elements and colorful ones in the foreground. With layers you can also achieve another level of depth (or depth-of-field) by overlapping larger brush strokes with finer ones—all it takes is this simple technique to achieve a highly creative work. Paint Styles and Effects Alla Prima (‘wet-on-wet’ or ‘all-at-once’)—is great for portraits! This beautiful paint style starts by filling the painting with an abundance of brushstrokes. A library of artistic finishes compliments this style by adding light, color and movement. En Plein Air (in open air)—is perfect for landscapes. This stroke-filled effect consists of eight artists’ palettes created by famous impressionists. Use them as they are or edit the paint colors to make your own palette—save preset feature keeps the palette and all the layers intact for future projects. Tache (‘spot’ or ‘blot’)—applies broken brushstrokes throughout the painting. This technique of laying thick patches, flecks and dabs of color is great for making paint look as if it stands out from the surface. Apply a light spackling of strokes or fill the painting with dabs of color. Canvas Layer—supplies the canvas texture and adds a painted edge. NEW—Soft Paint Effect—creates a hard edge when brushed to show contrast from other edges around it—great for foreground objects NEW—Background Paint Effect—recedes objects and scenery when brushed for a natural distant and out-of-focus effect NEW—Aged Paint Effect—cracks paint in a linear or angled fashion with control over crack color, strength, size, angle, spacing and sensitivity NEW—Painted Edges—creates a painted vignette NEW—Signature Layer - Add that personalized touch to your image NEW—CONFORM STROKES This new technology conforms brush strokes, using only a slider, to bring out detail naturally—while still retaining the brushwork.   NEW—BRISTLE STYLES Three bristle styles wield brushwork in an extremely free manner while retaining high quality strokes even up close. NEW—11 NEW BRUSH STYLES

About

HDR Portrait

Transform your photos into artistic portraits with AI-powered HDR effects. This app intelligently detects faces, applies expressive HDR to them, and enhances backgrounds with artistic blurs and bokeh. It works on various devices, utilizing advanced sensors when available for superior results.

Highlights
  • AI face detection
  • Expressive HDR portrait effects
  • Artistic background effects
  • Customizable blurs and bokeh
  • Utilizes dual cameras and TrueDepth sensors
  • Pre-set combinations for quick editing
Features
Read full description

AlphaPlugins HDR Portrait turns your Apple device into an incredible art portrait machine. This wonderful app uses artificial intelligence and neural networks to detect faces on photos and separate them from the background. Detected faces are processed with expressive HDR effects. Simultaneously, astonishing artistic effects are applied on the background behind the portraits. Lots of impressive focal background effects, such as different kind of blurs, bokeh with various shapes and others, are available. As its name implies, "AlphaPlugins HDR Portrait" is attended to deal with portraits. If your iPhone supports modern dual cameras and TrueDepth sensors, our app uses them to detect a face and achieve better results. If you're using an old device or taking not portrait photos, then our app can work without modern features by using its own neural network facilities. The basic kit contains a lot of prepared settings presets that allow to quickly apply different combinations of settings on taken photos. These settings combinations demonstrate application possibilities and let you obtain various combinations of application features. If you want to experiment with manually parameters settings, you should buy an extended license, then all appТs adjustable parameters will be available.

Screenshots

HDR Portrait4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: HDR Portrait at $2.99 against Impresso Pro's $29.99. HDR Portrait also leads on review sentiment (95% vs 73%) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Impresso Pro's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and ratings volume (81 vs 1). On ads and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Impresso Pro costs $29.99 and HDR Portrait $2.99 up front. HDR Portrait sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $0.99 per month. Impresso Pro asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

HDR Portrait holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Impresso Pro has 81 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 73% of Impresso Pro's written reviews are positive against 95% of HDR Portrait's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Impresso Pro ships an update every 3 months, HDR Portrait every 11 months. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 2 level
Impresso Pro versus HDR Portrait: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterImpresso ProHDR Portrait
Price$29.99$2.99 — better
Rating4.7 (81 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews73.3% of reviews95.2% of reviews — better
Number of ratings81 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 3 months — betterEvery 11 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS14.0 — better15.6
Further details — not scored
Size115 MB43 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJixiPix, LLCMaxim Chernousov

Customer experience

Impresso Pro

All ratings78 ratings
Positive92.3%
Neutral5.1%
Negative2.6%
Written reviews15 reviews
Positive73.3%
Neutral13.3%
Negative13.3%

HDR Portrait

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews21 reviews
Positive95.2%
Neutral0.0%
Negative4.8%

In-app purchases

None

Impresso Pro

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

HDR Portrait

Subscriptions1
  • HDR Portrait premium features$0.991 Month

Questions

Is Impresso Pro free?
Impresso Pro costs $29.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is HDR Portrait free?
HDR Portrait costs $2.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Impresso Pro or HDR Portrait?
HDR Portrait is rated higher. Impresso Pro averages 4.7 out of 5 from 81 ratings, while HDR Portrait averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Impresso Pro or HDR Portrait have ads?
Neither Impresso Pro nor HDR Portrait shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Impresso Pro or HDR Portrait?
Impresso Pro ships an update every 3 months, and HDR Portrait every 11 months. Most recently, Impresso Pro was updated on October 24, 2026 and HDR Portrait on October 22, 2026.

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