Comparison

Pastello 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

Pastello

Transform your photos into stunning dry media art, mimicking styles like pastel, charcoal, and colored pencil. This app offers a professional workflow with customizable layers and one-click presets for creating expressive, traditional-looking artwork.

Highlights
  • Photo to Pastel, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon conversion
  • Layering of different dry media
  • Customizable stroke direction, size, and volume
  • One-click presets with customization options
  • Traditional sketch styles and DaVinci effect
  • Professional workflow for artists and photographers
Read full description

Transform photos into a fine art drawing with Pastel, Pencil, Chalk, Charcoal and Crayon Introducing Pastello, a brand-new companion app to JixiPix’s Impresso Pro. Pastello takes you back in time to the 15th century. Away from brushes and large strokes and into the realm of dry media with color that is both brilliant and subtle. The “Dry color method” made famous by Leonardo da Vinci is so powerful in its simplicity and beauty with its black and red chalk and yellow pastel highlights. Later, artists would paint charming portraits in a smooth heavily blended fashion. Move forward a few centuries later and pastel quickly became filled with brilliant color and crisp detail. Fast forward to today and a digital age has made it so you, the artist, can mix and match media that is difficult or impossible in a traditional setting. Pastello makes it simple and convenient to take an image and change it into Pastel, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon, Colored Pencil and Graphite drawings. Use alone or combine these medias using powerful layers to produce interesting expressive sketch effects filled with colorful personality and passion. And the best part is Pastello does all the work. With Pastello, photographers and artists can now go beyond the camera to turn image files into creative works that resemble traditional handmade media using a professional workflow that is easy and comfortable to operate. Pastello has a pro workflow that automatically transforms a photo into a pastel drawing and places it on an art paper with options to customize. The Pastel can then be changed to Chalk, Charcoal, Colored Pencil, Graphite, Conte or Crayon using Layer styles. The medias start out delicate like traditional drawings do, then allows you to build them up using fills, shading and detail layers. The medias are beautiful as they are, or mix them for an expressive artwork. Pastello includes plenty of traditional sketch styles as well as a DaVinci effect using a mixed media of pencil, charcoal, crayon and old paper. It’s easy to use! We have mixed the media into one-click presets with all the freedom to customize, blend and fine-tune for your own unique artwork filled with age, depth and timeless beauty as if created by the renaissance artist himself. Pastel Styles: Colored Pencil, Graphite, Charcoal, and Chalk come with a fill and detail option that can be layered for infinite variation. Conte has a dynamic sketch feature that lets you fill in shadows, mid-tones and highlights with crosshatching or scumbling. All with the ability to change stroke direction, size, volume and variation. Pastel—(Soft) is a soft, buttery consistency and intense color. This effect is dense and filled with the grain of the paper. Chalk—(Hard Pastel) is a light dusty effect with little specks of preserved paper. This chalky pastel is known for it’s soft strokes and velvety texture. Charcoal—creates a velvety black charcoal effect with shades of grey. Use it for warming up the under painting of a composition, or to complete a finished charcoal piece. Colored Pencil—creates soft colorful strokes in the drawing that can be layered to build up color then burnished with a light Pencil Layer, or the Smudge tool. Pencil—creates pencil drawings with fluid outlines and soft, limpid tonal shadings for a drawing filled with warmth and charm. Conté—is a beautiful crayon media for enhancing highlights, midtones and shadows in drawings using classic colors. Crayon—creates a colorful waxy base to a drawing, then burnished it with a Conte White for highlights or Bistre for shading.

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 Pastello's $29.99. HDR Portrait also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.8) and review sentiment (95% vs 79%). Pastello's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and ratings volume (44 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

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

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

HDR Portrait holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Pastello has 44 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 79% of Pastello's written reviews are positive against 95% of HDR Portrait's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pastello ships an update every 3 months, HDR Portrait every 11 months. The most recent releases landed on October 21, 2026 and October 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 2 level
Pastello versus HDR Portrait: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPastelloHDR Portrait
Price$29.99$2.99 — better
Rating4.8 (44 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews78.9% of reviews95.2% of reviews — better
Number of ratings44 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 3 months — betterEvery 11 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.6
Further details — not scored
Size123 MB43 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJixiPix, LLCMaxim Chernousov

Customer experience

Pastello

All ratings43 ratings
Positive93.0%
Neutral2.3%
Negative4.7%
Written reviews19 reviews
Positive78.9%
Neutral0.0%
Negative21.1%

HDR Portrait

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

In-app purchases

None

Pastello

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

HDR Portrait

Subscriptions1
  • HDR Portrait premium features$0.991 Month

Questions

Is Pastello free?
Pastello 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, Pastello or HDR Portrait?
HDR Portrait is rated higher. Pastello averages 4.8 out of 5 from 44 ratings, while HDR Portrait averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Pastello or HDR Portrait have ads?
Neither Pastello nor HDR Portrait shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pastello or HDR Portrait?
Pastello ships an update every 3 months, and HDR Portrait every 11 months. Most recently, Pastello was updated on October 21, 2026 and HDR Portrait on October 22, 2026.

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