Aestheticam vs A«iD
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Aestheticam
This app intentionally degrades your photos with unique filters and effects. It offers presets like deep fry, glitch, and VHS, along with face distortion and random overlays. A chaos slider and shake-to-reroll feature add to the unpredictable, often hilarious, results.
- 10 quality-lowering presets
- Face detection with distortion effects
- Random cursed emoji and meme overlays
- Chaos slider for extreme effects
- Shake to reroll for new results
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a camera app that takes the worst photos imaginable most camera apps try to make you look better. i didn't do that. i made an app that takes a normal photo and turns it into something you can't show people without an explanation. nobody asked for this garbage. it's not a bug. it's the whole thing. what it does: → 10 presets that lower the quality of your photo in specific ways deep fry compresses it until it looks like a threat. glitch splits the colors apart and rearranges pixels. vhs adds tracking errors from a format that died in 2006. vaporwave puts pink grids on everything. nuclear meltdown is all of them at once and i'm sorry. → face detection that works against you the app finds your face using legitimate technology, and then makes a choice you wouldn't. it adds laser eyes. or copies your face 6-12 times. or melts it downward. it's precise about this, which somehow makes it worse. → overlays cursed emojis. random memes pulled from a folder i named myself. procedural word art with rainbow gradients. vaporwave grids. stars. things you didn't ask for, applied anyway. → chaos slider subtle is fine. normal is reasonable. maximum is for people who say "just do whatever" and then immediately regret it. at maximum the app itself starts glitching. the ui breaks. your phone vibrates. there's music. it's committed to the bit. → shake to reroll if you don't like the result, shake your phone. same photo, different disaster. the randomization is deep enough that you'll never get the same thing twice. accountability is hard.
A«iD
This app synthesizes video in real time, reacting to audio input. It offers a modular chain of effects to manipulate visuals, allowing for custom masks and intricate distortions. Create unique, psychedelic visual experiences inspired by vintage video synthesizers.
- Audio-reactive video synthesis
- Modular effects chain
- Customizable masks (SVG, PNG, PDF)
- Real-time feedback and distortion
- Color manipulation and remap
- CRT phosphor and DV tape emulation
- Edge detection and raster effects
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A«iD is an audio-reactive video synthesizer inspired by Eric Siegel's legendary EVS Electronic Video Synthesizer from the 1970s. ——— THE CHAIN ——— Modules process the video signal in real time. Stack them in any order, tap to open controls, drag to reorder, long-press to bypass. GEOMETRY SOURCE — Generate a synthetic shape and composite it over the signal. Circle, diamond, bar, cross, ring, triangle, hexagon — or load your own SVG, PNG, or PDF as a custom mask. Position, size, hue, and edge softness are all independently audio-modulatable. FEEDBACK — Route the processed signal back into itself. Pinch and rotate on the canvas to control zoom and spin in real time. KEYER — Unified luma and chroma key in a single module. Cut foreground from background by luminance or isolate a color as a matte. Tap the eyedropper to sample any color directly from the screen. Pairs visually with COMPOSITE in the chain — the signal knows where it's going. COMPOSITE — Layer the processed chain behind a clean camera cut using luma and chroma mattes simultaneously. COLOR MATRIX — Rotate, invert, and cross-channel the RGB color space. Strange colors guaranteed. HUE LFO — Oscillate the hue channel at tempo-synced rates. Psychedelic pulsing locked to the beat. PHOSPHOR DECAY — Emulate CRT phosphor persistence. Past frames linger like burned afterimages. BURN ECHO — Additive frame echo that saturates toward white. Motion leaves a scorched trail. DV TAPE — Analog dropout and compression artifacts from the era of consumer DV camcorders. HALATION — Film halation glow on bright areas. Warm blooming on highlights. CHROMA SMEAR — Horizontal chroma bleed and compression fringing. SCAN DISPLACE — Rutt/Etra-inspired raster displacement. Each scanline shifts horizontally by audio frequency content mapped to vertical position — bass warps the bottom, treble the top. The entire frame becomes a spectrum warp field. EDGE OUTLINE — Sobel edge detection with colored glow, inspired by Stephen Beck's Direct Video Synthesizer. Flat areas go dark; edges light up in the chosen hue and bloom outward. COLORMAP — Remap luminance to color. Five palettes: Thermal (heat vision), Psychedelic (full hue rotation, classic Siegel PCS), Phosphor (P1 green CRT), Ice, and Neon. Every pixel's brightness becomes a new color. RASTER BEND — Distort the scan lines. Warp the geometry of the image itself. MIRROR — Fold, flip, and tile the frame into kaleidoscopic symmetry. TILE — Repeat, scale, and rearrange the frame in a grid. POSTERIZE — Reduce color depth. Hard edges, flat planes, screen-print aesthetics. TRANSFORM — Rotate, scale, and reposition with full affine control. CHANNEL MIX — Blend and cross-route RGB channels independently. ENCODER — NTSC-style composite encoding. Color bleeding and luminance separation. ——— AUDIO REACTOR ——— Every knob can be wired to the live audio signal. A»iD listens constantly and extracts amplitude, bass, mid and treble bands, beat phase, BPM, onset triggers, and spectral centroid. Seven LFOs run at BPM subdivisions. Open the Patch Bay to wire any source to any parameter in any module. Stack multiple sources on one knob. Set amount and polarity per patch. ——— RANDOMIZE ——— Shake the device (or hit the die) to randomize the whole chain. Palette Lock freezes hue and saturation through dice rolls. Sleeper Mode locks each module's bypass state — sleeping modules stay asleep, active modules stay awake. Everything re-rolls around your intention. ——— SYNC & CONTROL ——— ABLETON LINK — Lock BPM and beat phase with Ableton Live, AUM, Loopy, and any Link-compatible app on your network. MIDI — Auto-learns CC from any wired or Bluetooth MIDI controller. Long-press any knob to assign. OSC — Receive /aid/ messages from TouchOSC or Max/MSP over Wi-Fi.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: A«iD at 5.0 against Aestheticam's 3.3. A«iD also leads on ads (none vs shown) and review sentiment (100% vs 70%). Aestheticam's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 8 days) and ratings volume (18 vs 5). On price, in-app purchases and device support 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
A«iD holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 18 and 5 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 70% of Aestheticam's written reviews are positive against 100% of A«iD's.
Aestheticam ships an update every 2 days, A«iD every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Aestheticam | A«iD |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.3 (18 ratings) | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 70.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 18 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Every 8 days |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 70 MB | 68 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nicholas Lee Designs, LLC | JOEL CHRISTOPHER RAKOWSKI |
Customer experience
Aestheticam
A«iD
In-app purchases
Aestheticam
No in-app purchases
A«iD
No in-app purchases









