Gradient vs Spotmatic Magic
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gradient
Effortlessly create beautiful gradient wallpapers by automatically extracting colors from your favorite images. Explore color coordination inspired by art and film, and use the generated gradients for various design projects.
- Automatic color extraction from images
- Generate gradient backgrounds
- Explore color coordination
- Use for wallpapers and design templates
- Color inspiration from art and film
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Gradient is a serene, lightweight wallpaper creation tool. Simply pick a photo from your library, and Gradient instantly extracts its dominant color palette, blending them into beautiful gradient backgrounds. **Smart Color Extraction** Everyday photography holds unexpected color harmonies. Pick any picture, and Gradient pulls out the most harmonious color swatches. Select any two colors to craft your own custom gradient wallpaper. **Four Crafted Styles** • Pure: Ultra-minimal two-tone gradient, clean and timeless • Middle: Gradient background with your photo featured in the center • Half: Horizontal photo layout with smooth side gradient blend • Drop: Rich organic layered textures layered over dominant tones **Versatile Uses** Perfect for lock screen and home screen wallpapers, aesthetic backgrounds, PPT templates, and creative design palettes. **Private & Offline** 100% on-device processing. No accounts, no ads, and zero third-party tracking.
Spotmatic Magic
This app offers a comprehensive suite of computational photography tools for mobile and desktop. It allows for real-time image adjustments, creative filter application, and advanced stacking techniques like HDR and astrophotography. Supports RAW import from various cameras and export to multiple formats.
- Real-time image adjustments with live histogram
- Creative filter suite including painterly and film emulation
- Advanced stacking: Focus, HDR, Astrophotography
- Motion removal and long exposure simulation
- RAW import from major camera manufacturers
- Export to HEIF, JPEG, PNG, 16-bit TIFF
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SpotmaticMagic is a complete computational photography studio for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Three tools in one place — Adjust tone and color with a live preview, apply a creative Filter like Watercolor or a classic film stock, or Transform a whole sequence with desktop-class algorithms like Focus Stacking, HDR Fusion, and Astrophotography Stacking. Adjust in Real Time Fine-tune every image on a live canvas with an on-screen luminance histogram. Drag Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Black & White Point, Brilliance, Saturation, Vibrance, Warmth, and Tint — plus a true vignette. Every slider starts on a smart Auto value that solves the whole adjustment chain at once — in true photographic stops — correcting color casts without blowing out highlights; take manual control whenever you like, or tap Reset All to return to Auto. On RAW files, Adjust also drives the decoder’s own Sharpness and Noise Reduction. Nothing is written until you apply. A Creative Filter Suite Transform a single photo with ten hand-built looks: • Painterly — Watercolor (soft bleeds, pooled pigment, and granulation on both the Quick and Verisimilitude presets), Oil Painting (thick impasto relief), Ink Painting (sumi-e ink wash), Painterly Media (pastel, gouache, and acrylic), and Impressionist brushwork. • Graphic — Cartoon, Line Drawing (pen, pencil, and charcoal), and Photo Abstraction. • Selective Focus — color splash, background blur, and spotlight effects driven by automatic subject detection. • Film — authentic color and black-and-white film-stock emulation, including Kodak Portra, Ektar, and Kodachrome; Fujifilm Velvia, Provia, and Astia; and Ilford and Fujifilm B&W stocks like Tri-X, HP5 Plus, T-Max, Delta, and Neopan Acros — each with real grain, sharpness, and halation. Every painterly look is built on a real simulation, not a preset stack — watercolor runs an actual shallow-water fluid solver, and paper and pigment are sampled and composited in physically meaningful units. Pro Stacking & Transform Combine an image sequence with hardware-accelerated algorithms: • Focus Stacking — merge images shot at different focus distances into a single edge-to-edge sharp photo, with optional per-pixel optical-flow refinement. • HDR Fusion (Natural & Vibrant) — blend exposure brackets for the full dynamic range of a scene, in realistic or punchy styles. • Astrophotography Stacking — reduce noise and reveal deep-sky detail, with full bias, dark, flat, and dark-flat calibration support and star alignment that fits even thin-overlap frames. • Motion Removal — erase passing tourists or cars from a burst of otherwise identical frames. • Long Exposure & Motion Blur — simulate silky water and light trails without an ND filter. • Image Alignment — scale-robust feature-based alignment built for handheld and macro sequences. Any Camera, Any Format Import from your Photo Library, or choose individual files or a whole folder. SpotmaticMagic reads full-resolution RAW from every major manufacturer — Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Olympus / OM System, Panasonic, and more, plus universal DNG — decoded on Apple’s latest RAW engine. Export as HEIF, JPEG, PNG, or 16-bit TIFF in wide-gamut Display P3, at the quality and resolution you choose, with your original EXIF, GPS, and IPTC metadata preserved. Inspect Every Detail Tap any result to open a fullscreen Zoom Inspector. Pan and zoom with a navigator minimap, and press and hold to compare your edit against the original. Who It’s For For macro and landscape shooters, astrophotographers, and any creative who wants real control over how their photos look — from a quick live adjustment to a painterly filter to a precision focus stack. The perfect companion for a dedicated camera, and a powerful way to elevate the photos you already have.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Gradient at $0.99 against Spotmatic Magic's $34.99. Gradient also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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
Gradient costs $0.99 and Spotmatic Magic $34.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Gradient ships an update monthly, Spotmatic Magic every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Gradient | Spotmatic Magic |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 — better | $34.99 |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 73.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Monthly — better | Every 5 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Chengdu Yichen Technology Co., Ltd | Erich Champion |
Customer experience
Gradient
Spotmatic Magic
In-app purchases
Gradient
No in-app purchases
Spotmatic Magic
No in-app purchases









