Pointillist vs Obscure
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Pointillist
Transform your photos into pointillist art in seconds. Select an image from your device or camera, and the app will render it into a unique dot-patterned masterpiece. Adjust and share your creations easily.
- Photo to pointillism conversion
- Select photos from album or camera
- Zoom in/out to view artwork
- Adjust painting to taste
- Save, mail, print, and share creations
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As you may know, pointillism is a form of painting developed in the late 19th century branching from Impressionism, in which small dots are applied in patterns to form a picture. And a pointillist, who paints with pointillism, usually needs to spend months to paint the hundreds of thousands of tiny dots. But now with the Pointillist, you can "paint" your photo into a work of pointillism art just in seconds. With it, you can select a photo from the album or the camera, and the Pointillist will render the photo into pointillism for you. Zoom in/out to view your artwork and adjust the painting according to your flavor. When finished, you can save, mail, print, or share your masterpiece on Facebook and Twitter. Make your iPhone/iPad a pointillism art master!
Obscure
Easily redact sensitive information from your photos before sharing. This app uses AI to automatically detect and obscure faces, text, and personal details, or allows for manual editing. Protect your privacy by blurring or blocking out private portions of images for safe social media sharing.
- Automatic face, text, and info detection
- Manual redaction editor
- One-touch email and phone number hiding
- Batch editing for multiple images
- Shortcuts integration for automation
- Blur, pixelate, or block sensitive areas
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Safely and securely share your photos! Obscure lets you quickly blur, pixellate or block out private portions of your images so that they are safe to share on any social platform. - Automatically detect & obscure faces, text, & personal info with advanced on-device AI - Redact all text from an image - Manually obfuscate any part of a picture with the easy to use editor - Find & hide email addresses and phone numbers with one touch - Edit multiple images in batches using the batch editor - Shortcuts action allows for easy redaction automation Just import an image, tap and drag over sensitive parts of the image then tap share. Use two fingers to pan and zoom to redact fine details. Works great for sharing screenshots! Obfuscate faces, license plates, and brand labels. Easily redact private parts of document images that you want to share. Redacted images can then be shared to any other app on your phone, or just save them back to your photo library. Obscure also works with Shortcuts, allowing you to easily setup an automated image processing pipeline. Long press the app icon to get quick shortcuts to your last taken image, the camera, or to paste an image you copied. Obscure is a one time purchase, no ads and no subscriptions! Privacy Policy: https://obscure.app/privacy Terms: https://obscure.app/terms
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Obscure at 4.8 against Pointillist's 3.2. Obscure also leads on update cadence (every 2 months vs every 7 months) and review sentiment (80% vs 63%). Pointillist's advantage is price ($0.99 vs $2.99) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 17.0). On ratings volume, ads, 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
Pointillist costs $0.99 and Obscure $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Obscure holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 3.2. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 13 and 30 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 63% of Pointillist's written reviews are positive against 80% of Obscure's.
Pointillist ships an update every 7 months, Obscure every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 12, 2026 and August 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Pointillist | Obscure |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | 3.2 (13 ratings) | 4.8 (30 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 62.8% of reviews | 80.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 13 | 30 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 7 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 志明 丁 | Swift Fox Software LLC |
Customer experience
Pointillist
Obscure
In-app purchases
Pointillist
No in-app purchases
Obscure
No in-app purchases
