Comparison

Acetate vs Mellow Film

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

Head to head
About

Acetate

Features
Read full description

The Digital Darkroom for Purists. Acetate bridges pure RAW capture and the soul of analog film — now for stills and motion. Built for image-makers who understand that a frame is made, not taken. Every adjustment runs on-device: no cloud, no account, no tracking. PURE RAW CAPTURE Shoot Apple ProRAW (DNG) on every supported iPhone. Acetate bypasses standard processing and writes the sensor's uncompressed data straight to your library, preserving every stop of dynamic range for post. PRO SHOOTING MODES Full manual or assisted: Auto, Program (P), Shutter Priority (S), ISO Priority, Manual (M), Night, and Long Exposure to 30 seconds. Swap ultra-wide, wide, and telephoto with a tap, or flip to the front camera. Self-timer and burst on the hardware shutter. MOTION — SHOOT CINE Video with the same discipline as stills. Full manual ISO, shutter, white balance, and focus. Up to 4K, high frame rates on supported devices, 10-bit Apple Log, ProRes 422, or HEVC. Cinematic stabilisation, Cine mode with shutter-angle control, broadcast timecode, and multi-source audio with a live meter. Bake a LUT into the file, or keep it monitor-only and grade later. THE VIDEO EDITOR Open any clip — from your library or shared straight into Acetate. Trim with frame-accurate handles, scrub and step a frame at a time, apply any look or your own .cube LUT, push exposure and tone, hold to compare, and export at source quality. The same colour pipeline as the photo editor, frame by frame. FILM LOOKS Twenty 3D LUTs in two families: research-informed film-stock emulations (Soft 400, Warm 200, Slide 100, Mono, Noir…) and art-directed looks (Teal & Orange, Bleach Bypass, '90s Cinema, Golden Hour…). Press and hold to preview live. OPEN LUT Tap any filter and the editor sliders move to reflect the look — see exactly what each LUT is doing and tweak from there. A tick mark shows the filter's value; reset snaps back, long-press clears to zero. Works for built-in films, looks, and imported .cube LUTs. BAKE YOUR OWN LUTs Save any edit as a portable .cube LUT and apply it to photos and videos with one tap — or load it in the camera and shoot your own signature look. Import from Files, iCloud, or AirDrop, in the camera or the editor. Export to Lightroom, Premiere, or DaVinci. THE EDITOR Full-strength tools: three-way colour grading wheels with per-range luma, OkLab perceptual HSL, RGB curves, split toning, filmic highlight rolloff, dehaze, texture, edge-aware denoise, and selective masks — radial, linear-gradient, and one-tap Subject / Person / Background / Sky via Apple's Vision framework. ON-DEVICE INTELLIGENCE Smart tools that run on your iPhone — and explain themselves. Smart LUT writes a per-scene recipe, then drops it onto editable sliders so you see and adjust every move. Plus auto-enhance, auto-straighten, and one-tap Object Removal (A15 / M1 or newer). PRO TOOLS Live RGB and luminance histograms, a luma waveform, zebras, false-colour exposure, focus peaking, a manual-focus loupe, framing guides, and a haptic level indicator. Continuous Kelvin/tint white balance with lock, plus AE lock — in photo and video, no drift mid-shot. PRIVACY FOCUSED Your photos and videos are yours. No account, no cloud, no analytics. Location is used strictly for EXIF geotagging on what you capture, and never leaves your device. Capture, edit, AI, and export all work offline. Don't just filter. Develop.

About

Mellow Film

This app offers a collection of vintage film effects and tools to enhance your photos. Create custom looks with detailed adjustments, add classic date stamps, and experience analog camera controls. Analyze your editing style with an intelligent gallery.

Highlights
  • Exceptional film stock LUTs
  • Custom film preset creation
  • Classic date stamp overlay
  • Intuitive analog camera controls
  • Intelligent gallery with metadata
  • Precision manual editing tools
Features
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Make life look like film. Mellow Film brings cinematic color and film texture to everyday photos and videos. Choose a look, make it yours, and keep the moments that matter. 16 ORIGINAL LOOKS Explore Film, DigiCam, Cinema and Mono. Preview each look on your camera image and find your favorite mood. YOUR COLOR. YOUR WAY. Fine-tune brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, tint, grain, fade and vignette. Save your adjustments as film presets to return to your favorite look. FILM COLOR IN MOTION Record videos with your selected look and color adjustments. Grain and vignette carry through to saved videos. Switch between photo and video while keeping your shooting settings. FROM A PHOTO TO A KEEPSAKE Edit photos in your gallery and finish them with print, instant-photo or stamp frames. Adjust the paper color, margins and postmark details to suit the moment. A VINTAGE FINISH Add an orange date stamp to your photos and adjust its size and position. Use the zoom dial, exposure controls and shutter feedback as you shoot. KEEP YOUR MOMENTS CLOSE Browse photos and videos together. Zoom into photos, revisit your filter settings, and play, seek or share videos from the gallery. See photos made with Mellow Film on Instagram @mellowfilmcamera.

Screenshots

Acetate4 screens
Mellow Film4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Mellow Film at 15.0 against Acetate's 17.2. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Acetate ships an update every 6 days, Mellow Film every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Acetate versus Mellow Film: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAcetateMellow Film
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequencyEvery 6 daysEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.215.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size246 MB82 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperBMB ENTERPRISES LTDJONGHYUN KIM

In-app purchases

None

Acetate

No in-app purchases

None

Mellow Film

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Acetate free?
Acetate is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Mellow Film free?
Mellow Film is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Acetate or Mellow Film have ads?
Neither Acetate nor Mellow Film shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Acetate or Mellow Film?
Acetate ships an update every 6 days, and Mellow Film every 5 days. Most recently, Acetate was updated on November 5, 2026 and Mellow Film on October 31, 2026.

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