Comparison

Acetate vs KaKa Camera

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

Head to head
About

Acetate

Features
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The Digital Darkroom for Purists. Acetate bridges pure RAW capture and the soul of analog film β€” 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 β€” 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 β€” 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 β€” 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 β€” 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 β€” 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 β€” 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 β€” 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

KaKa Camera

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KaKa Camera turns taking a photo into a small ritual. Pull the viewfinder down from the top of the screen and press the shutter. Your photo does not appear at once. It arrives sealed in a pack at the bottom of the screen. Swipe upward to tear it open and reveal the film look at the final moment. A true-to-life viewfinder The preview stays clear and unfiltered while you compose. Your selected film look appears only after the shot is unwrapped, bringing back a sense of anticipation. Eight film-inspired looks Choose from warm portraits, vivid landscapes, gentle everyday colors, cinematic tones, and distinctive black-and-white stylesβ€”or keep the original image. A tactile unwrapping experience A deliberate tear gesture with natural resistance, subtle haptic feedback, and gentle parallax that responds to the tilt of your iPhone make each photo feel more tangible. An on-device photo library Browse and manage photos inside the app, change their film look, and save, share, or delete one or many at a time. When saving to Photos, choose a framed white border or a borderless export. Privacy first No account, no ads, no third-party analytics, and no photo uploads. Capture, film processing, and storage all happen on your device. Important: Photos stored only inside KaKa Camera are removed when the app is uninstalled. Save anything you want to keep to the system Photos library.

Screenshots

Acetate4 screens
KaKa Camera4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Acetate at Free against KaKa Camera's $1.99. Acetate also leads on iOS requirement (17.2 vs 26.0). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Β· Rating Β· Positive reviews Β· Number of ratings Β· Update frequency Β· Ads Β· In-app purchases Β· Monetization Β· Best chart rank Β· Devices Β· Requires iOS

CostPrice Β· In-app purchases Β· Ads Β· Monetization

Acetate is free to download; KaKa Camera costs $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard2 real differences Β· 4 level
Acetate versus KaKa Camera: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAcetateKaKa Camera
PriceFree β€” better$1.99
Update frequencyEvery 6 daysβ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS17.2 β€” better26.0
Further details β€” not scored
Size246 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperBMB ENTERPRISES LTDεΎ·ι‘« 徐

In-app purchases

None

Acetate

No in-app purchases

None

KaKa Camera

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Acetate free?
Acetate is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is KaKa Camera free?
KaKa Camera costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Acetate or KaKa Camera have ads?
Neither Acetate nor KaKa Camera shows ads.

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