Comparison

Pixagram vs Ancient Light

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

Head to head
About

Pixagram

Enhance your photos with a wide array of filters, effects, and frames. Add text, adjust image settings, and save your creations in high resolution. Easily share your edited images to social media platforms.

Highlights
  • Color filters (lomo, vintage)
  • Light effects and overlays
  • Frame borders
  • Instafit
  • Orton effect
  • Add text with 30+ fonts
  • Adjust image settings
Features
Read full description

Easily create stunning images with Pixagram, and share them to your favorite social network. Add unique filters, effect and frames to create a great design piece! ** Features ** • Color filters as lomo, vintage, ... • Light effects or overlays such as bokeh, leak • Frame borders like instant, grunge, viewfinder, film, ... • Instafit • Orton effect • Add film grain • Adjust contrast, brightness, saturation, exposure, saturation, vibrance, temperature • 30+ fonts to add text to your photos • Vignetting • Save on your device • Share with your friends on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Email, ... • High resolution export You like Pixagram? Please give us 5 stars! Your feedback is very important to our work. Help us to improve Pixagram by sending your bugs or requests on contact@xnview.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/xnview Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/xnview G+: http://plus.google.com/+xnview/

About

Ancient Light

Features
Read full description

Ancient Light transforms your iPhone into a camera of the nineteenth century. Twelve authentic historic photographic processes - each faithfully simulated through the physics of tone, silver chemistry, grain, paper, emulsion, and light. Not filters. Processes. -- THE TWELVE PROCESSES -- Daguerreotype (1839) - The first successful photograph. A mirror-like silver surface with luminous shadow detail and seven scanned frame choices, plus No Frame. Tintype (1853) - The photograph of the working class. Robust, immediate, metallic, with regular or square format options and optional worn plate borders. Albumen (1850s) - Warm egg-white paper prints mounted as cabinet cards, with soft sepia-brown toning, aged cream stock, rounded corners, and a ruled inner border. Sepia - The warm brown tone of silver sulphide that preserved Victorian portraits through a century and a half. Cyanotype (1842) - Sir John Herschel's iron-based process. Deep Prussian blue. The print that gave photography the word "blueprint." Anthotype (1839) - Made from crushed plant pigments. Delicate, fugitive, botanical. The most poetic photographic process ever devised. Platinum (1873) - The process of fine art portraiture. Cool, shadow-rich, with a tonal range silver could never match. Autochrome (1907) - The Lumiere brothers' starch-grain colour process. Dreamy, pointillist, the first practical colour photography. Emulsion - A damaged instant-emulsion look with faded color, warm highlights, scorched edges, amber leaks, scratches, and oxidized surface wear. Bromoil (1907) - Oil-based ink on bleached gelatin. Painterly and stippled, with inky shadows and pale milky highlights. Lippmann (1891) - Gabriel Lippmann's Nobel Prize-winning interferential process. Warm amber ageing, long-exposure softness, and glass plate scratches from a century of handling. Infrared (1930s) - Light beyond the visible spectrum. Luminous white foliage, darkened skies, ethereal skin tones. The spectral world captured on heat-sensitive emulsion. -- WHAT ANCIENT LIGHT CAN DO -- * All four optical lenses - ultrawide (0.5x), wide (1x), 2x, and telephoto (5x) - selectable from the viewfinder * Shoot once, save many - save multiple historic versions from a single capture * On iPhone Pro: saves both a filtered JPEG and the original 48MP ProRAW DNG as a paired asset * Emulsion process with faded instant-film color, warmer highlights, lighter grain, and scanned edge damage * Albumen cabinet-card output with warm paper tone, aged stock texture, rounded card corners, and ruled border * Infrared process with glowing foliage, dark skies, and spectral black-and-white tonality * Tintype options - choose regular or square format, with period borders or no borders * Seven Daguerreotype frame styles plus No Frame, selectable directly from the viewfinder * Higher-resolution Daguerreotype frame output, scaled to the photo instead of the source frame artwork * Adjustments apply to the photograph while preserving Daguerreotype frame artwork * Full adjustment suite - exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, black point, saturation, vibrance, warmth, sharpness, and vignette * Auto enhancement with one tap * Precision crop tool with inset handles and rule-of-thirds grid * Landscape side-panel layout keeps the image large while all controls stay accessible * Photographer credit field - your name travels with every saved file in the IPTC metadata * Process, frame, and Tintype options stored between sessions * iPhone and iPad, all orientations * No subscription. No ads. No account required. Ancient Light is a single purchase. Everything in it is yours.

Screenshots

Pixagram2 screens
Ancient Light4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Ancient Light at every 5 days against Pixagram's every 3 months. Pixagram's advantage is iOS requirement (10.0 vs 16.0). On price, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Pixagram costs $0.99 and Ancient Light $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pixagram ships an update every 3 months, Ancient Light every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 17, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Pixagram versus Ancient Light: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPixagramAncient Light
Price$0.99$0.99
Rating4.5 (255 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews78.6% of reviews—
Number of ratings255 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS10.0 — better16.0
Further details — not scored
Size32 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developerpierre gougeletGreg Anderson

Bugs and requests

Pixagram

Reported bugs

7 issues
  • App freezes during editing
  • Cannot save edited pictures
  • Text disappears from saved image
  • App crashes after update
  • Cannot access keyboard for typing
Show 2 more
  • App displays photo upside down on iPad
  • App not fitting iPhone X format

Requested features

6 requests
  • Landscape mode for iPad
  • More text options (multiple texts)
  • Utilize full screen on new iPhones
  • Smaller letter fonts
  • Gamma adjustment (shadows)
Show 1 more
  • More frame options

Ancient Light

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Pixagram

No in-app purchases

None

Ancient Light

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Pixagram free?
Pixagram costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Ancient Light free?
Ancient Light costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Pixagram or Ancient Light have ads?
Neither Pixagram nor Ancient Light shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pixagram or Ancient Light?
Pixagram ships an update every 3 months, and Ancient Light every 5 days. Most recently, Pixagram was updated on October 18, 2026 and Ancient Light on October 17, 2026.

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