Pixagram vs Ancient Light
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- Color filters (lomo, vintage)
- Light effects and overlays
- Frame borders
- Instafit
- Orton effect
- Add text with 30+ fonts
- Adjust image settings
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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/
Ancient Light
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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
Verdict
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
Pixagram costs $0.99 and Ancient Light $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
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.
| Parameter | Pixagram | Ancient Light |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 | $0.99 |
| Rating | 4.5 (255 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 78.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 255 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 — better | 16.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 32 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | pierre gougelet | Greg 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
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- 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)
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- More frame options
Ancient Light
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Pixagram
No in-app purchases
Ancient Light
No in-app purchases









