Review: GLITCHE – a modern photo app that delightfully destroys photos

Glitché (Free $0.99, with in-app purchase) is a modern lo-fi photo app which degrades and destroys your photographs in strange and wonderful ways. It’s an app with very little control over the effects but a lot of happy accidents.

There is a lot of vivid color, movement, and pixels in the effects that Glitché creates. Effects move, bend, and pulsate with the shake of an iPhone or the swipe of the finger.

There are 26 different interactive filters, all of which look like they belong in a modern art museum. They range from basic destruction such as pixelization, video glitches, transmission errors, to warps and grid-based deconstruction. The user interface is clean and easy to navigate, although some eyes may find the text a little small.

The app encourages experimentation as there is little control of the filters. Several of the effects, such as Glitch and VHS, are as easy to use as selecting the filter, letting the app destroy the image, and hitting done — hopefully capturing that look that you liked.

Other filters such as Chnnls, Burn, and Fill are accomplished by swiping and painting over the screen to reveal.

Many of the effects are dynamic and constantly in motion. Glitché has a very cool feature where it can output short video clips of your processed photos, which can either be shared or converted to animated GIFs in a separate app. Many of the effects can save as both.

TIP: To output one frame of a dynamic effect such as Glitch, VHS, or Pixlgrid, just tap the Motion tab and turn off all but one frame.

The app is easy to experiment with, but has a fairly difficult learning curve if you want to try and precisely control the look of the effect. Don’t. I think the best way to use Glitché is to let the app do the work. Just be quick to capture the onscreen magic when it happens.

The results are lo-fi effects for the digital age. This is not an analog film filter app. This is a great, let’s re-create the errors and glitches that scare the hell out of digital artists app. As a designer, I hate JPG glitches. As an iPhoneographer, I just dropped three bucks on an app that creates them. Go figure….

Glitché Photo Gallery

Glitché has a $2.99 in-app purchase which unlocks high-resolution output of 2400×2400 pixels on an iPhone 6s. Not full resolution but definitely quite usable for enlargements. The free version saves at 838×838 pixels. Videos are saved at 640×640 px in both versions. If you like what the app does, then I definitely recommend the three dollar upgrade.

I do have a few issues with the app. I first wrote this review thinking the base app was a free download (I grabbed it for free a few days ago), and it is currently $0.99 for the base version. While it’s only a dollar, I hate to recommend any app that charges anything for a low-resolution version. It’s not about the money — it’s the principle of charging for a try-before-you-buy version. I gladly spent an additional $3 to unlock high-res output once I’d first had a chance to see if the app was one that I’d like. I still like the app, but this takes my Price/Value rating down a bit.

Sometimes the filters are frustrating. Many times Glitché didn’t really lock and capture the exact frame I thought I’d just selected. It was often fairly frustrating to capture the exact frame of some of the dynamic effects, such as Glitch and VHS. The slightest movement of my iPhone could change the look and intensity of the effect and I was pretty fast hitting the Done button.

Also, Glitché hasn’t been updated in over a year, although its developers are still active on social media. However, the app still works great in iOS 9.1 on an iPhone 6.

There are hundreds of iPhone apps available which re-create the look and texture of the analog film experience, but there are very few photo apps available which take a more modern approach and create the flaws and artifacts of digital media.

Glitché lets you take the digital mistakes, flaws, failures, and errors that we’ve grown up with and lets you apply these effects quickly and easily on your iPhone. Glitché may not be for eveyone, but it’s definitely one of the App Store’s more unique photo apps.

Glitché is a fun app to actively explore and experiment by adding amazing and unique modern effects to your photos.

UPDATE: Review and rating updated to reflect actual price of $0.99 for the base app.

Download Glitché

App Store link: Glitché – Glitché, LLC

Big thanks to iPhone artist Ginger Lucero who pointed me to this app with one of her recent works.