Ever since Instagram made image filters all the rage, there’s been a steady stream of copycat apps. Each promises to add an artistic flourish with filters, but after everything has been posted on Facebook—it all pretty much looks like the same. Stackables is a new iOS app by Samer Azzam that aims to take image filters to the next level with layering effects and blending styles.
Stackables opens to a very visual splash screen featuring six icons without any text. Luckily, the two most important photo-editing features are prominently displayed as large tiles. The camera tile, as you might suspect, launches the iPhone’s standard camera app, letting users take a quick snap before adding filters immediately after. Meanwhile, the picture frame icon opens up the image folder to post-process older images.
After selecting the image, Stackables will turn over to a much busier interface complete with three menu bars, image effects, and Photoshop like layers. Much like other image filtering, Stackables lets mobile photographers add a variety of elements like grungy textures, light leaks, vintage, simulated bokeh and blur, abstract weather, and painted grains. And the list of styling options only goes on and on, tallying up to a mind-boggling 150 total.
The key difference to Stackables is users can apply more than just one effect. Unlike Instagram and other similarly style apps, Stackables lets you mix and blend multiple styles together much like a multi-layered Photoshop file. What’s more, users can fine-tune the opacity of each layer to change the intensity of the filters or remove them. If it’s all a little overwhelming, you can also elect to use the 23 preset formulas, some of which incorporate 13 different combined filters and settings. Users can save their own fine-tuned image-effect combos into custom formulas.
