Litely Review

I recently took a trip to Greece and the surrounding islands, and I knew that my phone would be full of hundreds of vacation photos. I was looking at photo editing apps to spice up some of the more impressive pics and there certainly are a bevy of options on the App Store - including Apple's own filters in the Photo app. Out of all of these I chose to try Litely, and really test what it could do with photos that are more than the typical selfies or pet shots.

The first thing I noticed about Litely was the sleek, modern styling that really made it a joy to use. Immediately upon opening it there is a grid with all the photos that had been imported in their edited state, and with a single tap a photo is immediately enlarged and the editing can begin. The biggest flaw with the app is apparent immediately: while the app itself is free, it only comes with nine filters and they are merely three subtle variations of three different ones. This lack of options really hurts, but there are three more options available for $1.99 as in-app purchases.

Along with simply applying filters, Litely makes it easy to adjust the exposure, sharpness, vibrance, and vignette with the simple slide of the finger. It also does a good job managing landscape photos. Because the app never deviates from portrait mode landscape pics are enlarged to vertically fill the screen and they can easily be browsed by tiling the phone from side to side. This is a pretty neat concept that allowed me to pay attention to details even in thin panoramic shots. As is typical, photos can be easily shared over social media or saved to the PhotoStream directly within the app.

Unfortunately, even as glamorous as Litely looks from the outside, I have to say I was slightly underwhelmed and after a few photos there simply weren't enough tricks to really keep me coming back. Save for the occasional touch-up that Apple's photo app can't manage.