There are so many iPhone photo editing apps to choose from, it is hard to know which to install. However, a favorite has to be LensFlare Optical Effects, which makes images look fantastic.

Your choice of photo editing or effects app is made even harder because so many of them offer similar features. Typically you can take a photograph using the iPhone's camera or load a previously taken one, crop it, apply various filters and then save it or share it. LensFlare can do all of this, but it also has some extra features that set it apart from the crowd.

I downloaded LensFlare years ago when it went free for a short period, but even at the current US $4.99 or UK £4.99, it is not expensive for the range of features you get. (App prices are frequently up, down and sometimes free, so it pays to keep an eye on your favorites.)

LensFlare mimics the effect you sometimes get when the camera lens is pointing into the sun or just catching it in a corner, causing various types of streaks and rainbows across the lens. Sometimes it ruins the photo, but a skilful photographer can put this to good effect to produce a great photo. You can even put a filter over the lens of pro cameras to deliberately produce lens flare effects.

Trying to create lens flare deliberately is very difficult, it doesn’t always work and the results are often not what you were aiming for. The LensFlare Optical Effects app lets you fake the effect, which is cheating, but it is fun to do.

Load, crop and straighten photos

With LensFlare you can browse the photos in Moments, All Photos, Recently Added, Favorite and other albums, and select one for editing. A large thumbnail is shown and a set of controls at the bottom of the screen enable it to be cropped, rotated or mirrored horizontally or vertically. Rotating photos is done with a simple slider and a grid overlay is activated so you can straighten the horizon for example.

Add lens flare

Proceed to the next screen and there are five buttons at the bottom. The first one is used to select the lens flare effect the app is named after. There are Anamorphic, Spherical, Sunflares and Streams categories and there are up to 30 different lens flare effects in each one.

That is a lot of effects and there must be somewhere around 100 different ones to choose from. A tap adds the effect to the image and then it can be dragged into position on the photo and rotated so it is pointing in the direction you want.

The Edit button displays a set of slider controls that enable the scale, brightness and other attributes of the lens flare to be adjusted. A color wheel enables the color of the effect to be customised to better fit the photo.

There does not appear to be an undo, but this is not important because the app supports layers. You can add multiple layers and apply effects to them, so if you change your mind about an effect, the layer can be hidden or deleted.

Adjust colors and apply filters

The Filters button is used to access common photo editing tools and the brightness and saturation can be adjusted. A small set of color filters enable the photo to be tinted slightly, perhaps to fit in with the effect that is being applied. There are also vignette and gradient effects.

When you are happy with the results, the image can be saved at the original resolution. There are more options here and a photo can be saved as a PNG file or shared on social media - the usual iOS share options are available.

Conclusion

LensFlare has an excellent range of features and they are not the usual collection of filters that you so often get with iPhone apps. There are some really nice lens flare effects, adjustable colour, size and intensity, multiple layers and more. This is definitely a photo editing app you should have on your iPhone.

Remember that special effects should not be overused and if every photo has a lens flare effect it can become tiresome, but when used occasionally and with the right photo, the results can be impressive.

Title: LensFlare Optical Effects
Price: $4.99 / £4.99
By: BrainFeverMedia
Size: 75 MB
iOS: 10.0 or later