PREQUEL

The effects library is the reason most people install the app. Prequel lists 800+ effects across the paid catalog, with 300+ available in the free tier, covering D3D, AR objects, captions and film styles named after the eras they imitate. Filters come grouped by mood, so you can jump from vintage to retro to Y2K without hunting through a flat list. It works as a retro camera app and a film filter app on the same screen. Each one renders on device in a second or two.

The AI photo editor side turns selfies into something else entirely. Point the camera at a face and you get comic book panels, painted portraits and stylized avatars built for profile pictures. It's the feature that made the app spread on social platforms, and the output is good enough to post without a second app. Portraits with strong side lighting come out cleaner than flat indoor shots.

Retouching stays manual, which is the right call. You choose how much smoothing goes on the skin, how white the teeth get, and whether the jaw line moves at all. Nothing is applied automatically, so a face still looks like a face when you're done. Most selfie editor apps guess at all three, and the guessing shows. Anyone who has watched an auto beauty filter erase a freckle will appreciate the control.

Under the preset layer sits a normal set of sliders: contrast, brightness, saturation, warmth, sharpening and grain. They're enough to rescue an underexposed shot or pull a preset back when it goes too far. It won't replace a raw workflow on a mirrorless camera, and it isn't trying to.

Video templates are the part that saves the most time. Each one bundles an intro, an outro, transitions, text placement and a music slot, so a clip becomes a finished vertical video in a couple of taps. You still pick the footage and the track. For anyone posting short form video weekly, that's the difference between editing and not editing.

Captions run on 30+ custom fonts, and the sticker set includes animated and emoji overlays that move with the clip. Music is picked from a built-in library and attached to the timeline, which keeps the licensing question inside the app instead of sending you to a stock site. It's a small thing until you've spent twenty minutes hunting for a track that fits.