Digicam filter for iPhone photos

The digicam look is what a small point-and-shoot camera from the early 2000s made: slightly cool shadows with a green cast, cream highlights, colour pushed up, a hard on-camera flash and the date printed in orange in the corner. Open Cameras, tap Digicam, and all of it lands at once: the Digicam colour grade, Flash aimed at the face, and the date stamp.

Every part stays adjustable afterwards. The colour grade has its own Intensity, Flash is a slider under Effects, and the date stamp is a switch under Frames, so the look can be turned down to a hint or taken further than the camera ever went.

Flash finds the face in the photo and lights it: the subject gets brighter, a touch whiter, and the background falls away into shadow, which is what an on-camera flash does. The highlights roll off rather than burning to white, so a forehead keeps its detail even with the slider up.

The flash never changes the face itself. Nothing is generated and no feature moves; it is light on the photo you took, worked out on the phone.

The Digicam grade carries its own film grain, sized to the photo so it looks the same on the screen and in the saved file. Film FX adds the rest of the analogue texture: four warm light leaks (Ember, Sunset, Rose and Flare) and Dust & scratches, which lays specks and faint hairline scratches over the photo the way a scanned negative collects them.

The date stamp is drawn as seven-segment LED digits in orange with a soft glow. It prints the date the photo was taken, read from the photo on your phone, or today's date if the photo does not have one.

Cameras holds ten complete looks. Digicam and 35mm are compact cameras with the date on; Disposable adds a light leak and dust; Instant puts the photo in an instant-print frame; Night Cine is tungsten cinema film with a red glow round the lights; Street is grainy black and white on a negative strip; Chrome is muted slide film; Party is flash with the background dragged sideways; Glitch is digital damage; Dreamy is a soft glow with a rose leak.

Shuffle picks one at random, never the one already on, which is the quickest way to find a look you would not have chosen. Cameras change only the look. Skin, teeth, eyes and your own lighting stay exactly as you set them.

Frames puts a border round the finished photo: White, a gallery mat; Instant, with the deep bottom edge of an instant print; and Film, a black negative strip with sprocket holes along the long side. The frame goes round the photo rather than over it, so nothing is cropped and the saved photo is simply bigger.

Every setting on this page lives in a Preset with the rest of the edit. Save a look once and apply it to the next photo with one tap, or turn the Preset's strength dial down to use it lightly. Everything on this page runs on your phone, with no connection and no upload.