Prisma: Photo Editor, Filters

Prisma burst onto the scene in 2016, winning App of the Year by doing one thing memorably well: running photos through neural-style-transfer filters that genuinely looked like paintings rather than Instagram presets. Eight years and 120 million users later, the core trick still works, and the library has ballooned past 500 styles. At 213 MB it is not a lightweight install, and the free tier comes with strings attached, but for pure artistic transformation speed it remains a recognizable name in a crowded editing space.

The Filter Engine Still Impresses

The neural style filters are the entire reason Prisma exists, and they hold up. Applying a style takes seconds, the results look genuinely painterly rather than filtered, and having more than 500 options means you will not exhaust the library quickly. The dedicated Portrait styles show the team has kept pace with what users actually shoot most often. Daily additions keep the catalog feeling alive rather than static.

Where the Experience Gets Bumpy

The app has not received a meaningful update since October 2023, which is a noticeable gap for a tool competing against actively developed rivals. In-app purchases gate a significant portion of the style library, so the free experience can feel like a long advertisement. At 213 MB the download commitment is real, and users who want standard editing tools beyond artistic filters will need to look elsewhere entirely.

Who Should Actually Download This

Prisma is a strong pick for casual users who want to convert a photo into something that looks deliberately artistic without touching sliders or learning layers. Social media creators looking for a quick stylistic differentiator will get value from the portrait-focused filters. Power editors or anyone needing color correction, retouching, or compositing should treat this as a one-trick companion app rather than a primary editor.