With so many apps both in my account and yet to be tried, it's difficult to choose which one to review next.

So I decided to scroll backwards from my most recent purchases until I found a suitable candidate.

The one that appeared is Glitch Face Pro listed on the App Store by James Grote. Now’s the time for me to point out that this review is done entirely independently with no warning to the developer so the app was not gifted to me. Version 2.2 was reviewed.

Tapping on the link to the developer reveals a treasure trove of other art and photography apps as well as a few games. You may know the BrainFeverMedia ones such as LensLight which we may get to in future.

Glitch Face Pro appears to be the older sibling of Glitch Face AI Filters which James has carefully named to get the attention of the youngsters searching for AI art apps. Glitch Face AI Filters can be converted into the Pro version of the app via means of an In-App purchase (IAP) but I have found those can be problematic from time to time — not with Mr Grote’s apps per se, but just restoring them when moving to a new device. If you are in a certain situation where the company fails and their app is removed from the app store but it still appears in your purchases, you can still use the pro version if you bought it as a standalone app. I have seen it where the IAPs won’t restore but I don’t know why yet.*

Opening gambit

Upon first opening Glitch Face Pro you're presented with a mostly black screen. You can import from your camera roll after granting permission. Some of the filters appear to be created for eye detection, but it didn't complain when I imported my logo in.

The choices are presented as instant thumbnails in a row along the bottom, which are divided into five categories that act like bookmarks for the whole batch of effects. We have Glitch, Distort, Mask, Color and Grid. The group name highlights when you are in it, but the whole thing is slightly hard to read if your imported image is bright. However the main effected preview is fully scrollable and pinch-to-zoom supported, so you can move your image's dark parts if you need to read a word. Now I'm getting too nitpicky about the UI. Except one last thing, the way of representing the chosen effect is with the app’s icon of a smiley face with ×s for eyes, which for a moment made me think that effect was not working or locked out by another IAP.

Main screen to choose and modify thy glitches. As you can see, my initial image made it hard to see the icons on the right, because they’re white on a white background.

Modifying effects

When you choose a main effect from the bottom row, there is a single slider and eight buttons for different attributes that can be modified. The default is Intensity, then you have RGB split, Negative, Hue, Edge Blur, Glare, Scanlines and Grain. Tapping each button makes the slider change that value only, so you can only change one attribute at a time, unlike some of James’ other apps and a lot of music apps. This makes the UI look cleaner and more discoverable, but you have to switch back and forth if you are a tweaker.

The slider updates in real time and also briefly shows you a value which is a nice touch. We often see this in music apps because some musicians get pedantic about that sort of thing. More about that later. Like many music apps, double tapping resets the slider to 0.

Grid effect – the 3D spice

The fifth section of the main bank of effects is called Grid. Tapping on these surprises you by taking you into a new section of the app.

Here you are offered more choices: Depth, Scale, Bright, Invert, Color and Mask, and above them six unnamed grid rendering types, the last of which isn't a grid at all but seamless polygons, great for getting a 3D extrusion. This replaces the lost app Insanograph and there is a similar feature found in KinoGlitch Pro.

Enter the Grid Editor to play in the world of 3D

Once again, you can only adjust one slider at a time. But I did notice you can drag the 3D extruded image around while you change one of the sliders.

It isn't clear to me how Bright affects the brightness, but I did notice it changing the colors. Similarly Mask possibly only works as intended on an image with a person in it rather than my flat logo, based on the icon of the button. The Color button toggles from black and white to color.

Ticking the tickbox at the top right makes this your new main image which you can then go on and apply further effects to. But there is no undo. Make sure you save versions of your work as you go.

“It has some nice ragged edge distortions for that look of faux file corruption.”

Now during this review I now realise the Grid Editor section is usually entitled Mask Editor, and even though it's right there at the top of the screen I hadn't noticed it.

The Mask Editor is intended to give you control over how much of the effect is applied, for those not familiar with masking you can bring back your original image’s pixels by brushing out chosen areas.

This section seems to have the UI borrowed from some of the other BrainFever apps. But although I don't recall having any issues in them, I had some trouble here. I couldn’t paint a mask on the right side of the image. The brush had no effect. When I started on the left side and dragged, the brush would get to the right side and just end its function. So there might be a bug there.

You can’t import any other image to use as a mask or brush. I know, it’s not intended to be Photoshop, I’m just listing the features. I found the Brush to be slow and hard to use on my ageing iPad, it didn’t update in real time and sure, I might be told to get a newer iPad but it surprises me when compared to the smoothness of the 3D section of the Grid Editor. And I have other art apps with masks and or brushes that do not behave this way. This section has an Undo function.

Workflow

A 500px version of what I exported. Garish colors aplenty!

There is no way to save your combination of attributes to a preset, and therefore no way to share it with others. If you want the same effect on several images, take note of the values and the order you applied any effects.

Exporting

When you visit the Settings, you are given the choice of PNG or JPG. I exported a JPG and was given a 3000 x 2979 image and a 2224 x 1076 both of which are quite usable.

Possible directions

James has the bones here for a more deeply featured effects app by adding undo, or an advanced mode where you can see multiple sliders onscreen at once. Saving at least some of the values as presets and being able to favorite and share those presets would help improve consistency in a glitching a batch of images.

To go further than that, I can envision being able to put a basic LFO on each slider so it pulses. James could check out the music app apeMatrix for an idea on how to implement this, as it adds a slider for LFO speed and two endpoints for it to bounce between. Then export the whole wobbling thing as a loopable animation, either as mov or a short GIF. I’d like that for the grid section too, but that would take some rethinking about the UI. Basically if I can drag a slider in real time with my finger I want to be able to automate that and multiple sliders, and turn it all into a video without having to do a screen recording.

Final Thoughts

Unheard of color palette for the Uncaught Exception logo

Although aimed at creatives who want to glitchify faces, this does offer a range of effects that can definitely be used as inspiration points even if you need to add some different spices with other apps.

I would like to have the ability to do simple animation by having the slider value bounce between two values. Or at least to be able to turn off the live preview of the slider value. Then I could use screen recording even if a video export function is not added.

Overall this is a fun app for glitching your photos or images with a decent output size. To go to A3 size prints you may need to upscale the file. It has some nice ragged edge distortions for that look of faux file corruption and can give you serendipitous discovery of new hue combinations. Plus it's from a solid developer who has been around for many years, and one that has chosen to avoid the subscription model for this app. I recommend it.

*

I used to think IAPs were just certificate encoded files held in your account in the app store, but it appears that there is at least some part of the mechanism that the developers’ accounts are still active, or perhaps their websites? I’ve never developed an app but if you have and know the answer to this, please let me know.

Glitch Face Pro — glitch anything