3 app alternatives to Instagram

By Michelle Maltais

April 10, 2012 12 AM PT

Is Facebook’s buying Instagram the cue for you to exit stage left? Fret not. Your newly attuned eye and filtering skills need not be squandered. There are several alternatives to Instagram if you’ve got to shoot and share.

Here are three for the road.

Pixlr-o-matic – This app is available on iOS and Android. It is a Facebook app, a download for your PC or Mac and also a Web-based offering, so you can tweak photos from your files or straight from your webcam. It offers a broad array of filters and effects. If you use Photobucket, Pixlr tools are now available there too. The app boasts that more than 1.5 million new images are edited every day.

Via.me – Hey, iPhone users, you want that exclusive world of filtered photos back to relive the glory days of Instagram? This free app’s for you. (So far, no Androids on the horizon.) And it really, really wants Instagram refugees. Written on its blog: “For all our new users fleeing Instagram (aka FaceTagram, InstaBook), we are happy to share news that we are indeed working on helping you port over all your photos. We should have something ready in the next day or so.” What makes this very new app a bit different is that it’s not just photos you can share. Users can also upload videos, audio notes and text online from www.via.me and publish to their social profiles.

Snapseed – This one’s not free and is available on iOS ($4.99) and Mac OSX ($19.99). It does promise an Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) version is “coming soon.” This app goes beyond vintage filters -- and for $5, it should. It’s got autocorrecting, cropping, enhancements, focus tilting and shifting, frames and selective adjustments for tuning in specific areas of the photo. You can share your masterpiece with the world through Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Of course there are numerous other apps that can fill the void. What’s your favorite Instagram substitute?

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