Maker of Facetune Takes on Photoshop With Enlight, a Mobile Photo Editing App

When it comes to discussing his latest app, the co-founder of Lightricks boldly proclaims Enlight to be a major leap ahead of other iPhone image editing programs.

Enlight, says Itai Tsiddon, can both do things never before possible, as well as take tasks that previously required multiple steps and make them available with a single swipe.

“It’s what Photoshop would have been had Photoshop really been mobile-native,” says Tsiddon.

While he makes some pretty big claims, Tsiddon does have some credibility. His team previously released Facetune, a top-grossing and well-regarded app focused on one particular image editing task — making faces look prettier.

Enlight, by contrast, aims to be a one-stop shop for photo editing. It is a paid app and iOS only for the time being, with an introductory price of $3.99. While it offers pixel level editing as an option, many of its effects can also be done by just using a finger or thumb to roughly select the area to be transformed.

Putting the program through its paces, Tsiddon shows how the program can be used to bring two objects closer together as well as to effortlessly clean up a photo or turn it into modern art.

Tisddon says Enlight is much easier to use than desktop programs, noting that he used to work in intelligence for the Israeli army.

“We had to use Photoshop sometimes,” Tsiddon said in an interview at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “It was the worst part of the experience.”

As for his company, Tsiddon said Lightricks is entirely bootstrapped, having taken no outside money and used the proceeds from Facetune to grow from the initial four cofounders to a team of 23. Tsiddon is based in New York, while the rest of the company is in Jerusalem.

Tsiddon showed me what Enlight could do, taking a poorly lit shot I had of Android co-founder Rich Miner and turning it into something more usable.

Here’s the original shot:

Here is one Tsiddon did with just a few swipes, boosting the contrast.

And, given a bit more time, Tsiddon’s colleagues used Enlight to also produce this one.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Explanatory journalism is a public good

At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. That's why we keep our work free. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$95/year

$120/year

$250/year

$350/year

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $120/year

Yes, I'll give $120/year

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via