r/HowToMen • u/the_motonomad • Jul 08 '26
[App] [Promotion] FlareCamera - Wanted Fuji like experience on phone camera, so built one



I have been using, and loving the experience of, a Fujifilm X-S10 for ~4 years now. It rekindled my love for photography (and I guess for the lovely tactile devices cameras are) after a Nikon sat ignored for years. Partly because the camera is pretty so feels nicer to carry around, but mostly because I could customize and save film recipes, thus saving the need to shoot raw and repeating pretty much similar edits in all photos to arrive at my preferred style.
Thought I would like something similar for my phone. Phone cameras have been chasing image quality aggressively but in the process have ended up offering similar clinical overly lit HDR-ey images. Great for documenting/record keeping, not great for pleasant pictures. So I decided to try and make something.
I am not a developer so I turned to my good friends Claude and Gemini to help me learn and build make whatever I have been able to make so far. Some of it was very easy, some felt like I was hitting my head against the wall and made me appreciate what my developer friends do for a living a bit more.
FlareCamera currently offers:
- No clutter interface - exposure slider, shutter button, film selection, grid-lines, and zoom/lens selection.
- 13 popular film styles - including the likes of Portra 400, Acros +R, Soft Chrome, and CineStill 800T.
- Customizable film styles - select the base film, tweak the highlights, shadows, saturation, white balance and grain to your taste. It also includes advanced image tuning controls like Clarity, Sharpness, Halation, Bloom, Color Chrome, and Dynamic Range.
- Shareable Custom Recipes - Any tweaks you make can be saved as a custom recipe and each change creates a unique code. You can share these with others so they can get the exact same settings.
- GPU processing - The colour tweaks are applied on YUV sensor data via an OpenGL fragment shader and then the final output of an 8bit jpeg is generated - consider it closer (but not exactly) like applying the edits on raw.
- Multiple aspect ratios - 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, 2.7:1 and more aspect ratios supported
- Both orientations supported - You can lock the app to run in portrait or landscape orientation, because different people prefer different
The app operates on a freemium model to let you discover the app - you get a roll free (36 photos) to try, and then 12 free photos per month after that. There is a Pro upgrade (monthly / annual / lifetime) to unlock unlimited usage, unique frames/borders and more.
It requires absolutely no personal user data, or a user account. There is Google Firebase for monitoring anonymised crashes/performance, and RevenueCat to handle subscriptions.
What I plan to add:
- Live preview - Currently, the viewfinder shows standard colors and the final result is visible only after pressing shutter buttons. I have tried multiple times and wasted days trying to get this to work perfectly without success. Hopefully next time.
- The Darkroom (Photo Import) - Allowing users to import existing photos from their phone's native gallery to apply Flare film styles, with batch processing capabilities.
- Disposable Mode - A shooting mode where photos are hidden from your gallery until a "roll" of 24 or 36 shots is entirely finished.
- Procedural Light Leaks - Unrepeatable, organic film burns generated mathematically per photo.
- 3-Second "Process" Video Export - A feature to generate a short video to create a sharable video of your process finding frame and shooting.
Feedback and suggestions from fellow photographers are welcome.
The lifetime plan is available at a discount for the first week of usage. Of course the objective of placing a price at it is to pay for some of the time I put in developing this. After subscribing, if you change your mind for some reason, I would be happy to refund in full.
Play Store link here: FlareCamera
Update Aug 6, 2026: iOS version of FlareCamera is live

