There are roughly 1.7 zillion photography apps out there. All of them offer a slew of options to improve your snapshots before you share them, but after testing a whole bunch, we've pinpointed one that'll work great for most smartphone owners.
It's called Afterlight.
Maybe you've heard of it. The app launched in 2012, so it's kind of a dinosaur. Still, it stands out for a few reasons: It's very straightforward, it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you and it lets you make everything from minor aesthetic tweaks to major image overhauls with a few simple taps.
True, the same could be said of many photography apps, but we've yet to find another that balances complexity and usability so perfectly. A confused smartphone newbie could get something out of Afterlight, and so could a photo obsessive.
The app offers a mountain of options, all of which you can take or leave. They operate on a simple "slider" system just like Instagram's. You can mess with the brightness of a photograph on a scale of -100 to 100, for example. Afterlight also packs a ton of filters that go well beyond what you'll see on Instagram -- you can edit their intensity, too.
There are also some gimmicky -- but pretty cool -- film effects that can make your shots look like they were taken on a traditional analog camera. Add fake wear to the image or light leaks: Why not? That photo above was originally a pretty unremarkable shot of my fiancée's backyard in Atlanta -- I put a bunch of light-junk over it in Afterlight, and now it looks like Endor or something. See if you can spot the Ewoks.
You can use Afterlight for minor tweaks, too. Most importantly, the app is just fun to use -- be careful not to get sucked into editing every shot you take. Unlike other apps, it doesn't make a constant effort to sell you something or connect to social networks you're not interested in.
Afterlight is available on Android, iOS and Windows Phone. All of the links are here.