Instagram is a hit on mobile platforms, and for good reason. There’s no better way to make your selfie pop5 Things To Avoid When Taking Selfies5 Things To Avoid When Taking SelfiesSelfies shouldn’t be taken lightly, and there are many things you need to avoid.Read More than a little artistic touch, even if that touch comes from a standardized filter. The only problem with Instagram is the fact its app only works on Android and iOS. What if you want to filter your photos later, on your PC, and upload them directly to Facebook or some other network? You have a few options.
Photoscape X is a popular photo editing apps on windows and the alternative for the iPhoto in Mac. Features: It can organize, edit, view and print images. If you've been using a Mac, you might be intrigued by Windows 10, now that it's in a matured state. While Windows and OS X (soon to be macOS) are similar in concept, in practice using them can be. We tested 10 Mac photo editing programs for over 50 hours by comparing editing capabilities. We imported the same group of photos to each software and applied the same edits. Each program's ease of use was an important factor in our recommendations, as we the best programs should be powerful yet easy to learn.
Vintager
Exeone’s Vintager is a purpose-built tool for adding filters to photos on your desktop. It exists for no other reason and is entirely free to download and use. The developer’s other (paid) apps are unrelated to this one; it seems a side project.
Even so, the app does what you’d expect, and does it very well. A solid selection of filters are included alongside basic crop, rotate, resize and contrast adjustments. You can also choose from seven different “frames” (i.e. borders), as well as an optional depth of field effect.
You can edit images in a series, one by one, using the “previous” and “next” navigation buttons. There’s no batch editing7 Free Apps to Batch Edit, Resize, & Rename Images7 Free Apps to Batch Edit, Resize, & Rename ImagesSome of the most common edits your images will have to go through are simple things such as resize, rename, format conversion, basic color fixes, etc. While you can’t be expected to sit through an...Read More option here, but this is the next best thing. Vintager is a solid choice if you want a simple, free, no-nonsense filter app.
Camerabag 2
Though it performs a similar task, Camerabag 2 is otherwise the direct opposite of Vintager. The latter is simple, but also fairly limited. Camerabag 2 is more complex, but offers a huge volume of options.
Most of these options come from the ridiculous variety of filters available here. You’re spoiled for choice, and at least some of the filters are arranged in a unique way; by year. In other words, you can select a filter based on the vintage you’d like to apply to your photo, with preset choices ranging from 1937 to 1985. But don’t worry; you can add all the usual named filters you’d normally expect, and a lot more besides.
The filters are joined by a wide range of more precise adjustments. You can crop, change color temperature, alter exposure, move the RGB curve and far, far more. We’re talking Photoshop-level detail adjustment. Oh, and borders? You’ll find plenty of those, too.
What’s the catch? You have to pay $20 after a free 15 day trial. Also, the program crashed at launch when I first downloaded it. Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2013 is required, but oddly was not installed alongside the software.
Pixlr-O-Matic
Pixlr is known for its online photo editor, Pixlr Editor, which is basically a stripped-down Photoshop that’s available for free through your web browser. The organization also provides Pixlr-o-matic, however, which is very basic filter app for the PC.
![Program For Windows Similar To Mac Photos Program For Windows Similar To Mac Photos](https://static.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/adobe-free-alternatives-inkscape.jpg)
There’s not a ton to say about this app. The selection of filters is excellent (better than Vintager, in fact), and joined by some very basic editing tools, like aspect ratio adjustment. Other basic tools are missing, though; there’s no crop, no exposure adjustment, no color balance.
But hey, it’s free and it’s online, so you can use it at any moment on any computer with an Internet connection. You can also use if offline, if you’d like, by downloading the app’s tiny executable.
BatchPhoto
Most people, most of the time, only need to add a single filter to a single photo at a time. But what if you’re the exception and you want to add a ton of filters at once? Then you need BatchPhoto from Bits & Coffee.
This tool isn’t built for adding filters specifically, but filters are a significant part of its feature set. There are about 36 filters in total, and they’re joined by image color adjustments and the ability to add watermarks. You build a job by deciding what filters you want to use and then apply them to all the photos in the batch in one go. With all of this said, not all the filters are great for providing a vintage look, and you may need to get creative to produce the results desired.
While it doesn’t match the fine detail as CameraBag 2, BatchPhoto does offer more options and detailed adjustments than Vintager. The big downside, once again, is price; this software will set you back $29.95, but a free trial version is available. Check out our full BatchPhoto reviewEasily Edit Multiple Photos At Once With BatchPhoto for Windows and Mac [Giveaway]Easily Edit Multiple Photos At Once With BatchPhoto for Windows and Mac [Giveaway]Have you ever taken a lot of photos and needed to edit them all at once? Whether they need to be resized, rotated, or combined into a photo album, editing the photos one-by-one can be...Read More to learn more.
Fotor
Another solid choice for batch editing, Fotor is a multiple-purpose app for the PC that offers Photoshop-style image editing, collaging and batch editing with filters and other effects, like borders. Since we’re talking about Instagram from your desktop we’ll just focus on the batch features.
There is a very wide varity of options here. Detailed image adjustments are less than what you’ll find with BatchPhoto or CamreaBag 2, but there are almost as many filters as the latter. You can also batch edit photo names, add borders and throw in some additional “scene” effects like sunset and clouds.
Surprisingly, Fotor is free. The app does include advertising for additional software from the developer, EverImaging, and frequently prompts users to review the software. This pop-up asks users to post reviews on Chrome’s Web Store even when using the desktop version, which is arguably deceptive.
Conclusion
Normally, I like to round up an article with some best-of recommendations, but that’s hard to do here. All of these apps will let you mimic the photo filtering capabilities of Instagram, but do so in different ways. Some users will like the detail of CameraBag 2, others will demand the batch capabilities of BatchPhoto, and still others will prefer the simplicity of Pixlr-O-Matic. Each app defines itself in some way.
What’s your choice? Is it one of the apps here, or have you found another Instagram-a-like? Let us know in the comments.
Explore more about: Batch Image Editing, Image Editor.
- Thank you very much for this helpful article. I really need Instagram like app for PC.
- Check out Photolemur.com it's a real cure for photos. I use it as first aid and the other filters work better with it.
- Hey, I'm interested in how they effect the quality of the photo as want to print my photos to relatively large sizes but instagram strips to much - do these vary or do all leave high megapixel images? Thanks
- pixlr-o-matic does save your photos as a smaller file, the 1.2 MB photo added a filter to got saved into 765 KB. I would also like to keep the size for printing, if you found how let me know.
- Did you ever figure out how to keep your size?
- I recommend Adobe Lightroom :)
- koi nhi sab jhoot hai
- Thank you Matt Smith for an interesting and useful article. As a photographer even I sometimes appreciate the simple programs mentioned here, to give my images that little bit of extra pop or creativity while also saving bags of time. Cheers.
- XnRerto
- Thanx. All these are quite simple apps to edit photos otherwise desktop photo editing softwares are hard to master at.
- Fotor is also available for the Mac in the Mac App Store.
- Vintager!
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Apple offers a variety of apps that can be quite alluring to Windows PC users, and you don’t have to buy a brand new machine to try them. Using a program called VirtualBox, you can run Apple’s OS X on your Intel-based PC. This will be a complete version of OS X, allowing you to run Apple-specific software like Mac apps and programs.
Initial Installations and Downloads
1.Download and install VirtualBox and the VirtualBox Extension Pack (link available in Resources).
2.Download the Hackboot 1 and Hackboot 2 ISO files (link available in Resources). These ISOs will be used to start the OS X installer and the operating system itself, respectively.
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4.Name the new virtual machine and set the Operating System box to Mac OS X and the Version box to “Mac OS X Server (64 bit).”
5.Use the slider to allocate RAM to your virtual machine; at least 4GB of RAM is a recommended.
6.Click “Next” and select “Create New Disk.” The program will return to its main menu.
7.Right-click the named OS X virtual machine and click “Settings.”
8.Uncheck the box next to 'Enable EFI' in the System tab. EFI is an alternative to BIOS but Windows machines are unable to use EFI to boot in VirtualBox as of August 2013.
9.Navigate to the Storage tab and click on the CD icon called Empty. Select “Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file” and select the Hackboot 1 ISO. This sets your virtual machine to boot from Hackboot 1 the first time it starts up.
Installing OS X
1.Select your OS X virtual machine in the VirtualBox main menu.
2.Click “Start” in the toolbar and then click the CD icon at the bottom of your screen.
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3.Click “Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file” and select the ISO disc image of the Mountain Lion version of OS X.
4.Click on the main screen and press “F5” to refresh the program. An icon in the middle of your screen will now be labeled as “OS X Install DVD.”
5.Press the “Enter” key on your keyboard to bring up the OS X Installation screen.
6.Select your language and agree to the operating system’s terms. You will be taken to an installation page that gives you no hard drive installation option.
7.Click “Utilities” and then click “Disk Utility…” in the VirtualBox toolbar labeled OS X Installer.
8.Click on the VirtualBox hard drive, navigate to the Erase tab and click “Erase” to clean the virtual hard drive and allow OS X to be installed. None of your data will be lost by erasing the drive.
9.Close the Disk Utility window and click on the hard drive icon now in the middle of your screen.
10.Follow the on-screen steps to finish the OS X installation.
Program For Windows Similar To Mac Photos Tutorial
11.Click the CD icon at the bottom of your screen when the installation finishes and you see a black screen with white text. Select the Hackboot 2 ISO so your virtual machine will properly boot when you restart it.
13.Select the Apple icon and press “Enter” on your keyboard.
14.Follow the final on-screen instructions to setup Mac OS X. You can now use this virtual operating system to run any Mac programs on your Windows PC.
Things Needed
- A 64-bit Windows PC with 4GB of available RAM
- An ISO disc image of OS X Mountain Lion
Tip
- Since multiple downloads are required, it is best to keep a record of where each is located to make the installation process easier.
Warning
- You must allocate a minimum of 2GB of RAM to your virtual machine -- though at least 4GB is recommended -- but the majority of your RAM should remain allocated to your Windows installation in order to properly run VirtualBox and all of your other software.
References (3)
Resources (2)
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About the Author
Geoff Whiting is a writer and copy editor who has specialized in business technology, consumer electronics and research reports since 2007. He has written for national magazines like 'American Shipper' and 'BIC Magazine,' has written daily news articles for FierceMarkets, and has crafted research reports for Rider Research, Intel and Spotify.
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Run Windows Programs On Mac
Whiting, Geoff. 'How to Run Mac Programs on a Windows PC.' Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/run-mac-programs-windows-pc-72291.html. Accessed 07 September 2019.
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