Prequel is an app for your iPhone that can edit photos and videos, and it also has an impressive stylized selfie maker that uses artificial intelligence.
Avatar results from prequel
In recent years, the adoption of artificial intelligence based tools has increased, from text tools like ChatGPT to creative tools like Stable Diffusion. There are also casual apps for generating AI photos, including Lensa and Prequel.
Prequel also includes tools for editing images and movies, so it’s not just about AI. There are more than 800 effects and filters for different looks. Videos can be quickly edited using templates and stickers and music can be added.
edit content
While the app has standard editing options to control exposure, brightness, saturation, and other aspects of a photo, it’s not ideal for landscape shots, still lifes, etc. – basically anything that isn’t a selfie or portrait.
The editing features are manual, similar to the Apple Photos app. Unlike Photos, Prequel doesn’t offer a one-tap “magic button” to automatically apply adjustments.
There are many simple templates to choose from to produce videos of different styles, so the video editing experience is better. For example, with a few taps, Prequel can create retro videos, Christmas video templates, and social media-targeted edits with a “viral” category.
One of the video templates
There are far more options for selfies and other photos with people, although users can add some of these to non-selfies, e.g. B. Music and stickers.
For example, a beauty tool allows users to smooth their skin, resize their eyes, make their chin wider, and have additional options for their hair, nose, teeth, and lips. In addition to editing tools for changing elements such as color and light, everything a person needs to change their appearance is present.
There are two ways to add AI editing to a photo. One option in the editing view is to tap the Effects button on the side.
Some of the AI effects. I will be your anime waifu
Effects include various templates and a program called D3D that creates moving 3D visuals. For example, users can add objects like clouds, ghosts, and more to photos, and the software will move those objects to make the image appear three-dimensional.
The app saves the 3D image as a movie or Live Photo, and the result is like the Live Photo “bounce” effect that moves photo elements back and forth.
In this section you will also find AI effects of different styles that will make you look like an anime woman, a fantasy character or give your face a heat map effect. Depending on your subscription level, once you select one of these effects, processing can take up to a minute or so.
The effect that makes a photo appear three-dimensional
AI effects can be applied to any photo, but that’s only useful if you want cartoon representations of plants, flowers, or other objects. However, we noticed something interesting.
The fantasy AI effect turned a photo of a goose into a beautiful landscape with a palace, trees, a woman and other elements, instead of a cartoon-like goose like the plant photos. The same happened with additional images of animals, plants and landscapes.
The app transformed a goose into an artistic fantasy landscape
The program’s editing area produces inconsistent results, which we didn’t think were particularly good for selfies. However, the exciting part comes with another feature called Avatars.
AI Avatars
By choosing from 10 to 20 photos, Prequel uploads the batch to its servers and applies better AI effects in about 35 minutes. Some rules prohibit group photos, glasses, black and white photos, nudes, and duplicate photos.
After selecting at least ten photos, users can purchase a pack of 50 avatars for $3.99, 100 for $5.99, or 200 for $8.99. Those who are on a cellular network should know that the app may consume a lot of data. For example, half an hour of using the app resulted in Prequel consuming 375MB of data.
Prequel uploads the photos to its servers after a user purchases one of the packs. It takes 35 to 40 minutes but users can close the app or even lock their devices as the work is done remotely.
Some of the AI avatar results
We went with the 50 avatar pack, which generated five styles for our selection of ten photos. The styles were Fantasy God, Sketch, Techno Cyberpunk, 3D Cartoon and Valentine’s Day.
As with most AI tools, some results were unusual, but they were still far superior to effects in the photo editing realm. Downloading produced a low quality JPG image with a resolution of 512×512 and it’s unclear if there is an option for a higher resolution photo.
We didn’t try to use non-selfies for the AI avatars, although given some rules it might not have been possible.
Prequel is an excellent app for people looking for fun AI effects, video templates that do most of the work, and portrait beautification tools. While the app can edit any photo, it’s not intended for most photography genres unless you specifically want to create AI art from images.
Even then, it’s not possible to tweak the art output like Stable Diffusion and other tools. There is no way to type something like “give me a picture of a goldfish swimming in the sky”.
Prequel AI Art Avatar Editor Pros Great for photos destined for social media Easy templates to start editing AI gave good results for avatars Prequel AI Art Avatar Editor Pros Not an ideal app for editing photos other than selfies are Rating: 4 out of 5
Prequel AI Art Avatar Editor is available as a free download on the App Store.
While some features are free to use, others require payment or a subscription. The Prequel Gold subscription has a few tiers including $4.99. Weekly option and a yearly plan for $49.99.
The app is compatible with iOS 13 or higher and iPads with iPadOS 13 or higher.
