The availability of Instagram for Android made a big news splash, but is it really better than equivalent Android apps. Android does not suffer from a lack of photo editing apps. Rather than review several apps, this article will focus on a comparison of Instagram to Pixlr-o-Matic, a free Android app. Pixlr-o-matic is also available as an iOS app, a Facebook app, or a Google Chrome extension.

Both Instagram and Pixlr-o-matic allow you to start with either a camera photo, or a photo from your library. From this point on, the differences are dramatic. Instagram requires a square format, while Pixlr-o-matic give you the choice between original, or square format. With Instagram, you are limited to 20 different effects. Pixlr-o-matic starts with 25 default effects, with the ability to install another 59 effects (all effects are free). Pixlr-o-matic divides the 84 effects into 18 collections. You just select the collections that you wish to use.

Where Instragram has two brightness levels, Pixlr-o-matic has 30 default lighting overlays, with another 257 installable overlays divided into 16 collections. For example, the Paper collection contains 20 overlays that simulate the looks of different types of photographic paper. Instagram has three effects that contain borders. Pixlr-o-matic treats borders as a separate overlay. The default border collection contains 30 borders, with 163 additional borders contained in 8 collections.

Since there are three separate layers, you can go back to any layer and change it to see the resulting effect. With over 2 million possible combinations, you can experiment until you find the perfect combination. Plus, there is always the random button in the upper right-hand corner that generates different random combinations of effects, lighting, and frames. If you don’t like one element of a random combination, you can change it.

Pixlr-o-matic does lack the ability to crop and rotate a photograph, which Instagram does support. However, you can use the Gallery, or camera app, to crop a photograph and then share it to Pixlr-o-matic. The Android share feature means share between apps, and not to social networks. Thus, one app can share its output to another app. For example, you can share a photograph from the Gallery app to the Skitch app, and then to Pixlr-o-matic, and then share it to Instagram. Since many mobile devices have limited memory resources, it is better to have more smaller apps that perform a limited number of functions, than one large app that tries to do everything.

Instagram allows you to save a photograph to their server, and upload it to Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, or Tumblr. Instagram, itself, does not support the Android share feature. Pixlr-o-matic allows you to save a file to the SD card, or to share it, via Android share, to any Android app registered to except a file as input. Thus, you could send a file to Google Docs, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Gmail, Google+, Picasa, Skitch, Tumblr, Twitter, or many other apps. It all depends on what apps you have installed on your Android device. Pixlr-o-matic also allows you to save a file at imm.io. This is a file sharing site, with a few interesting twists. When you save a file to imm.io, you get a unique URL path to the file. The file can only be viewed using this URL. How you use the URL is up to you. Just do not forget the URL, as there is no way to retrieve it. If a file is not viewed within 30 days, it is deleted.

The Pixlr Web site focuses on Web based image editing tools. You could process a file in Pixlr-o-matic, and share it to Dropbox. On your PC, you could retrieve the file from Dropbox and edit it further with one of the available editors. For example, the Pixlr Editor offers many options for editing a picture, but provides very few filters. The Web site does not have a gallery of photos. Pixlr is about editing photographs for uploading to other social networks.

There are other Android apps that are similar to Instagram in that they provide their own social networks. Two popular apps are Streamzoo and picplz. All three apps offer features that are not part of the Instagram app. Since Pixlr-o-matic has the most features, I use it to edit my photographs, and then share the photograph to the Instagram app. I then crop the photograph to Instagram requirements, and upload it to Instagram, without making any further changes. This procedure is used by many Instagram members to create the effects that you see in their photographs, as it circumvents the lack of features in the Instagram app.