Light trails or silk-water averaging, with start delay and tripod stacking.
Light Trails Camera turns car lights, sparklers, torches and stars into trails of light — without a DSLR. Set a time from 1 to 30 seconds, press the round button, and the app keeps the camera running and stacks every frame on your phone. You watch the picture build up live. It is software compositing, not a sensor long exposure, and the app says so wherever it matters.
✨ Trails by lighten stacking
Every frame is combined with a lighten blend: for each pixel the app keeps the brightest value it has seen. Bright things that move — headlights, tail lights, a sparkler, a phone torch — leave a trail, and the dark background stays dark. Set 1 to 30 seconds and choose how long the trails get.
▶️ Live preview as it stacks
The accumulating picture is shown on screen as the exposure runs, with the elapsed time and the number of frames stacked so far. Stop early whenever the trail looks right.
📳 Shake warning, tripod tip
Trails smear when the phone moves. Before your first exposure the app reminds you once to rest the phone on a tripod, a wall or a table. During the exposure the accelerometer is read and a warning appears the moment the phone moves; the result screen tells you how many frames were affected. You can switch the warning off in Settings.
🌊 Average mode and a start delay
Switch the compose mode in Settings: Lighten keeps only the brightest pixel (classic light trails), while Average blends every frame evenly — smoothing moving water into silk or erasing a passing crowd. A 2s or 5s start delay lets the phone settle on a tripod before the exposure begins.
💾 Saved as a new file
The result is written to the Light Trails album at up to 1080p. Frames are downscaled before stacking to keep memory in check, and nothing else on your phone is touched.
🔒 Private and offline
Camera frames and photos are processed on your phone and never leave it. There is no account, no server and no internet requirement. The only Android permission the app asks for is the camera; the accelerometer needs no permission and is read only during an exposure.
🎁 Free, one optional upgrade
Everything above is free, supported by a small banner and an occasional full-screen ad. A one-time purchase removes ads forever; it is not a subscription.
A note on honesty: this is software compositing, not a sensor long exposure. The camera keeps its normal shutter speed; the app does not gather more light than a single frame, so it will not brighten a dark scene the way a real long exposure does. What it does is keep the brightest moment of every pixel, which is exactly what makes moving lights draw trails.
🎨 Decorating studio
Tap Decorate on the result screen to adjust, and apply filters, film effects, frames, crop and stickers — the decorated version is what gets saved and shared at 9:16, 4:5 or 1:1.
Novedades
More stable layout with larger text, improved screen reader announcements, and smoother performance while shooting.