How to add live glitter effects to Instagram videos

Written by Vicki Marques on 22 November 2017

You may have noticed a viral trend amongst Instagrammers with the addition of shimmering glitter effects that provide a realistic sparkles on light sources in videos.

Instagram influencers have made a new viral trend: The glitterization of video. During fashion week in NY and London the app KiraKira+ was heavily promoted, making it a household name practically overnight and causing a viral sensation in the social media world.

It’s particularly common in Instagram circles where people are showing off their fresh manicures, in fact you’ll be hard pressed to find a manicure video on Instagram that doesn’t use this effect!

I think this might be my first ever video #evachenpose (and first one with a Kira Kira filter, certainly). No bag today but the boots are so extra I felt like they were sufficient. Also if you look closely at my right knee, you can see a CC pressed into my skin from sitting with my legs crossed at shows all day
A post shared by Eva Chen (@evachen212) on Sep 17, 2017 at 1:50pm PDT

How it works

Surprisingly there are only a couple of apps that pull this effect off well. They work like this:

Use the camera with live preview of the glitter effect
Customise the size/color of the effect
Shoot the video, share to Instagram

It really only works on parts of objects that are already shiny, and it is no good for humans or selfie shots. Half of the fun is experimenting and seeing what the app decides to make glitter!

The technology behind this is actually quite impressive, which is probably the reason why so few people have managed to create apps that work well with this effect. Nobody has yet made this effect work well on Android devices, but we’ve got our ear to the ground and will let you know as soon as Android has a decent release.

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Best apps for adding glitter to video (iOS)

KiraKira+

Available for $0.99 on iPhone/iPad

KiraKira+ is the original and best app for adding the sparkle / glitter effect to your videos. The app was recently updated with more filters, plus the ability to load videos from your album (which people were crying out for!)

There still aren’t any apps that compete with KiraKira+ for this effect, it’s hard to recommend anything else!

Best apps for adding glitter to video (Android)

Unfortunately no apps exist for Android that we currently recommend to replicate this effect. Sign up to the following mailing list to receive a notification as soon as a KiraKira+ style app is launched on Android and this post is updated, so you can be one of the first to find out!