Everything about INKterest, answered

INKterest is an iPhone app that shows a tattoo design on your own body before you get it. You bring a design — from the built-in Pinterest browser, a link, or your photo library — and the app places it on your skin, live through the camera in 2D or warped to your body's curves in 3D. It is free to download and runs on the device.

Yes. The App Store listing is titled Pinterest Tattoo Try On because that is what people search for; inside the app, and here, it is called INKterest. Same app, same maker, one download: apps.apple.com/app/id6780413726.

The app composites your chosen design onto a photo or the live camera feed, using Apple's on-device machine learning to read the body. In 3D mode it builds a depth map of the photographed body, so the design bends with ribs, shoulders and muscle instead of sitting flat like a sticker. You move, scale, rotate and tilt the design, adjust ink opacity, and mask the areas it should not cover.

2D is the live camera preview: point the phone, and the tattoo lands on your skin in real time so you can check placement and size while you move. 3D works from a photo you have already taken: the app measures depth, then warps the design to follow the curves of that body. Use 2D to explore quickly, 3D to judge how the finished tattoo will sit.

No. Both modes work on an ordinary iPhone camera: there is no LiDAR requirement, nothing to print and no marker to draw on your skin. 2D is the live preview through the camera; 3D reads depth from a photo you have already taken. INKterest has no AR mode and none is promised.

Yes — up to three at a time in 2D. Each one is moved, resized, rotated and tilted separately, which is how you judge a sleeve or a pair that has to sit together. The 3D mode works on one design at a time.

It shouldn't: the app works out where bare skin is and lets ink show only there. When it gets that wrong there is a mask to fix — an eraser for anything the tattoo must not touch, a brush for skin it missed, a one-tap Magic that drops a whole piece of clothing, and a reset that puts back what the app detected.

No. The app ships with example bodies — pick the set that fits and try a design there first; the photo library and the camera are for when you want it on you. Nothing you add is uploaded either way.

An iPhone running iOS 26.4 or later. The 2D live preview needs a real device because it uses the camera; the 3D mode works from photos already in your library.

No. INKterest is iPhone-only today — there is no Android app, no iPad-specific version and no browser version.

The app is free to download and includes 10 free try-ons. After those, INKterest Pro unlocks unlimited try-ons and is sold in the app as a weekly, monthly or yearly subscription at Apple's regional prices. Sharing the app with a friend adds free try-ons too. There are no ads.

Like any App Store subscription: iPhone Settings → your name → Subscriptions → INKterest → Cancel Subscription. The app cannot cancel it for you, and cancelling leaves the try-ons you already saved on your device.

You bring them. Browse Pinterest inside the app (there is a grid of 44 tattoo styles — blackwork, fineline, japanese, mandala, trash polka and the rest), paste a link to an image, share one in from another app, or pick a picture from your photo library. INKterest does not generate designs and does not sell flash — it shows a design you already have. Making one from a description or a photo is a different job, and our other app, ToDo.tattoo, does that half.

Only if you want to browse Pinterest inside the app — signing in is Pinterest's requirement, not ours, and it makes their whole catalogue of designs reachable without leaving the try-on. Everything else works without it: links, the share sheet and your own photos.

No. Photos, designs and finished try-ons stay on your iPhone — the depth and segmentation work runs on the device, and there is no account and no cloud library. The only thing that leaves the phone is anonymous usage statistics (which steps people use), and Settings → Analytics switches even that off. The privacy policy lists exactly what is and is not sent. And when you want it all gone: Profile → Delete ALL Data wipes the three libraries and the analysis cache, logs out of Pinterest and resets the profile, in one step.

No ads, no cross-app tracking, no advertising identifier. The app sends anonymous product analytics — screen and feature events, never your images, searches or pin links — to Amplitude's European data residency, and you can turn that off in Settings.

The try-on itself does: placing, masking and saving all happen on the device. You need a connection only to browse Pinterest inside the app or to load a design from a link.

Yes, and that is most of the point. Saved try-ons live in the Try On Results library and can be shared like any photo, which gives the artist a concrete brief — this design, this size, this placement — instead of a screenshot and a hand wave.

It is a preview, not a promise. Placement, size and proportion are what it gets right; the real result also depends on the artist's line work, how ink settles into skin, healing, and your skin tone. Treat it as a way to rule things out before the needle, not as a rendering of the final piece.

Yes — the design is blended onto whatever is in the photo, and the ink-opacity control lets you match how strongly it reads on your skin. Arms, chest, back, ribs, legs and hands all work; the 3D mode has the most to do on curved areas like ribs and shoulders.

You can place a new design over an existing one to judge size and coverage, and the mask tools let you decide what it should overlap. The app does not erase or predict how the old ink will show through a cover-up — that is the artist's judgement.

A clean cut-out on a white or plain light background. The app has a background-normalisation tool and a brush for tidying edges, but a photo of a tattoo already on someone's skin is the hardest case: the skin comes with it. Line art, flash sheets and transparent PNGs are ideal.

22: English, Spanish, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Dutch, Romanian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian (Bokmål), Swedish and Danish. The app follows the phone's language, and Settings can override it.

No. Pinterest is a trademark of Pinterest, Inc.; INKterest simply opens Pinterest in an in-app browser so you can pull a pin into a try-on. There is no partnership or endorsement.

Email contact@inkterest.app. The app also carries a Tutorial in the Profile menu covering placement, masks, 2D versus 3D, the tattoo editor and the Pinterest connection.