Phonegap/cordova applying filter to camera image

I'm using the Ionic framework (which is built on phonegap) and am trying to apply filters to an image uploaded from the camera.

I'm using vintage.js to apply filters. The problem I'm running into is when I upload an image from the camera into an <img> tag, it looks fine. However vintage.js can't seem to modify it at all. It works fine with remote URLs, but it just doesn't work with a FileURL that the cordova camera plugin returns. Now, perhaps the problem lies within the vintageJS library, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything with how directory permissions work in IOS because my hypothesis is that it's trying to modify an image that lies in a read-only dir (var/something/../tmp) and if that's truly the case, what are my options here? Upload to s3 first?

Any kind of help is highly appreciated.