Best Photo Editing Apps For Instagram and Blog
How do people make their Instagram photos look so beautiful?
I love Instagram and I know you do too but I’m bored of Instagram filters and I don’t like how the photo loses it’s quality after one is applied. Instead, I use photo editing apps before uploading the image to Instagram. This helps, in particular, if a photo is taken in low light situations, for example – or if you’re going for a certain “theme”.
I got to admit, I spend (or waste, however you like to see it!) a lot of time tweaking the brightness and filters for one single photo to make it look perfect. It can get addictive but once you’ve found your “style”, you’ll end up using the same settings and editing photos will become a quicker process.
There are lots of apps out there but I’ve narrowed it down to my favourite five photo editing apps:
PICFX
Picfx was the first app I paid for when I was pretty much bored of Instagram filters. It cost £1.49 from the App Store and there are lots of filters on it to choose from. The thing I liked about it was how you could control how much of the filter you apply to your photograph, you could turn the opacity down (way before Instagram did the same thing) and add other layers to it.
Another feature I like about Picfx is the “Lights” tool where you could add various light leaks and bokeh, just like the Yankee Candle pic above. You might have also noticed cute little heart shaped lights on some people’s photos. A bit gimmicky, and the novelty does wear off but if you’ve ever wondered which app people use to do that, it’s Picfx!
AFTERLIGHT
If you were to pay for any photography apps, let it be Afterlight! I highly recommend this! I’m not sure if there’s a free version floating around but I’d go straight ahead and commit to the paid version because it only cost 69p! You won’t regret it!
Afterlight is my FAVOURITE app out of the whole lot and it does pretty much everything you want it to. It allows you to adjust the photo (sharpness, brightness, contrast, exposure, colour balance, hue & saturation, etc) and then there’s the 59 fully adjustable filters, 66 textures and light leaks to choose from.
You can add one on top of another, making your image as unique to you as possible. There’s also cropping, transforming, resizing and framing tools too – which comes in handy if you’re one of those people that has to have their Instagram photos nothing but square!
VSCO CAM
A lot of people rave about VSCO and it is an amazing app. After I’ve edited an image on Afterlight, I go to VSCO to add a filter. You can save an edit and apply it to every photo to keep your Instagram profile looking consistent too.
I usually use the HB1 and HB2 filters and you can see from my Instagram how white this makes my photos look without giving them that ‘washed out’ over exposed effect.
However, the adjustment settings aren’t as flexible as Afterlight so that’s why I use this before I apply the filter on VCSO. VSCO is free with the option to purchase the in-app extras.
MOLDIV
I don’t use Moldiv a lot but it really handy to have! It’s just waaaay quicker than faffing about with Photoshop, especially if it’s just a quick photo for Lookbook or Instagram!
Moldiv is a one of the better collaging apps. A lot of collage apps can be a bit naff, most of them have the novelty factor, but Moldiv means business when it comes to putting collages together! It is such a good quality app!
What Moldiv offers that other collage apps don’t are the beautiful, professional looking magazine-style layouts. Also, with this app, the aspect ratio aren’t restricted to a 1:1 square shape either, you can elongate them or make them wider to suit your blog/website/whatever platform you’re uploading the photo to. I look forward to using this more, especially for my blog!
Moldiv is free but you can buy sets of layouts, if you wish.
A BEAUTIFUL MESS
A Beautiful Mess cost only 69p and is a quirky little app that adds a bit of fun into your photos! You can also make images from scratch too, just like the one above on the left hand side. The first image of this blogpost is also made with A Beautiful Mess too. There’s a small selection of filter to choose from, you can add illustrative borders, cute little doodles and fonts.
It’s a lovely way to annotate your photos but sometimes, I do find it quite difficult to use this one so I don’t use it as much. It would be nice to have a slider to resize the fonts and doodles, it would make it easier to use.
Overall, A Beautiful Mess, as you can see, is a pretty awesome app and it works just fine.
Other Apps Worth Mentioning
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Dropbox: Dropbox doesn’t edit photos but… have you ever taken photos from your phone that you want to use on your blog? Or perhaps you have a photo stored on your computer that you’d like to upload to Instagram? How do you transfer it on to your phone without compressing the quality? You probably upload them to an image hosting site like Photobucket, or email them to yourself but Dropbox makes things much easier.
From your computer, you’ll need to make an account first and then secondly, get the app for your phone – but don’t worry, it’s all free! You put all the files you want in to your dropbox folder and you can access this from your computer, or your phone!
Snapseed: Another free photo editing app but what I love about this is that you can select a specific part of the image to adjust. This is handy when there’s a shadow you want to get rid off, or you want to accentuate a certain area of the photo.
Camera360: It has a little bit of Picfx, Afterlight, and VSCO Cam rolled in to one! Not as advanced as those three, but still better than Instagram, in my opinion! Camera360 is a free app, and contains filter effects, adjustment settings and textures/light leak/lens flare.
What other apps do you guys recommend? Anything other ones I should get to add to my collection?
To see my photos, hop over to my Instagram feed! My username on there is @tempsec.
And if you do end up downloading any of the apps I have recommended here, let me know how you get on!
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what a wonderful blogpost! it's so helpful!
wish you all the best, dear
lovely greets from rome.
kissesMaren Anita
FASHION-MEETS-ART by Maren Anita
I love this post! There's so many apps out there to help us create amazing blog and instagram images, I've got a couple of them but I need to get my hands on some more. It's nice to deviate away from the well used instagram filters sometimes!
emmerliejay x
I use dropbox all the time, it is such a lifesaver and makes working from home an absolute dream x
Beautyqueenuk xx
These apps are looking super cute ! Love the Beautiful mess one !
Sara,
http://thecrimeofashion.blogspot.fr
I love the Beautiful Mess app, so worth it!
Hayley
Water Painted Dreams xo
haha at the LC comment! I like using VSCO and ABM too. Other great ones are Fotor and Picsart, for bokeh and lens flare!
Hanh x | hanhabelle
Thanks for this post! I'm always looking for new apps to edit my photos with. Currently I really love VSCO Cam, Afterlight and Picsart 🙂
Marissa Jamie : Faithfully, Marissa ♡
moldiv is brilliant i use it for all my collages. i have snapseed too, didnt know you coudl only edit a little bit of the photo though, need to check this out
Lauren
livinginaboxx
Great post – I've just discovered A Beautiful Mess and LOVE it, all my pictures are getting the once over 🙂 but I'll definitely look into the others you mention as I use instagram shots for a lot of the images on my blog. Harriet x
Thanks for sharing your photo apps and tips with us. This is a very useful post 🙂 x
Love this post – great tips! Thanks for taking the time to share 🙂 I've found Moldiv a godsend for collaging photos for blog posts together rather than faffing with Photoshop (which I neither have, nor know how to use). Picfx looks like great fun though! I find myself using PerfectPhoto a lot, for basic editing functions like spot healing etc – but it's not perfect and it crashes sometimes. I like Self Timer for those times I need a photo of myself and don't have anyone around to take it for me – but I bet there's another app out there that has this function too by now!
I just got my first iphone… so this post was a great help! Never really edited photos on my phone before, so I will definitely take your advise and get afterlight and maybe A Beautiful Mess.
Lovely, informative post!
Alannah // Kissing Winter
This post is so helpful Sarah! I love so many of these apps and now I've found a few more to go and explore x
holljc.blogspot.co.uk
*pops off to the app store*
This is a really useful post, I currently use snapseed & dropbox to edit and move my photos, so it's good to hear about other useful photography apps. Currently all my photos on my blog are off my phone, unless stated otherwise, as I'm without my camera for the moment.
YES at Dropbox! 🙂
I have used a couple of those & I love making my photos all fancy but I seem to forget to do it & upload them as they are. Im going to get the MOLDIV one that looks like a great collage maker
http://www.letstalkbeauty.co.uk/
the first two look nice! I might add them, even if it's just for editing things for instagram!
Take care*
I love Snap seed and VSCO cam! Use them lots. Will have to see afterlight. Love the way your pic looks 🙂
great tips! i also have vscocam and moldiv and these apps are great!
I'm going to download A Beautiful Mess, it sounds really cute! 🙂
Tara x
Wow great tips thanks hun xxx
thanks for sharing! I've just started a fashion instagram and it looks so bad compared to others. Maybe these might help me make it looks a bit better.
littlekaatie.blogspot.co.uk
Oooh, need to download some of these apps, I like the look of Afterlight and VSCO CAM. xx
Julie
http://www.rainingcake.com
Great post Sarah! Though I have to say, since Instagram introduced their additional photo editing options (brightness, contrast, shadows etc) I've found my picture editing is getting better but will definitely be looking into some of the ones you've mentioned. I'm on a mission to find out LC's though 😉 I love a good mystery! xx
I wanted to get the A Beautiful Mess app but I don't think I will now! I really like the sound of Picfx and Afterlight so I'm gonna go ahead and download those 🙂
Yazmin xx
http://www.yazzyscorner.co.uk
Great post! I've gotten a bit lazy recently of my photos, but i'll take anything that will make the photo of my breakfast look better 🙂
These all sound great
L x
http://workingmumy.blogspot.com
Love these! I always use VSCO Cam, it's my favorite out of these!
L&L from sisterblend
I have downloaded afterlight but can't seem to use it well. Have to search for a youtube tutorial. Great selection. I use Moldiv and Cam360 a lot.xx
Great post! I just can't get enough of instagram if anyone wants to come and peek? instagram.com/sheandhem Vx
These are so cute! I REALLY want Afterlight but it's not available on Android which is rubbish 🙁 May have to definitely invest in one of the others though!
hellomissjordan.blogspot.co.uk xx
Ive gotten bored of instagram ones too, so might check out these ones as an alternative!
Two Hearts One Roof
Bookmarking this for when I get my new phone 🙂
Megan x
MeganRoisinn
Awesome post! I love Snapseed, I use it to edit with all the time as for blog posts it's perfect and even some photography I do. 🙂
http://theremightbecoffee.wordpress.com/