4 Photo Editing Apps to Improve your Instagram Feed

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Instagram is one of the best tools to promote your blog, your brand, and your perspective. With Instagram members now surpassing even those on Twitter, it’s definitely a social media outlet you want to get into if you’re looking to gain wider exposure for your blog. I waited to join Instagram, I was worried it would be just another social media outlet to manage – but once I joined, I was immediately hooked. Now Instagram is my favourite outlet and tool to building my audience.

I also find it to be an excellent tool to stay connected to the blogging community and to readers. Just like on your blog, you want to provide high-quality images that’ll grab the attention of the viewer. You want these images to be bright, eye-catching, and on-brand. The thing is though, we can’t always lug around our DSLR cameras and laptop to shoot these images! Thankfully, you don’t need to because there are a variety of editing tools you can download right onto your phone to help you create more beautiful photos for your Instagram account.

4 Apps to Improve your Instagram

Camera+:

Improve the photos you snap simply by upgrading your camera to Camera+! It’s a provides higher quality images, and also gives you unique editing tools to further refine your photos before posting on Instagram. It’s only $3 and gives you a ton of options and filter for your images. All of the filters can be customized to either be applied subtly or more intensely to your images. I personally have found that the clarity, tint, and brightness tools on Camera+ helps to create images that almost look as though they were taken on my camera.

VSCO Cam:

I had heard about this APP from a few other bloggers, and decided to give it a whirl. In the last few weeks I have been using this APP and have really been impressed by the variety of tools it has. One thing that I quite liked about VSCO Cam is the fade option, as it creates a really beautiful soft filter over the photo. I also really like the Portrait option where you can change the tone and alter the skintone slightly in a photo to create a warmer look or a cooler look (some of my hiking photos definitely required me to cool my photos done!)

Pic-Tap-Go

One of my absolute favourite editing tools is Pic-Tap-Go. You easily can add filters to a photo and then alter the amount of the filter applied to the image. The really unique part of this APP is that you can actually layer filter to achieve the exact look you like. This tool is pretty much a quick one-stop-shop to editing your photos and creating beautiful images.

AfterLight:

I discovered this tool a few months ago and now use it on nearly all of my images. This tool has options which allow you to edit more subtly than the other tools. You can opt to use the filters, or go into the tools section to make smaller adjustments. I personally love all the filters available on afterlight.

EXTRAS: If you’re not into editing your photos on different APPs before uploading, then there are some simple edits you can easily make just on Instagram too! When taking product shots or coffee photos, I always want my images to be bright and have that clean white look to them. Often you can easily get this look simply by brightening the images, cooling the image saturation with the “warm” tool, removing some of the shadows and sharpening them slightly.

Comments

Emily Campbell says

May 13, 2015 at 12:14 pm

Just downloaded Camera+ and it's brilliant! Great post 🙂

Emily x
Wonders of a Fairytale

Launna says

May 13, 2015 at 6:09 pm

I'm going to download the camera+… I like to try and make my pictures look better xox ♡

Alyssa Guttendorf says

May 13, 2015 at 6:36 pm

This is great, Bree– thank you! I always use the sharpen filter in Insta too, even after editing with another app like VSCO cam. I'm going to check out Afterlight now too!

Sara Strauss {Sincerely, Sara} says

May 14, 2015 at 12:59 am

I love Afterlight so much! One of the best things about it is that you can create a custom filter, so all of my Instagram filters have the same look due to me using that same filter! Great post!
~Sara
Sincerely, Sara

Allie* says

May 14, 2015 at 2:59 am

Great post. Love these tips!

MissK says

May 14, 2015 at 6:47 pm

I always use VSCO Cam lately! The filters are really nice 🙂

blogoratti says

May 15, 2015 at 11:05 am

Hello and thanks for sharing that!

Lucia Flores says

May 18, 2015 at 6:49 pm

Still need to get into Instagram… boohoo. Will definately return here to steal some tips when I finally get started :P.

Kisses,
Lucia

Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Lucia Flores Diary Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

Unknown says

October 14, 2015 at 2:29 pm

These apps are lovely indeed, i use all the 4 of them, but as for me i can't even imagine going viral without managing apps. I'm pretty sure you, Bree, are familiar with apps from my list, but maybe someone else will find it useful. First of all iconosquare.com, it is simply the best statistical app. Second – scheduling, i use postso.com. Third – unfollow app fast-unfollow.com as i use follow4follow hashtag actively, and new limits imposed on actions won't let me get rid of large amounts of users.

- Bree Aylwin says
  
  October 14, 2015 at 2:48 pm
  
  Thanks! Yes, these are mainly image editing APPS. I do use Iconosquare, but I do not use any scheduling apps, I haven't used follow4follow / unfollow either. I did write an entire post on Iconosquare though that you may find interesting, find it here: http://www.theurbanumbrella.com/2015/08/how-to-use-iconosquare-for-instagram.html
  
Yuga Bharathi says

January 13, 2016 at 7:25 am

Nice apps. I like this post. Thank you so much for sharing.

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Alex Larson says

February 2, 2016 at 1:21 pm

Not bad apps. I'm using VSCO Cam and it's really awesome, and avoiding other apps like the plague lol) Hootsuite, by the by, helps with analytics and managing, zengram provides real followers. If you earn money on instagram an choose another apps, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

- Bree Aylwin says
  
  February 2, 2016 at 7:57 pm
  
  Thanks, Alex! Yes, hootsuite is a great management tool and does provide great analytics – as does Iconosquare! The apps mentioned in this post are just for photo editing, but I should share a post on a few of the analytics tools I use.

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