If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I love taking photos of my travel adventures and daily life. Visuals are such a fun way of sharing updates as well as providing a source of inspiration for others. I’ve played around with a bunch of editing apps over the years (I seriously LOVE discovering new ones!), but the ones listed below are my all-time favourites and my go-to tools for creating images that pop! Soon I’ll be sharing a step-by-step tutorial on how I prepare my photos for uploading to Instagram, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, these are my top apps for creating killer Instagram photos along with example images from my feed from each. Go on then, get downloading, and up your Instagram game instantly!
1. Snapseed
The first step of my editing process is to always import my photo into Snapseed. You can do a bunch of things in this app, from adjusting perspective, altering tonal contrasts to healing imperfections. I find that I use the ‘Tune Image’ function the most and in most of my images I will increase the brightness, highlights and ambience and might boost the saturation levels a little to bring the photo to life.
Price: FREE
A photo posted by Rachel Bale (@departmentofwandering) on
2. Mextures
Mextures is a great app for adding that little bit of magic into your photos. It contains hundreds of light leaks and textures that you can overlay your photo with. I love that you can also adjust the intensity level and layer the textures on top of one another to make the effect as subtle or as intense as you like. Not every photo is right for Mextures, but sunset, sunrise and landscape scenes all work really well.
Price: $1.99
A photo posted by Rachel Bale (@departmentofwandering) on
3. VSCOcam
VSCOcam is widely hailed to be the best photo editing app out there because of its extraordinary range of presets with a really simple editing interface. There is an in-app camera you can use to take your photos that has a bunch of extra controls such as shutter speed, white balance and exposure compensation. I have purchased quite a few additional preset packs to give me greater control over the look and feel of my images and these are all very reasonably priced (you can also buy all of them for a special bundle price).
Price: Free (additional preset packs can be purchased at a low price)
A photo posted by Rachel Bale (@departmentofwandering) on
4. ColorStory
I have only recently discovered ColorStory by A Beautiful Mess and I have to say, that it is my absolute favourite photo-editing app I’ve ever used! I’ve been editing all of my Instagram photos with ColorStory lately and I seriously can’t get enough of it. Over 100 fresh and colourful filters are available that replicate colour-balancing techniques in Photoshop. This app really makes your images pop with colour and vibrancy, which I love for Instagram. There are also light flares, bokeh as well as a heap of custom editing tools including curve and exposure adjustment and colour toning.
Price: Free (additional filter packs can be purchased for a low price)
A full tank of gas, your favourite person and nothing but the open road ahead ✨
A photo posted by Rachel Bale (@departmentofwandering) on
Loved this post…this is going to help me so much! Thank you 🙂 I love VSCO too!
Your Instagram is already amazing Sisley!! x
I used to try so many different photo apps until I found A Color Story! It is seriously the best photo editing app I’ve ever used! I love the light leaks! insta: @juhkwee
Isn’t it, Jaqui! I LOVE it! I love the clean, bright filters that bring up the highlights and colour. Can’t get enough! 🙂
I lovvvve snapseed but PS Express is similar and I find the editing process easier to use than snapseed. Sometimes I find myself going back and forth between the two 🙂
I don’t have PS Express, but now I’m intrigued! I’ll have to download it and play around with it! 🙂
You know, I’ve used the default editing tool in Apple Photos (both for iOS and Mac) and been quite happy with the results. Snapseed is definitely my next go-to app though! Good post 🙂
That’s great you’re finding the result you’re happy with using the default tools, Fabio. Glad you love Snapseed too!
Nice post! You should mention some of those apps, well at least Color Story & Mextures are only available for people with iphones. Lest the rest of us get our hopes up excited to have new apps. Iphone only!
Oh it must be frustrating to not have access to the full range of apps, Mica! Fingers crossed there’s an Android release soon!
Thank you, this is great!! I am a huge fan of SnapSeed already - it’s addicting to edit photos with! I can’t wait to check out these others - especially Color Story. Again, thanks for the tips!
Snapseed is super easy to use isn’t it Beth? Trust me, you will LOVE ColorStory — go try it and let me know what you think! x
I only use Snapseed, but will check out the others! I usually retouch photos on my laptop and then upload the to Instagram via Dropbox. Thanks for the recommendations 🙂
Snapseed is great isn’t it Olga! I always retouch using Lightroom for photos I take on my DSLR but if it’s just with my iphone, these apps are all I need. Happy ‘gramming! x
You’re amazing and thank you for sharing your photo apps. You have no idea how many times Ive asked bloggers but they never get back.
Keep up
Sorry for the late reply, but you are more than welcome! Sharing is caring! 🙂
Never heard about Mextures and ColorStory — thanks for the tip!
I discovered your blog though Instagram — your feed is really lovely! Do you stick to the same filters across all photos?
Best,
Olga
Thanks Olga! Nice to have you here 🙂 I do generally stick to the same filters, although sometimes an image might need a slightly different look. My favourite filter is ‘clear’ in Color Story and it’s the one I use the most. Happy ‘gramming! x