Original photo used when editing in these apps. Katie Cooney photo.
Gone are the days of your Instagram feed being filled with shitty plane wing photos, your friend's girlfriend's soy latte, #FoodPorn, hot dogs or legs, and mirror selfies–and to that I say good riddance.
Recently, photographers have taken to Instagram as a network for sharing their photos. If you're looking to add some incredible shots of the great outdoors to your feed, I recommend photographers Chris Burkard, Forrest Mankins, Morgan Phillips, Rob Strok, Emily Thomas, and Alexandra Taylor.
As an aspiring photographer myself (you follow me on instagram as @ktcooney), my friends are always asking me what they can do and what apps they can use to make their photos look cooler. These are a few user-friendly apps that I often recommend.
#1: Afterlight
Afterlight (previously known as "Afterglow") is a widely popular, extensively developed editing app that can take your Instagram game to the next level. The app is available for $0.99 on the App Store, and is also available for Android. It features standard straightening, cropping, and adjustment tools (clarify, brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, highlights, shadows, fade, highlight tone, mid tone, shadow tone, temperature, vignette, grain and sharpening) which each have a slider for fine-tuning.
The app includes 74 adjustable filters, separated into several categories:
- Original: the app's original set of filters
- Guest: filters created by popular Instagrammers
- Seasons: filters to add seasonally appropriate vibes and tones
- Wander: a new pack with landscape shots in mind
Recently, developers added a "Fusion" filter tool, giving users the ability to stack and add multiple filters to a photo, with the ability to choose the strength of each added filter.
Beyond adding filters, Afterlight has the ability to add 35mm/instant film light leaks, film textures, and a wide variety of frames (shapes, letters, Polaroid, etc). Developers also recently added a double exposure tool. Users select a second photo to overlay on the original with several blend-mode options. After finishing your edit, Afterlight allows users to export directly to your camera roll and a variety of social apps, with three quality options.
Overall, Afterlight offers a killer set of tools in a clean, intuitive app. For $.99, it's a steal.
#2: Lens Distortions
Lens Distortions allows you to add realistic sun flares, light leaks, hazes, fogs, and glass fragments to your photographs. What sets the app apart is that the elements are created from actual photos, not just created with fancy brushes in Photoshop.
The user interface is straightforward. Selecting and manipulating filters is quick and intuitive–after selecting, you can resize, rotate, and reposition the filter with your fingers to get it in just the right spot. It's also easy to adjust the intensity of the effect, with tools to adjust the blur, blur intensity, opacity, saturation, color, and contrast (tools vary depending on the effect).
Lens Distortions is not set up as a full editing suite–if you need color, contrast, brightness, etc. adjustments on your base photo, you'll need another app to do so. Compared with other apps, Lens Distortions creates effects which appear the most realistic. It is free to download on the App Store, and comes with a basic set of options for the above effects. Lens Distortions is not currently available for Android.
Download here: iPhone
#3: Snapseed
Snapseed is Google's foray into the photo editing world. If you're just getting into iPhone photography, this is a great app to download. It's easy to use, free, and offers a great selection of tools to take your photos from "okay" to "damn, Daniel!" The app does well with basic photo processing–sharpening, cropping, straightening, exposure and color adjustments, adding a vignette, etc.
The app also offers advanced editing/brush tools to make selective adjustments, as well as a healing tool for removing small unwanted objects/zits from your photos.
There are also creative filters that you can use to make your photo black and white, give it a vintage feel, apply textures and blur effects, and generally play with the mood of your photos. Bonus: If you're into the HDR thing, this app does a pretty good job of turning your photos into super tonal HDR landscapes.
#4: VSCO
VSCO (Visual Supply Company) has gained a reputation in the photo world for creating film emulation presets for Adobe Lightroom. They've also packed much of that editing power into their app, which recently got an interface overhaul to be more user-friendly.
VSCO's filters are designed to emulate classic analog films, many featuring the soft and slightly faded look that's become so popular. They are adjustable, so you can apply only as much as you'd like to the filter.
The app also features a number of editing and adjustment tools, such as brightness, contrast, perspective warp, sharpening, and many more to get your photo just right.
VSCO is free on the App Store, and comes loaded with a basic collection of filters. You can purchase additional packages of filters within the app, and the occasional free download.
The best way to find the photo editing app for you is to try out a bunch, and do some experimenting to figure out what looks you like and don't like. Only you can make your instas rad. Unless you have a friend that's a great photographer. They'll probably help.
About The Author
stash member Katie Cooney
Skier, photographer, dog lover, adventure seeker. Native of the land of cheese and beer, sometimes called Wisconsin.
jimrhodes
July 29th, 2020
And what can you say about Spyzie app? Have you ever tried it? I highly recommend you check it out.