Instagram Hacks - My Favourite Photo Editing Apps

We're in the midst of holiday season where we're snapping Christmas / New Years pics and on social media more often than usual. Have your pictures stand out - if you don't already use these 3 apps to edit your Instagram pictures...you're missing out.

The thing I love most about Instagram is how visually appealing it is. There is something so fun and creative in choosing an Instagram theme, selecting pictures that have synergy with your theme and editing them to fit in.

I also find it extremely interesting how photo editing techniques have changed and adapted over the years. Who remembers those bright rainbow filters and holographic looking hearts you could place all over your picture?

Now I feel like Instagram has moreso leaned towards the trend of light and bright with pops of intense colour and crisp, clear photos. I wanted to share with you my Instagram hacks featuring my favourite photo editing apps. I have 3 fantastic ones to share. Let's get into it...


Snapseed
This is the ideal app for getting your photos to be light and bright. You can adjust the intensity of how bright you want to make the editing tool then select certain elements in your picture to brighten. Say you really want the green of the trees to pop so you whiten the road, the buildings around you and everything that isn't you or the trees. This means that you can draw your audience's eye to the key elements you want to focus on. This is particularly useful for outfit photos, food shots or makeup pictures because it fits the light and bright theme without taking colour out of the main element.


Photo Editor +
This is a jack of all trades app with endless possibility. This one does absolutely everything from lighten to smooth and everything in between. I mainly use this one for when I have a serious case of "red eye" because the function in this app works particularly well. I'll also use the lighten function if I don't need Snapseed to make any serious shade adjustments. This app is also great for making adjustments to brightness, exposure, contrast, warmth, saturation and more. This will also blur a background using the "focus" tool which is another amazing feature of the app.


Whitagram
The purpose behind this one is pretty simple actually and I don't use it all that often due to the new Instagram feature. Basically what this app does is adds white to the sides of your picture so that it will fit your entire picture in the frame when you go to upload it to Instagram. Like I referred to earlier, Instagram now allows rectangular and portrait photos so this was more of an issue when previously only square images were usable. However, this still works if you want to fit in your entire outfit into an Instagram picture but it doesn't quite fit or you want a close up selfie that happens to be a rectangle shape, this solves those problems.


It feels funny talking about editing Instagram pictures like it's an art form but if you really think about it, it kind of is. I love Instagram because it acts as a visual diary of my life and allows me to express myself creatively. These apps really help me get my pictures to exactly what I want them to be and accurately represent the theme I am going for. All of these apps are free so I would highly recommend heading over to the app store and trying them out to see if they might work for you too.