How-To Edit Your Instagram Pictures

What did we do before Instagram? Honestly! It's the one app that I am consistently checking and the one I seem to get the least annoyed with.

I've always been one of those girls that takes a crazy amount of pictures, even long before the Instagram or Facebook days. Guilty as charged. I love photography, even though I'm not an expert by any means, and I love seeing what pictures other people are taking. Pretty pictures are just fun to look at, especially when you can see pictures from all around the world in a simple click (one of my favorite hash tags to search on insta? #travel) One thing that I am knowledgeable about is staying up to date with the best photography apps. I'm always looking in the iPhone app store at the best up-and-coming photography apps to see what is out there, how I can make my pictures better, and what app everyone is raving about.

When I first started using Instagram, it seemed like I was always picking a filter with a border (borders? oh, fun!) and I chose a lot of the darker filters that Instagram provided. Now I find that I'm doing the complete opposite...I gravitate towards the lighter filters (Nashville is a favorite) and I never use a border. I like to try and keep the picture as natural as possible, but while still adding something extra to it in one way or another. I don't use a border anymore because I found when I went back to print one of my older pictures or use it for something, I hated having it on there and it got in the way.

So, without further adieu, here are some of my favorite ways to edit your Instagram pictures with your iPhone! Please share in the comments below what apps you like to use, I love to hear what you all are loving as well!

>>Once you have the image you want, take advantage of the "enhance" feature on your iPhone. 9 times out of 10 I will use this feature because it makes the photo look more sharp or crisp, but there are times it can pull some off coloring so if it does I won't use it in that circumstance.

>>Open the app Afterlight. Afterlight is my favorite editing app. With an iPhone, it's hard to get the right amount of light for a picture and you might find yourself with a handful of dark pictures. With this app you can add brightness, light leaks, adjust the exposure, add a unique filter, or crop. Not only that, it hardly ever crashes and it's fast.

original image of our kitchen before afterlight

image after editing in afterlight (adjusted the brightness)

 Our kitchen has a lot of natural light already, but my iPhone picture still came out a little darker than I wanted. Just adjusting the brightness is an easy editing tool that can make your picture better!

>>If you have a horizontal or vertical picture that looks better in it's original size, Whitagram is the app for you. It allows you to keep your original photos size and gives your pictures a pretty white background. You can see an example of this on my instagram page, as showing it on this post you won't be able to tell.

>>Are you looking for more filter options than what Instagram has to provide? Camera + is where it's at. This is the app that I have had on my phone for the longest period of time and I'm so glad I found it. It does so much that I couldn't begin to explain it all to you, but my favorite features? It has a timer for those situations where you don't have anyone to take your picture, it has a "flash" and "backlit" option for those extremely off or dark photos, and the filters are awesome.

Some of my favorite filters (featured in above photo): Hipster, Auto (it just makes the colors pop more), Vibrant (I use this when I'm traveling-it's great for beach/sky shots!), Sunkiss'd, Black and White, Lofi...to name a few.

this photo's colors were already amazing on it's own but after adding only a little bit of the vibrant effect with Camera +(you can adjust how much you want), it made the colors..you guessed it..more vibrant..

 picture of Rocky after using the auto effect (it makes his tie and coloring stand out more)

>>Want to know how everyone adds fun text or cool graphics? Download A Beautiful Mess or Rhonna Designs. A Beautiful Mess has a ton of phrases, arrows, symbols, and text fonts you can add to a picture but beware that this app takes a lot of storage space!

text/graphics after using ABM

>>Do you want to showcase more than one photo at a time? PicFrame gives you the ability to create a photo collage (you can fit up to eight photos for one Instagram pic) and you can also add text.

These are the apps that I'm using on a regular basis and have passed my photo editing "test". Some of my other favorite editing apps out there that are worth checking out:

+Perfect365 (for face touch-ups!)
+Aviary
+Snapseed
+Vintique

Phew! After all that and multiple copies of the same picture taking up space on my camera roll, I just MIGHT be ready to finally upload to Instagram. :)

What are your favorite editing apps? Leave it in the comments below and don't forget to follow me, @katiewkrysh, if you aren't already!

Happy Monday friends!