By: Johana M. Caba, M.A.
If you have ever been on Instagram or Pinterest, you know that having great photos is one of the keys to success on these platforms. Small businesses, bloggers, influencers, and just about everyone wants to have the best photos and best aesthetics for these apps. Great photos are essential to captivating your audience and getting views on your pages. These views can lead to visits to your webpage and eventually lead viewers to purchase your products. In this blog post, we will be going over the top 3 free photo editing apps that we found were the easiest to use. We will also be discussing some Instagram Stories tips to bring your stories to the next level of Instagram aesthetics.
1. Over App: The Over app does have free features and in-app purchases. For the Pro features the fee starts at $8.99 per month. The Pro version has extra features that are not available on the free version such as the ability to add shapes to your designs. In this app, you can use filters, crop your images, and use adjustments to edit your photos. The app also offers great tips for beginners and has pre-made layouts ready to use for your posts and stories. Below is a quick edit that I made using the app. First, I uploaded the photo and played with filters. Then, I cropped it to fit the image size that I was looking for and played with the adjust features including saturation, vignette and sharpen. Finally, I decided to play with the blur tool to show you guys you can use this app to blur your images when you don't want the audience immediately knowing what you are posting or if you are having a contest with a secret prize.
2. Instasize App: The Instasize App is more like a basic photo editing app without layouts or tips and tricks. It does have a paid version, Instasize Premium, for creators and a toolkit with tips and other content help for beginners and creators that sign up for the app. The creators package starts at $4.99 per month with more features than the free version. This app has basic features similar to other editing apps including the features on photos in your iPhone. Again, I was playing with filters and adjustments like saturation to edit the photo. You can also crop your image and add a grid around your image if you want to add text or anything else on the sides of your photo. Other than that, this one was not as impressive and did not have as many free features as the Over app.
3. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: This Adobe app is a very quick and easy to use editing tool. It has a lot of free basic features similar to the other two apps. The free version does not include the healing brush and selective adjustments, but other than that it is still a very quick and easy app to use when editing photos on the spot. The paid version starts at $4.99 per month. Below is my quick edit that I made to play with the app. I followed the same process as with the other two apps.
4. Instagram Stories Tips: Everyone wants the best Instagram Stories to captivate their audiences. Whether you are a creator, a business or a blogger, you want your stories to lead your audience to your profile and hopefully your website. There are apps like Over and Canva that provide pre-made layouts for your stories which will help you in making them more aesthetically pleasing. These pre-made layouts guide you in where to put your writing and where to place your photos. Another tip for stories is to do it yourself. You can go on these apps and choose to create your own story without a pre-made layout. For DIY stories, my favorite thing to do is go on Pinterest to look at backgrounds that will fit the mood of the story. Then, I screenshot these backgrounds and upload to either Over or Canva. After you have your background, you can edit it like a regular image and then select your text style, font and curvature. You can also add borders on your photos, stickers and other elements to really make your stories pop. Sometimes, I use both apps. I use Canva to edit and design my story, but I will use Over to add the text because it makes it easier to curve your text if you want to have it in an arch. My last tip, is to use the stickers that Instagram already provides on Stories. This will also make your Stories pop and captivate your audience. Sometimes you might see filters or effects that you like on other people's Stories. When this happens, you can tap on the name of the effect and choose to try it, save it or send it. Below is a quick DIY edit that I made with Over for Stories rather than using a pre-made layout. I will also include the screenshot of the effects options on Instagram.
4 Comments
Johana
8/13/2020 10:34:26 am
Thanks for the reply. I hope these apps and tips work for you and your blog!
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8/13/2020 09:34:43 am
These are some great sounding apps and tips. I love using Lightroom for editing.
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Johana
8/13/2020 10:35:02 am
Thanks for commenting. I love Lightroom too its super easy to use!
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