Description

The explosion of Instagram in the last few years has seen a surge in the interest in casual photography; back before the days of social media people tended to forget their phone even had a camera. Now? Our saved creations awaiting the veil of ‘just the right filter’ take up more memory space than everything else combined.

I’ve been editing photos on my phone for 5 years now & have learnt a thing or two when it comes to making a photo ‘pop’ so, I thought I’d share my most common photo editing steps with you guys in this post xx

1.

I increase the contrast, increase the brightness and decrease the saturation in almost every photo I share on Instagram.

Brighter photos statically are more appealing, increasing contrast helps details to pop and, decreasing saturation just a little allows my overall feed to look more uniform as it avoids any colours being too jarring when placed next to another image.

2.

I whiten any discoloured areas with the tooth whitening tool on Facetune.

This is a godsend because, sunlight puts a yellow tone on everything white in images which looks great if you’re going for a warm tone image overall. Otherwise, the white areas will always make the image look cleaner if they’re pure white & not yellow tone.

3.

I brightened shadowed areas with the selective tool on Snapseed.

Snapseed is a little daunting to get to grips with as far as photo editing apps go but its so amazing if you can get the hang of it. If you’re not looking to complicate your editing process by using ahhhnother app (I hear ya!) then this option on Snapseed is all you need to know. Downloading it for the selective tool alone is honestly worth it.

4.

Decide on a filter you like & stick with it as this will allow your overall feed to have a theme & be more pleasing to the eye.

I always go for cool tone (blue tone) filters in the VSCO or Afterlight apps then add the same filter on top in the Instagram editing phase. I’m currently using the Aden Insta filter at about 40% on all my images but I’ll probably get bored of that & change it to something else in a while. Whatever you decide, stick with it for a few weeks if you want your feed to look cohesive.

Well, that’s it guys, my 4 most used tricks when it comes to editing my photos, I really hope you guys find this useful, make sure to tag me in any benefiting creations on instagram.com/i_come_undone xx