Welcome to a new lesson of the Instagram Academy. Who says you need a professional camera to take a good shot? With the careful use of filters and adjustments, even a phone photo can do well on the network. Many of the best photos published on Instagram were in fact taken on a smartphone.
In this lesson we will look at how to edit photos on Instagram so that every shot is distinctive, engaging and, above all, content that stands out from the crowd. One important caveat first: if a shot is bad, it is bad. No editing will save it.
The first rule for succeeding on Instagram is choosing quality photos. And by quality photos we don’t only mean beautiful ones — well lit, sharp, well framed — but shots that give something to whoever is looking at them. Filters are not there to “correct” a badly made photo but to make an already good shot distinctive, giving it your personal style so you are recognisable at a glance.
New to the Academy? Have a look around: you will find plenty of other lessons on Instagram, on SEO, on Facebook and on growth hacking.
In our Instagram Academy you will find other lessons on Instagram marketing, on geotags, on how to make money on Instagram, when to post on Instagram and much more…
Want to know how to publish the perfect photo? Read on and find out how to edit photos.
Ready? Let’s go.
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Three rules for taking the perfect photo
To understand how to edit photos on Instagram with filters, it helps to run quickly through the things to follow when taking a good shot.
The main camera. If you use a phone to capture your favourite moments, always use the main camera rather than shooting through Instagram. The quality is far higher.
The rule of thirds. If you want to be sure your shot is well framed, imagine the frame divided into a grid of nine squares, then place your subjects along the lines or at the intersections. That way you get level horizons and avoid cutting off someone’s hair or feet.
Mind the light. Light is certainly one of the most important elements in a successful shot. Everywhere you read that “photography means writing with light”. Natural or artificial light? You have to know how to use both — prefer natural, but be able to use artificial when conditions leave no choice. Light should also be used deliberately, according to the effect you want. If you want to give the subject depth, side light works; if you want them surrounded by a glow, use a soft light hitting them from behind; if you want to soften shadows, the light should come from behind the photographer, facing the subject.
Free image from Pixabay
How to edit photos on Instagram: the 25 filters
Once your shot is taken properly, it is time to edit photos on Instagram with its filters. How? Applying them is very simple. Open Instagram on your phone, pick your photo from the “Gallery” and tap “Next”. You land in the section where you can apply filters or edit the photo by hand.
To add a filter, just tap the small effect preview at the bottom. In an instant your photo changes. And if you tap the chosen filter a second time, Instagram lets you adjust its intensity however you like.
Instagram gives you 25 filters to choose from:
- Slumber: softens saturation and mutes the tones
- Crema: brings out the colours
- Ludwig: raises brightness and contrast
- Aden: applies pastel tones and reduces contrast
- Perpetua: emphasises blue and green tones
- Amaro: adds a vintage effect, brightening the centre and applying a veiled frame
- Mayfair: brightens the centre, adds a vignette at the edges and raises contrast and saturation
- Rise: reduces saturation towards a sepia tone
- Hudson: brightens the centre and cools the tones, emphasising blue
- Valencia: mutes the colours for a vintage touch
- X-Pro II: darkens the edges and applies a golden effect at the centre
- Sierra: softens the tones and adds a light blur
- Willow: desaturates the image into greyscale
- Lo-Fi: raises contrast and saturation, darkening the edges slightly
- Earlybird: loads up the warm colours and adds a light vignette
- Sutro: pushes purple and brown tones
- Toaster: heavily saturates the centre, giving the image a lot of warmth
- Brannan: gives an aged effect by pushing the contrast
- Inkwell: black and white, used to kill “noise” — the speckling and grain in a photo
- Walden: softens contrast and adds a certain haze
- Hefe: raises contrast and saturation together
- Nashville: lowers contrast for a soft feel leaning towards pink and blue
- 1977: pushes the reds for the effect of a photo “taken in 1977”, with a retro note
- Kelvin: brings out the yellows and applies heavy saturation
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Editing Instagram photos: which filter to choose
We have seen how to apply filters and edit your photos on Instagram. But which is the filter that gets the most likes? Yahoo! Labs and Georgia Tech asked the same question and ran a study analysing over a million Instagram photos shared in various countries.
The study found that the filter most used by Instagram users is Clarendon. The filters that do best (and get the most likes), however, are Valencia and Juno.
The results also offer useful suggestions about which filters suit which subject and situation. The filter that works best for a natural landscape is Valencia, while for fashion photos the one that gets the most likes is Kelvin. For selfies, filters are strictly out: the study shows people don’t like over-edited shots and prefer something more natural.
Our advice at Instagram Academy is to edit photos consistently. It doesn’t matter which filter you prefer. What matters is using it across all your shots, so your profile looks coherent and conveys a clear stylistic choice. Warm tones, cool tones, more contrast, vignetted edges: there is no rule that makes one beat another. As we said in the lesson on Instagram marketing, the golden rule is understanding your own identity and not being afraid to show it.
Free image from Pixabay
Apps for editing photos for Instagram
Instagram’s filters not enough for you? Here is a list of photo apps for you, which let you edit shots before publishing them, adding effects beyond Instagram’s own.
VSCO
VSCO is one of the best known and most used photo editing apps in the world (here is the site). Its filters have won everyone over, to the point that many Instagram users prefer them to the network’s own. VSCO offers free presets and paid ones at a modest price, and lets you adjust almost every parameter of a photo: perspective, brightness, contrast, sharpness, saturation. As on Instagram, VSCO lets you adjust a filter’s intensity if the colours look too strong.
Snapseed
Snapseed is a photo app produced for Google (iOS, Android). Beyond the basics VSCO also has, Snapseed lets you remove unwanted elements and, with the “brush” and “selective edit” tools, edit only parts of a photo.
Perfect365
If you are after the perfect selfie we suggest Perfect365 (here is the site). Free on Android and iOS, it is a retouching app whose features include removing dark circles, a silk effect and applying make-up.
TouchRetouch
If you want to remove something from your photo (an object, a person, an element), you can turn to TouchRetouch, available as a paid app for iPhone and Android. Use it judiciously, though, without wrecking the balance of the image (as when you lop off part of someone’s body).
Free image from Pixabay
Conclusion
Here we are at the end of this Instagram Academy lesson. Today you saw what to follow to take quality photos. Then you learned which filters Instagram offers and how to apply them to your shots. Finally you discovered four apps that can help you edit your photos until they are exceptional. What are you waiting for? Pick your favourite shot, edit it with your favourite filters and make it go viral.
We will see you in the next lessons, where we will go deeper into other Instagram subjects you are sure to find interesting. Stay tuned and keep following your favourite Instagram Academy.
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