Instagram has evolved from being a social platform to a digital portfolio of sorts, where every aspect of one’s life is captured in images. And what’s even better is the divine ability to enhance those images. From fundamentals to final touches, these are the best editing apps for Instagram.
Be it a social media influencer creating stunning imagery or your amateur photographer friend who seems to have suddenly upped his skills, the truth is that everyone gets a little bit of help from editing apps on the world’s most popular social media platform. Making things look even better can’t hurt, right?
So which are the best editing apps for Instagram? There are really hundreds you can choose from. Want to shoot high-quality images while using white balance and controlling the shutter speed? Yup, it’s possible. Want to go beyond colour, light, and exposure to do selective adjustments? Or maybe you like distortion and textures. Well, there is an app for everything.
Moreover, instead of editing apps for a post, you must also look for solutions for Instagram stories as well. There are tons of apps dedicated to designing and creating stories for Instagram. It shares equal importance with posts and deserves equal attention too.
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1 /5
For shooting high-quality images, Halide Camera is an accomplished camera app for iOS. It sports a pretty elegant user-interface and captures several types of images like RAW, TIFF, HEIC, and JPG. Thanks to the complete manual control like shutter speed, ISO and white balance, you have the desired control over your photos. With the manual depth control, you can take fascinating portrait images. Even better, this app lets you capture portraits of pets and objects effectively on the iPhone.
2 /5
Adobe’s Lightroom CC has always been a powerhouse and a top-notch RAW photo editor. So calling it the best raw photo app for iOS is fair. Aside from being a great image editor, Lightroom CC also excels as a camera app. It features multiple advanced capture modes to let you shoot RAW and HDR shots elegantly. To make your images look more appealing, you can tweak several things like colour, exposure, tone, and contrast. Even better, you can go for the premium version of the app to unlock a wide range of pro features including Healing Brush, selective adjustments, geometry, and also essential cloud storage.
3 /5
What makes this app different from the other apps on this list is that here you aren’t reducing or editing the image. You’re simply adding to it. Once you’ve edited and fine-tuned your image with the desired exposure and colour detailing, you can add an overlay or a ‘distortion’ as it is called. These distortions are categorised as Principle Light Hits, Standard Light hits, Fog, and Shimmer. Lens flare and shades come under the first two categories. Fog is useful when you need to cover up something, maybe something that doesn’t belong in the image. Shimmer adds a shiny layer. It gives a unique sparkle that can enhance the photo. The best feature is that all these are customisable. Available on both iOS and Android.
4 /5
Snapseed, hands down, is one of the hottest editing apps in the market right now for both iOS and Android. It’s an all-rounder app that comes with a whole lot of features. Fine Tuning, Selective Enhancement, HDR features, Tonal Contrasts, and Facial Enhancements etc. Even the interface is easy and super effective. Snapseed has a slightly more casual feel compared to the other apps listed here. However, it’s quite powerful and a must-have for anyone wanting to step up their Instagram game.
5 /5
Mextures is a fantastic app for applying textures to your iPhone photos. It also has a range of other effects including grain, light leaks, and gradients. Textures can really turn boring, unfinished images into something worthy of an Instagram post. Grainy details and background textures are its core highlights. Another cool feature of this app is its ‘Lens Focus’.
All images: Courtesy Brand
Mikhail Gomes
Features Editor, Lifestyle Asia India & Contributor - Augustman
A watch aficionado, Mikhail also enjoys learning about fine whiskies, and one day hopes to establish his own menswear label. At Lifestyle Asia India, he writes on watches, menswear, auto and tech.
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