Insta envy: When you are jealous of someone’s Instagram page or their theme- The Urban Dictionary.

It won’t comes as a surprise but photo editing is behind all Instagram envy. I by no means see my feed as perfection, but over time I have managed to develop my daily editing routine. It continues to change, but right now I have 3 to 5 apps I use with most photos I post. Some are free and others cost a few dollars, but well worth the price. I thought I would share my routine and apps with you in case your Instagram is giving off dull vibes.

The apps I use:

Snugg

Snapseed

VSCO

Facetune

TouchRetouch

The Steps

Step 1:

Choosing the Photo to Edit

It is likely I have at least 20 photos of the same thing to chose from. From selfies to POV pics. In order to narrow them down, I’ll add the best ones to my favourites. (That’s the little heart under the picture on the iPhone). Next, I open up Snug. When connected to your Instagram it will automatically load your feed. From here you can select the photos you favoured and see which one looks the best against your real feed. You can drag your photos into all sorts of arrangements to really play around with what will look best. This type of app is one of the main secrets behind amazing consistently themed feeds.

Step 2:

Snapseed

By now you I will have hopefully narrowed down the pictures to one. Next, I open it up in Snapseed. This app is incredible and the reason I cancelled my Adobe package.
My most used features are:

Transform
I’m not a photographer, so sometimes I take photos at bad angles. This feature help’s to fix that and change the image perspective.

Brush- Dodge & Burn and Exposure

This is the best tool to lighten dark photos. I use it to overexpose and under-expose certain areas in a photo.

Healing
I use the healing tool to remove unwanted items in photos, think everything from pimples to people. You will never have to worry about photo bombers again!

Details
Again, I’m not a photographer so I don’t own big fancy cameras and lenses. So sometimes my photos appear slightly blurry. Adding a little detail magic can sharpen them right up! I’ll often use it to highlight jewellery, details on my clothes or words.

Step 3:

VSCO

Sometimes, I’ll be done by this stage and ready to upload. Other times, I’ll go to VSCO to add a filter.
If you get overwhelmed by Instagram filters then get yourself a cup of tea for this one. I haven’t counted how many filters but there is a lot to choose from and because I’m never satisfied I went and purchased a few extra. Now I have maybe three filters I stick to, especially if I’m trying to stick to a certain colour theme on my feed. I always tone the theme down a little to make it look more natural and then I might jump into editing section to make some small tweaks.

Pick a filter, tone it down a bit, go down two notches on contrast and up two notches on sharpness etc etc…

I find the Instagram filters flush photos out too much which is why I only use VSCO. Another great feature is being able to copy the edit settings of one photo and paste them to another making all your photos consistent and creating the perfect Instagram flow! Should I do a whole post on VSCO and the filters I use with examples? 

Step 4:

Facetune

Hear me out! Yes, Facetune is known for the app behind celebrity’s Instagram fails. There is a feature that can be used to reshape or deform your body. It only really works if you standing in front of a blank background, otherwise, you’re likely to be left embarrassed when someone points out wonky items and unrealistic shapes. The tools I will sometimes use include whiten, blur and smooth and patch. The whiten tool is great for erasing yellow and is what many people use on their teeth.

Sometimes I like to blur out the backgrounds of my photos to keep the focus on the subject. This also gives the effect of a professional camera. The smooth tool is the best for evening out wrinkles, spots, and creases on my clothes. And with the Patch tool you can take a little snap of an area, copy it and then paste somewhere for the same effect. I recently used it to hide a smoke detector spoiling a nice wall.

Step 5:

Sometimes I will edit the same photo in a few ways and will need to use Snug again. I will put them up one at a time, take a screenshot on my phone and then look at the screenshots in my camera roll and decide which set looks best.

Step 6:

Finally, I will pop that winning picture on to my Instagram. I will almost always do no further editing with the Instagram tools. I might crop the photo, or tilt/ straighten it but you can also do this with most of the edit apps mentioned.

 

There’s a lot that goes into taking and editing great pictures for blogging.  I’m eye-rolling at myself reading over this post. What an effort!  

If you have any further tips or want to tell me your editing routine please do so in the comments section below. I’d love to know the different things people like to do. And as always, you can follow me on Instagram HERE.