Everywhere you look, there are influencers showcasing the most beautiful photos on the most aesthetically-pleasing feeds. It may seem like their perfect photos are almost impossible to achieve, but that’s not the case. You can totally do it too! While there are many ways to find your own style and many apps you can download to help you do it, I’m going to be sharing with you five of my favorite apps to use to elevate my Instagram photos. All of these apps are free to download and use, but just be aware that they all have paid features within them as well.
- Unfold
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Unfold is an awesome app for Instagram stories. It offers dozens of collections of templates to use for your photos. The templates are often minimalistic and artsy, with stickers and text you can add to them too. This app will help give the perfect professional touch to your Insta stories.
- Phonto
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Phonto is my favorite app for adding text to my images. It has loads of fonts already programmed into the app that you can choose from, or you have the option to download your own fonts into the app. If you don’t know how to download your own fonts, head to a website like dafont.com, find a typeface you like and there will be instructions for importing it into Phonto! You just have to be careful with what you will be using the fonts for because some artists will only allow you to use their work for commercial purposes if you’ve bought the license to their font first. Just make sure you do your research before you use the text for something more than a little Instagram post! Overall, Phonto is very easy to use and has lots of options for text customization.
- PicsArt
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I always get questions about how I add cute stars, stickers or other graphics to my photos, and the answer is PicsArt! PicsArt allows you to insert an image and search for stickers to add to it. You can also draw cute squiggles and designs onto the picture to give it more of an artsy feel. There are tons of other options to customize your pictures on the app, but those are a few of my favorite ways to add to them. There are paid features you can invest in with PicsArt, but you can also do just fine with the free version.
- Lightroom
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I use Lightroom to apply a preset to all of my photos so that they go together and match a certain aesthetic. Presets are basically just a saved set of edits and filters made to a photo, and I use this app to keep my feed looking clean and cohesive. Lightroom does require a purchased plan to be able to utilize this feature, but if you have a preset that you really want to use, I think it’s totally worth it.
- VSCO
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I know, you’re probably very familiar with VSCO already, but are you using it to its full extent? VSCO has more than just a few built-in filters; it has a store where you can buy more filters, and many times it even has packs of filters that are free for download if you look! I’ll share with you another little trick that I’ve used many times on my Instagram. If you go to Pinterest and search “VSCO Filters”, you’ll find so many presets that people have come up with for you to try in your own app! These search results will give you instructions on which filter to use and how you should adjust the exposure, saturation and more to achieve the look of the photos you like.
As I said, there are hundreds of apps you can use to make your social media feed truly stand out, so don’t be afraid to explore and try new things. I think these few apps are great places to start if you’ve been looking for new ways to spice up your photos. Enjoy, and happy ‘gramming!