CLICK. Edit. Add caption. Post. These steps have become a routine for most people—especially the millennials—because of the existence of social media. But have you ever wondered how online celebrities put some magic in their photos to make them more artsy and #InstagramFeedGoals (as netizens call it)?
With photography skills, creativity and of course, photo editing apps (thank you, app creators!), you can now achieve those well-curated photos that you see online, and you can now be as artistic as your online idols. Here are the five editing apps you can use for free by downloading them from the App Store for iOS users and Google Play for Android owners.
VSCO
Created by Visual Supply Company, this app enables users to capture photos, import photos from their camera roll or gallery and edit them for exposure, contrast, temperature, sharpen, skin tone, clarity, resize, shadows, highlight and colors. But the best part of this app is its one-tap presets that are subtle yet fancy, allowing you to create a natural effect for your photos. With just one tap of your desired preset, your photo is now Insta-ready. Most of the grammers (millennial lingo for Instagrammers) use this app because it’s hassle-free yet natural-looking and elegant.
Lightroom CC
This app is developed by Adobe Photoshop, allowing everyone to create amazing photos from anywhere with its powerful yet simple camera and editing features. It allows you to edit photos in seconds with its tools that range from simple one-tap presets to advanced adjustments and corrections with the tone curve to change color, tone, contrast and exposure. Plus, Lightroom CC now adds a raw high-dynamic range capture mode to help you achieve DSLR and mirror-less camera effects and quality.
Snapseed
Developed by Google and produced by Nik Software, this photo editing app allows you to enhance photos and apply digital filters. It has 29 tools and filters including tune image that adjusts exposure and color manually or automatically with fine and precise control; brush that enables you to selectively retouch exposure, warmth, brightness or saturation and structure; text that adds both plain or stylized text with over 38 font styles; grainy film that enables you to get modern film looks with realistic grain; double exposure that allows you to blend two photos; face enhance to add focus to the eyes, add face-specific lighting that is perfect for portraits and selfies; and face pose that corrects pose of portraits based on 3D models.
PicsArt
This photo editing app is your all-in-one creative suite with its drawing tools, collage maker, photo editor and a social network that are for free. Its collage maker and grids provide hundreds of free templates with different colors and designs as a background that is very easy to use. You can use either its templates or the freestyle arrangement collage. Its photo editor has thousands of amazing features that you need to make every photo awesome. Among the features are the tools to create cutouts, crop, stretch, clone, double expose, and adjust curves and texts. It also has a full library of artistic photo filters, backgrounds, borders, frames, and stickers and font styles. Aside from that, this photo editing app lets you snap photos with live effects and permits you to create your own stickers using your own photos. Now you can make your own meme or make your photos stickers for those online greeting cards.
Hujicam
Film cameras are back! Not only do they bring back so many good old memories, but they also make your photo more appealing. No film camera? No problem! All you need to do is to download this app to make your picture-perfect moments as precious as the feeling of having an analog film. With just one click, you will have vivid and vibrant photographs as “developing” will start as soon as you take a picture.