Hey Everyone! I am super excited to pop in here today and share with you some of my personal favorite photo editing apps! There are so many apps in the app stores and it can be super overwhelming. I have a few that I really love and don’t really look for any others. Though I use an Android (and love it!) and there are some apps that are iPhone only that I really long for. Filmborn is coming soon to iPhones and I am so jealous. It is the first time in a LONG time that I have wanted to have an Apple again!
I will start with listing and linking to my favorite apps and then I will do a wee bit of photo editing to show you how a few of them work. (I am linking to the Google Play store)
- A Color Story – This is a super fun app with loads of filters for your photos that are either minimal or pretty heavy. There is a good mix of everything and even some special effects like sun flare, textures, etc. You do have to purchase most of the filters. My only complaint about this one is that after I edit my photo I have a hard time emailing it to myself. For some reason it converts it to a different file type and I can’t open them. I use this app and the open the photo in a different app before emailing.
- Facetune – This is my favorite app for small editing like blurring a background and enhancing details on eyes. There are some effects like gradients and filters, but I use other apps for that and this one for touching up.
- Adobe Lightroom – I do not do a lot of editing in the LR app, but I LOVE it for syncing with my big girl camera and sorting or organizing photos. I plug my camera in to the computer and then set it to sync with mobile and walk away. Then I can edit photos while we are out and it makes sharing them so much easier! You have to have a Creative Cloud subscription I believe to utilize this completely.
- MIX – I love this app so much for minor tweaks like skin softening and adding light. You can do those things in other apps, but I love this one for them. I feel like they are easier to personalize. This app is really cool as well because you can create and save your own filters. I have not completely utilized that yet, but I think it’s worth mentioning because I don’t know of any other apps that let you do that in this way. You create and save them and then share them in their community within the app.
- VSCO – VSCO is my personal favorite editing app. It gives your photos a really cool film camera look which I personally really enjoy. There are tons of filters to use (though you do have to purchase most in this one as well) and so many options!
- Instagram – Everyone knows and loves IG! It has some great built in features and filters and is the best app for sharing your photos in my opinion. You can connect with other people and find all kinds of inspiration. It’s a really awesome multi purpose app that I definitely think everyone should have and use!
Now I will walk you through a quick photo editing using a few of these!
I started by opening up my Lightroom app and saved the original photo at the highest quality (it asks you which quality to save each time you save a photo). Then I opened it up in A Color Story.
I applied the “Fresh Air” filter and that was it. I didn’t mess with it anymore. I saved it and then opened it up in Facetune. You can see the different options at the bottom for modifying your photos. I used the “Defocus” to blur the background a little bit and the “Details” (which isn’t showing on the screen shot) to enhance his eyes.
This is where the photo is at after just those simple tweaks in A Color Story and Facetune. It is already looking so much better!
I decided that I wanted to highlight the light coming in from the window to the left and soften his skin a little bit so I opened up this photo is MIX to do those quick edits. You have to click “Effects” to get to skin effects and “Textures” to get to the light overlays.
As you can see above, that strong of a flare does not work in this photo. The sun is not directly in our living room ha! So I drug that slider “strength” down a little bit to about 40% to get the final result that I was happy with!
Super cute right?! Of course Jasper makes any photo cute, but I love this so much better! I think I need to edit out some of the TV in the background still so I would probably crop it a little on the computer or before sharing elsewhere but all in all it took about 5 minutes and it’s precious!
Hopefully that was helpful at least a little bit! I would love to know what apps you recommend and go to the most for editing on the fly so let me know in the comments!
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