Tip Tuesday: My Favourite Photo Apps

I’m sure I am not the only person who finds themselves wishing, on a daily basis, that they had their camera.  But it’s not always practical to carry a camera with you and to be honest, I quite often just forget to take it with me (not for weddings or portrait sessions I hasten to add!  I ALWAYS have my camera for them).  Thank goodness for camera phones!  I’ve mentioned before that I don’t love my iphone4 but I can’t deny that I love having a handy little camera in my pocket to capture pretty lighting or a family moment I don’t want to forget.

There are hundreds and maybe even thousands of different apps for editing photos on your phone, but today I am going to share with you the ones that I am currently loving and how I use them.

On my phone I have a little section where I keep all my editing apps, nice and tidy and easy to find.  The only one that isn’t in there is my Instagram app as I like to have that on my home screen so I can get to it really quickly.  I’m not going to take you through the collage apps today, but I can safely say that after a long search, InstaCollage and Pic Collage are both easy to use and effective.  If you haven’t yet come across Instasize then I recommend getting it; it allows you to resize your photos so that you can put full size images into Instagram without having to crop them into a square.

My most-used app for editing and sharing photos is Instagram.  Instagram lets you create a profile where you can display and share your photos.  You can follow your friends, celebrities or people whose photos you admire and they can follow you back.  If you follow me on Instagram then you will probably have seen most of the photos in this post before!  Here is a little snapshot of my profile.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about using Instagram today as I am planning on doing a separate Tip Tuesday on how to make the most of this amazing app!  Once in Instagram, you can apply pre-set filters to your photos that enhance the colours and give your pictures a vintage feel.  My favourite filters to use are Amaro, Rise, Sierra and Walden.

Here are three photos that have been taken on my iphone and edited in Instagram.

Whilst I love Instagram, I often use other editing apps alongside it; making adjustments or adding bits to my photos before opening them in Instagram.

The best app that I have for editing photos is the Adobe Photoshop Express app.  I only discovered it last week but I am loving it!

 

It has so many options that allow you to change the exposure, contrast, sharpness, highlights, shadows and much more.  It’s almost like sitting at the computer and having a full editing program to play with.

Next up…

Shapely is so much fun!  The downside is that it is one of those apps that is free but then you have to pay for all the extra bits.  I just use the free bits which includes shaped frames, stamps and lovely fonts.  A really fun app for when you are feeling creative or if you want to add a bit of interest to your Instagram feed.  This photo is of my friends little boy and I have used Shapely to make a little name announcement.

Every time I share an image like this…

or this…

I’m always asked how I get the little globes of light.  These globes of light are called bokeh and I have tried so many different apps that apply bokeh to your images, but the one that I like the most is called PhotoMagic.

It is a really simple app to use and you can put filters and effects on your photos but I like to use it just to get this really pretty effect.  There are a few different light effects that you can apply and these ones bellow are my favourites.

Last, but not least, we come to A Beautiful Mess.

This gorgeous app gives you filters, borders, doodles, fonts and phrases to play with so you can let your creative juices flow and spend hours putting together the perfect doodled-on image.

Leave a comment below or head over to my facebook page to tell me what your favourite apps are; I’m always looking for new ones to try!

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