How I Edit My Instagram Photos - My New Favourite Editing App

Do you remember the days where everyones Instagram theme was all white and we all used and abused the whitening tool on Face Tune just to get the right effect? Not to mention the most used filter on VSCO Cam - A5. I'll hold my hands up and say that I'm guilty and when I look back on this section on my Instagram theme I really hate it. Actually thats a little extreme, I don't hate it, but it's definitely not what I'm about anymore. Whilst some bloggers still work this theme AND make it look amazing, it's just not me anymore and I'm definitely more about injecting some colour into my feed. For the last couple of months I've been sticking to one consistent colour in my theme, which is pink and I absolutely love it. But over the last few weeks I've tried incorporating some more lifestyle photos in as I feel that this makes things look more personal and I can give you guys a bit more insight into my life. All these changes on the gram means I've been experimenting with different editing apps and seeing what suits my style best. Well, over the last two months the process of editing my photos has never been more fun and I can only put it down to my new favourite app - A colour Story and today I want to tell you all about it and how I use it to edit my Instagram photos.

Why A Colour Story?

I know a lot of people stick with the really popular apps to edit photos, VSCO being the big one, followed by Face Tune and Light Room - I hardly ever hear people rave about A Colour Story and I don't know why because it's so easy to use and you can go into so much detail when it comes to editing photos. The app is completely free, but does have some amazing in app purchases which are really reasonably priced and I would recommending in investing in some, especially if you're looking for your photos to be a certain style. The app comes with some really good free filters which I was happy using until I wanting to make my editing style a little more tapered to me. With all of the filters you have the freedom to adjust the strength of the filter so you're still getting that same editing experience as you do with the other apps.

Next to the filters tool, you have the effects tool which is great if you're wanting to add different textures to your photos or different lighting effects. To be honest, I don't really use this section of the app that much, unless I have an outdoors photo that needs lightening up a little bit. Again there are some free presets to use, but A Colour Story also offer some purchasable ones if you're interested.

My favourite part of the app has to be the tools section as this is where I can really fine tune my photos and bring them to life. There's a tool for everything in this section, from curves, brightness, saturation, contrast, etc... you get the idea. What I really love though is that you and select a certain area in your photo to apply these tools which enables me to get really precise with my editing.

And for me the icing on the cake is that A Colour links up to your Instagram whilst your in the app so you can see your feed and you can add the photos, move them around and see what your edited photo looks amongst all your published content. If a photo is not looking quite right I can quickly make a few changes and see the saved photo in my feed, which really is the thing of blogging dreams. In this section you can also write your caption and schedule your post - Which is a great little feature that's helped me get more organised.

How I edit my photos?

Before A Colour Story I was using a few apps to edit my Instagram photos, but now I just do it all in the one app. The first thing I like to do is head to the tools section and tweak my photo to make it as perfect as possible, before turning to any filters. I always up the brightness and recently I've been loving the curves tool just to add some more depth to my photos. Depending on the photo I'll either up the contrast or drop the saturation if things are looking a little too bright, just so that all my photos are really consistent in the way that they look. I've also been loving the clarity tool and will only use this ever so slightly, just to sharpen up my photos and make the focus point of them stand out a little bit more.

When it comes to filters my favourite packs are 'Cardigan' and 'Golden'. I purchased both of these packs just because they really help to make my photos come to life and add more character and feel to them. The Cardigan pack is perfect if your like me and have a pink theme. All of the filters in this pack are pink toned, so they will really help give your photos more of a pink tone and bring out any pink in the actual photo. My favourite ones to use are Lockwood and Felicity.

The Golden pack is perfect for lifestyle photographs and I use these to edit photos of myself and Archie when we are out and about. There are so many filters to choose from in this pack and they really help give my photos a lovely golden glow to it. My favourite ones to use are 'Amethyst' and 'Golden'.

Whenever I use a filter, I never use them at 100% as I find it changes my photo completely - I just adjust it just to give my photo more of a tone rather than make it look completely different. Because there is so much to choose from the Colour Story App, it can sometimes take me a good hour to edit one photo, but I actually really enjoy the process and love the app and I always have a picture that I'm really happy and proud of - So for me it's time well spent.

That's all I do when it comes to editing, as I mentioned I like my photos to look as natural as possible and just use the tools and filters to enhance certain things. Once I upload the image to Instagram, I may just adjust the sharpness or brightness with the Instagram tools, but that's about it - So there we have it.

I would love to know what your top tips are for editing photos on Instgram and I would love for you to take a look at my account and show it some love (follow me here) - I'm so close to my next mini milestone, so would love it if you could help out with that.