In our social media driven world, posting a good picture is something a lot of people thrive to do. What people consider to be a “good” picture varies, but most of the time when you see a quality photograph with just the right lighting, great clarity and colors, you always appreciate the image, no matter what the image is showing. That being said, there is a plethora of photo editing apps out there. Some of those apps can be accessed through our desktop computers and others are only available on our mobile devices. Today, I’m going to talk about my favorite apps that I use on the iPhone to edit my pictures (and I will make sure to mention their availability on Android as well) and show some examples of images I’ve edited using those apps. Unfortunately, a lot of these apps aren’t free but I definitely think are worth the price.

The header image above shows all the photography apps I currently have on my phone. While Boomerang and Layout are both listed there, they won’t be mentioned in detail during today’s post. For those who aren’t aware – Boomerang lets you create mini videos that repeat themselves (by mini I mean 2-3 seconds) and Layout is the app that allows you to make picture collages (the app is owned by Instagram so it’s the most “Instagram friendly” of the collage making apps). So now let’s get into the other 4 apps listed above.

Afterlight:

Out of the four apps I’m going to talk about today, I’ve had this one the longest. This app has a lot of cool effects that I haven’t been able to find on other apps and while I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to now that I’ve found the other photo editing apps, I still keep it around for those unique features. One of the coolest features on Afterlight is what I call the “overlay” feature. This can be found by clicking the 5^th feature on the bottom of the app (one that looks like a cropping sign) and is the furthest feature to the right once you’re in that menu. This lets you choose a second picture to “overlay” on the first and create what looks like a moving image or a “ghost” image as I refer to it. It can also be used to combine two different pictures together for special effects. For example, if you have a picture of a city at night with a mountain range in the background, you can take a different picture of the city (without those mountains) and overlay it and make the mountain range look as if it’s in the background by using the overlay feature. You can also use this app if you need to make a picture fit on the Instagram format by adding the white spaces on the sides when the picture itself cuts off certain parts. That’s what I use this app for mostly these days as my others apps have better editing features for picture quality. This app also has a ton of different filters that aren’t available on other apps and if you are someone that likes using new filters and doesn’t want to be limited to the few that Instagram has, this is definitely a reason to download this app.

Availability: Both iPhone and Android

Cost: $0.99

Facetune:

This is currently my most used photo editing app. This app has so many features that are unique to it and the app itself is so user friendly. This is the app with which you can whiten your teeth, erase any pimples, make certain features pop (for example, if you have a shirt with very intricate detailing, you can highlight those parts of the picture and make them more noticeable), and many other features. You can also focus, blur, and reshape anything using this app. I’ve used this app to erase stains on people’s clothing by using the tones feature and smooth out wrinkles out of clothing using the smooth feature. Another great thing about this app is the red eye removal feature – it breaks it down into red or white eye and by far makes the fix look the most natural ( because we have all seen a botched job with red eye removal on people’s pictures and don’t want to do the same). The whitening feature that can be used to whiten your teeth I actually usually use to whiten the backgrounds of pictures or make certain backgrounds look lighter.

Here is an example of how I used the whitening feature to change the granite on my kitchen table to fit a lighter “theme” and make my picture more aesthetically pleasing:

Availability: Both iPhone and Android

Cost: $5.99 (but TOTALLY worth it)

Adobe Lightroom

So this one is a little bit different because it requires a subscription or a full payment that is quite hefty. I use this on my computer more often than my phone, but I do have the option to use this app on my phone if I don’t have access or time to use my computer. This is by far, my most important and “have to have” product. This is what I use to edit all my pictures whether they’re of me for the blog, my travels, my family, etc. This makes a huge difference in my pictures and I definitely recommend checking this out if you are into photography or are just starting to get into photography. This was recommended to me by someone that has been into photography for years when I asked him what the best photo editing program is for starting out. He recommended that I check this out and I definitely appreciate the recommendation because I’ve been using this since and don’t see myself switching anytime soon. This program helps you with the basics of photo editing – changing the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, etc. but it does so with such ease and such quality that your pictures instantly become ten times better.

Here are some before and after examples for Lightroom:

Availability : Both iPhone and Android

Cost: Either a $10/month subscription through Adobe or an outright purchase of the program for $142.99

You can also do a free trial for a month which I would recommend if you are considering this program.

VSCO Cam:

This one is the newest app for me even though I’ve heard about it for years. I actually remember downloading this app ways back and deleting it because I couldn’t really figure out how to use it. I did watch a YouTube tutorial this time before downloading it which taught me how to use this app and I recommend doing this for everyone. This app lets you apply different lighting “filters” to your pictures, but it lets you control how much of that filter is actually applied. This app is definitely what helps you create a “theme” to your pictures if you use the same filter settings each time. This also has the basic picture editing options such as fixing the clarity, exposure, etc. but I mostly use this for the lighting features.

Availability: Both iPhone and Android

Cost: Free (!)

Let me know if you use other photo editing apps that I should check out. I am always looking for new ones. I hope this was helpful and if you guys have any questions about these apps, don’t hesitate to comment below. Thanks for reading!