Do you love creating content through photography and video as much as I do, and if so, how much time do you spend on selecting and editing?
I’m certainly no professional photographer, but I am a very visual person and make a living as a content creator, social media manager and online marketeer, so for me visual content, editing and the use of apps is essential!
Luckily I love doing this, and editing and creating content comes naturally to me. That is also how was able to grow my social media follower base to over 140,000 followers combined in less than 4 years, and why I started working as content creator and social media consultant for other companies and brands.
For Instagram photography and content creation tips you can find out more in these blogs: Tips for the perfect Instagram pictures and 9 Tips for content creation.
But in this blog I will also share my favourite editing, photography and video apps with you, to help you stand out amongst the huge competition online, especially on social media!
I don’t use desktop editing tools, such as Photoshop and Lightroom, because I think they are quite time consuming and make me less flexible. That’s also why I take a lot of my pictures with my phones: a Samsung Galaxy S8 and and Iphone 8X.
Although some people look down on mobile phone photography, I experienced that the quality of the newest phone lenses nowadays is very high, if you know how to use them, and can even be better than older camera models and lenses.
As I travel a lot, my strategy is to keep things fast and efficient by taking pics while enjoying, and edit on the go (for example during transfers). I do this as much as possible on my phone, so I don’t need my laptop every time. And I try to stay innovative by using the latest apps!
These apps enable me to edit on my phone and help me to create ‘fairy tales’ out of ordinary moments, to make my pictures stand out and create my own signature and style.
I don’t want to create a fake reality, but rather enhance the beauty that was already there, and remove less appealing distractions, as you can see in these before and after pics:
For these pics I used the phone app Snapseed to brighten up the colors, make them look more fresh, color the sky, remove distractions, and create a dreamy effect.
Of course Photoshop and Lightroom also have mobile app versions, which can work really well if you want to edit on the road, but as these are more complex and you have to pay to use them to the fullest, I never started using these.
Like Einstein once said; 'Creativity is intelligence having fun' which really resonates with me! And nowadays editing doesn't have to cost much time, as there are many versatile and fast mobile apps, which I am happy to share with you:
Photography & Editing Apps
Snapseed
This is by far my favourite editing app. I also tried a few other filter apps like VSCO for example, which are ok. But Snapseed has the most applications that work best for me.
With Snapseed you can use a pencil to brighten up, or color certain parts of the pic. You can make the sky more pink as you can see in the 3rd picture here below, and you can remove distractions. You can create your own signature preset filter which you can apply every time to several pics, and as you can see below, you can even make the snow more white (SWIPE in 1st below Instagram pic), and so much more:
Photodirector
With this one you can easily add overlays, such as light flares, and special skies as I did in below pics:
Lensdistortions
This app has amazing life like additions, such as snow, fog, rain, and subtle light flares, which you can even add over each other. Here you can see the difference in these pics where I added both a light flare and snow, after having edited the pic with Snapseed first.
Unfold
Very nice to create small stories with, by combining several pictures in standard templates, with different combinations and font options for text. I use it mostly for Instagram Stories, as these small picture galleries can look quite cluttered when used in your Instagram feed.
Facetune
THE app to use if you post a lot of selfies and want to remove bags under your eyes, blemishes, imperfections, and improve, or even add make-up. I don’t use it a lot, as I don’t post selfies in general 😊 but it can be used to remove other imperfections as well!
Layout
You can combine several pictures in a grid with Layout, in different combinations like below. I use this app mostly to make before-and-after picture combinations, as I did in this blog.
App for Type
Great for quotes and different fonts, if you want to add texts in your pictures, like this one:
Glitterphoto or Kyra Kyra
As Kyra Kyra is only available for Iphones I found Glitterphoto in the Play Store, which works similarly. Perfect to add beautiful variations of glitters and stars to your pictures, for example during Christmas or winter time, as you can see here:
Importance of Instagram & IG Stories
Of course ‘content creation’ is quite broad, as text and blogs are also important. But with the rise of social media and video marketing, visual content is still king, and Youtube, Facebook and Instagram are the marketleaders. Although FB and Youtube are still very relevant, Instagram is one of the most important social media platforms you can benefit from now and in the future. Why do I say that?:
Instagram has doubled its active user base in only 2 years to over 1 billion users last year already. It has the highest engagement rate of all social media platforms, and IG Stories has seen the fastest growth EVER! From 100 million users per day start 2017, to more than 400 million a day right now. That's an increase of 4 times, in less than 2 years, surpassing Snapchat and Pinterest.
This does however also mean that you must produce content consistently, as posting daily IG Stories has proven very important for your reach, but they do disappear after 24 hours.
I know what you're thinking…even more work, and yes it is! But when you focus on creating broad content and know which apps to use, which you do now😊, you can make this process less-time consuming, more efficient and a lot of fun!
To help arrange your Instagram gallery in advance, and see how the pictures you want to post look in a specific order, I would advise using these apps:
Preview or Unum
You can use them as a gallery without adding your Instagram account to it, but can use it more extensively as well to schedule posts and even get insights per post in the paid versions.
Video Marketing
Research also predicts that 82% of all internet traffic will be video by 2022, and analysis and trend forecasts show that future content & communication will become even more focused on video. Next to Youtube the other big players; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn now all cater for video content and Google search results favor videos too. As 2019 progresses video will become more important and everybody who buys a new phone is effectively purchasing a new video camera, which makes it even more accessible.
Yes, YouTube is designed for video, but currently there are so many more social sites where people watch videos online, so I make sure to stay relevant by producing more video content already with these apps:
Video apps
Pixaloop
By far my favourite to create moving effects in still pictures, which looks really cool, as you can see in my below Instagram post. It has several options and additions, but unfortunately most are paid, and the app is only available for Iphone right now..
Videoleap
This is THE app, in my opinion, to edit video’s on the go. So far I only used it for 2 compilation trip video’s, but I already feel it's very flexible and versatile!
Unfortunately it's also only available for Iphones until now. Here's one of the video's I edited with it:
Boomerang
I love this Instagram feature for stories, but the app is also nice to have on your phone separately to create these hilarious video loops anytime!
Lumyer
Also a great tool to create video’s with still pictures, by adding snow or other fun (often seasonal) themes, as you can see in this Instagram post from last year:
Mobizen
Don’t you find it annoying that Android phones don’t have the standard feature to film your screen? Well I did, and that is how I found Mobizen, an app that films your phone's screen while scrolling through.
Great to promote your website for example on IG Stories, so people can see how it looks, while scrolling through it.
Storybeat
I was looking for a stopmotion app available for Android, and found many that only allow you to create a stopmotion on the spot, while taking several pics. I however prefer to do this afterwards from pics I took already.
Luckily I found Storybeat, a free app that enables this, and even has a free library with the latest pop songs to add to your video as well. See how it looks here:
Do you edit your pictures already, and what do you think of these apps? Did you know all of them already or did I leave one out which you use, and like a lot?
Would love to hear it, just leave a comment here to share it with me, or find me on social media, via the icons at the bottom of this page.
